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Show and Tell Time!
OK, today is going to be a "tell" rather than a "show" because the only thing I have to show was already put up on wordless Wednesday!
This week in Adventures in My Father's World, we learned about George Washington. We have thoroughly enjoyed reading about him... what an amazing man. After a week of Ben Franklin and now George Washington, I am totally impressed with how disciplined these men were! reading about them has challenged me totally!
We learned "borrowing" in math this week, and Violet amazes me with how quickly she catches on!
Language Arts is going through an Extreme Makeover at our house, and I am not sure what it is going to look like exactly from here on out, so this week we just focused on cursive handwriting, spelling and some copywork of quotes from George Washington and Ben Franklin.
We were supposed to cover seasons this week for science, but things got busy and I kind of dropped the ball on it. I think Violet has a good grasp on the concept already, though, so I am trying not to feel guilty.
This weekend, Violet is getting baptized!!!! She is SO excited, and Mr. Incredible and I are, too! She is especially looking forward to sharing it with all her grandparents and friends who will be coming!
So that's all I have to tell for today!
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Like Buttah....
We made butter today! Tomorrow we are going to make bread to go with it. Our memory verse for the last couple weeks is John 6:35: "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."
Also, we have been learning about the early American settlers, as I mentioned before. So, our hands-on activity is making bread and butter... yummy AND educational! :)
Violet shaking the cream
Dash took a turn, too!
But in the end, can you guess who shook it and made the butter?
Yeah,.... it was Jack-Jack ;)
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Violet is a genius!
I had an "oh-my-gosh-my-child-is-a-genius" moment tonight... so let me tell you before I burst!
Because we did not do Math-U-See last year, I chose to start this year with Alpha even though Violet is in second grade. I figured we would blitz through it and move to Beta for the rest of the year. We have been loving MUS so much! Alpha focuses on mastery of single digit addition and subtraction facts. Beta moves to double/multiple digit addition and subtraction, with carrying, borrowing, etc.
So tonight we are out in the yard and Violet says, "Mom, I know what 38+50 is, it is 88." I said, "you are right, but how did you get that answer. Teach me how to do that problem." This was because I thought maybe she had counted her way up or something. She then explained to me that you add the units and then add the tens and it tells you the answer. I was wowed!
THEN, at bedtime, she asked me to give her some problems and stump her. So I wrote four double digit problems, which she solved no problem. So then I said, "well, Miss Smartypants, I bet I can stump you!" I then wrote four problems that required carrying to solve.... and she figured them out!!!!!!!! I had to explain where to put the one at the top, but she had the answer and figured out the concept on her own! I was FLOORED!!!!!!
So after she made me write 1234567+4321442 and solved to 5556009 I figured we had better hit the hay for the night.
So:
#1: SHE IS A GENIUS!
#2: I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING!
#3: I LOVE HSB because I get to tell people who will ooh and ahh!
and finally #4:
If a. she is not a genius and this is typical, b. you know I will be frustrated about something next week (or tomorrow) in our homeschooling again, and/or c. you do not think this ooh and ahh worthy or do not care one whit, then please just leave me for this one night in ecstasy over having just discovered that I gave birth to the Einstein of the 21st century, and ignore this post LOL!
And if you are struggling with math, let me encourage you:
1. to try Math U See!
and 2. that we, too, struggle... this morning, the same aforementioned genius stated that actually she does not like any subject in school. So, how's that for wacky ups and downs in the same day?! :)
Blessings!
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Sharing about some resources....
I got tagged about homeschooling resources by Joni a while back... I really loved reading all of your responses to this one, so I have decided to do this one, although I may be the last blogger in the universe to complete it, LOL!
- ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED: There are so many, I can’t choose just one! Two books that I read when I was first investigating homeschooling that stick out to me as great are The Homeschool Journey by Michael and Susan Card, and So You’re Thinking of Homeschooling by Lisa Whelchel… both are wonderful and turned me on to the vision of homeschooling!
- ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN’T BE WITHOUT: Homeschoolblogger. Hands down, you all are the best resource I have, above the literally hundreds of materials and books I have found! The information and encouragement I have found here is beyond compare… but the best thing is that before HSB I often wished I could be a fly on the wall of another homeschooling family… and now I get to do that every day!
- ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT: It’s a tie between Singapore Math 1a&1B, and Miquon Math. It was my first year homeschooling, and there was no teacher manual for the Singapore… and I felt like a complete idiot because I didn’t know what they were getting at in the lessons or how to teach it. Miquon I didn’t like for similar reasons, but mostly because I truly, even after playing with them for a full year, never truly got how the rods really help you to do math.
- ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR: Sonlight Core, we loved the books!
- ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING THIS YEAR: Math-U-See, which probably seems kind of funny since we didn’t like Miqoun. But, the only similarity between the two is that they use manipulatives. MUS is so well laid out, planned and visual… and I GET IT! In the Intro DVD to MUS, Steve Demme makes a joke that you want kids to really get it, otherwise it will not be Math-U-See, it will be Math-U-Almost-Saw, and we joke that the Miqoun was our “Math-U-Almost-Saw” program!
- ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY: A piano and piano/music theory curriculum.
- ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED: A science program that is a lot of fun and interesting but is as easy to integrate and do as the rest of our curriculum. I find that science labs are just a pain because of getting all the stuff out and the mess… I even have a box containing most of what I need and I still can’t get it together.
I have seen this tag all over the place, so I am not going to tag anyone on the chance that they have already done the tag. If you have not, please do it. This one was so great to read what people wrote, and I hope that at least someone out there has made it through mine and found something in it helpful!
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Highlights of our first week!
We have had a VERY good first week of school! Here are some of the highlights:
* Taking pictures in front of the tree in our front yard on the first day of school.
* IHOP...'nuf said! (thanks again, Cindy!!!!!)
* Violet has had a WONDERFUL attitude in apporaching her schoolwork... thank you, Lord!
* We are LOVING the Story of the World! What a huge difference from A Child's History of the World we did last year!
* I am actually enjoying doing things with more structure, and we are already getting lots done with me having lesson plans... it is working out a lot better than the no-plan method of last year.
* That being said, I love the flexibility we have! I love tailoring what we are doing to each child, stopping when we want to, and following the "rabbit trails"!
* Dash climbed UP our FIVE SHELF boookcase in our new schoolroom, and it did NOT tip over onto him and Jack-Jack who was playing right in front of it... a weird highlight, but thank God for His protection!
* Love our new room- I think we all do! I am so glad we changed the basement around to use for this!
* We LOVE Math-U-See so far! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! It is SO much better than what we used last year, which shall remain nameless but is also the name of an Asian country LOL;)
* Just being together as a family. We are enjoying our time together so much!
* Blogging! HSB was a highlight of my week this week because you all have encouraged me so much, and I thrive when I have people around who care what I am doing, because then I want to post what we are doing and it keeps me accountable to do it.
THANKS!
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Our First Day of School...
was great! I took some great advice from Terri Maxwell's column for moms, and took it really easy for the first day, not a lot of school at all.... rather, starting traditions that will be great memories for years to come.
First of all, I took their pictures in front of our "picture" tree in the front yard. I first took my "official" student, Violet, holding a current favorite book and the accompanying favorite toy that goes with it, Misty of Chincoteague.
Next, I took all three of my "pupils"... I call this one "I WANT YOU to homeschool, too!":
I think Jack-Jack is pretty hilarious!
Next, I allowed them to go downstairs into our brand newly cleaned and rearranged "learning and fun" room. I will post some pictures once it is 100% done, I still have to put up a couple things. I wrote "Welcome to our Homeschool!" on the white board with their names on it, and had Violet's stuff all set up at her table, and Dash & Jack-Jack's toys and activities ready to go.. they LOVED it! Violet took a marker and wrote MOM on the board and told me that I am part of our homeschool, too!
Next, we borrowed a Burlingame family tradition for our own... we went to IHOP for breakfast! We invited our next-door neighbors, who are the most wonderful homeschooling family, to join us, and two of them did. It was so much fun! (Thanks to Cre8iveMom for that wonderful idea!)
I had Violet do a writing sample when we got home, so we will be able to look back and see how much she has changed at the end of our year.
That was it! Tuesdays for us are "Grandma Day", and so I took the kids over to Grandma's for the afternoon. I came back and normally I work on my business like mad with no kids around, but today I fell into bed and napped... because yesterday I got hit with the yuckiest cold! I feel pretty yucky, but I was so glad it did not diminish our first day.
Tomorrow we will begin to ease into academic work, but I was so glad we chose to make today a special day.
To top it all off, Violet had a soccer game tonight and received the Star of the Game award from her coach! She was so thrilled!
I would love to hear about your first days for those of you who just started!
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The night before the first day of school....
When I was little, I could never sleep the night before the first day of school. I was always so keyed up and excited, and more than a little bit nervous. Who owuld be in my class? What would my teacher be like? What would we be doing? What would the year ahead hold for me/
Tonight, I am the same exact way but from a different perspective. Our basement schoolroom has just the fewest finishing touches to go tonight before it is ready, all fun and newly arranged. Tha books have been chosen and assembled, and are sitting ready along with the school supplies in their proper places. I printed out some great forms for a notebook to keep track of everything. I have thought of a few little suprises for the morning, as well as some things we will do tomorrow that will become our traditions in years to come.
My mind is racing... how will our curriculum work out? Will it be as wonderful and fun as I hope for my children? How will they progress? Will they reach the goals I am aiming for? What different rabbit trails will we go down? What will be our struggles? And so on and so forth.
So now I am the teacher. But I am just as keyed up and excited as when I was a kid, and still more than a little nervous, too.
I will post about our day tomorrow! Pray for us, and I am praying for all of you, too!
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It's official....
I have decided we ARE going to start school this year! LOL! Despite reports and suspicions to the contrary by those of you Real Homschoolers who have been going now since July, we are gearing up around here. New books and supplies have been spotted, schedules are being worked on; and most suspiciously, the basement is being reworked into a learning and play room!
We are starting Tuesday, and I am looking forward to it! So, for 4 more days I get to imagine how much fun we are going to have and how delightful learning will be together this year. Then on Tuesday I will join the real world and get down to work, and have some struggles to report to you all, I am sure. One nice thing that has come from blogging is that I see that struggles are normal, especially as you get back into the school year, and that makes me feel better about it and not as much like an Incredible homeschooling flunkie like I did last fall! :)
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Dough Much Fun!
At 7:30 this morning, Dash arrived in the family room with an announcement: " I want to make play-dough, Mom!" I guess he had been thinking about it all night. So, at 7:45 this morning, we cooked up a batch of green playdough, lemon-lime scented to boot!
Violet and Dash played play dough for two hours straight after that, and Dash has not let go of his current two favorite play-dough toys all day!
Did I ever mention that in my "former life" before children, I was a pediatric social worker at a speech and hearing center? Ever since, I have had a complete obsession with early childhood concoctions and play crafts.. like play dough, shaving cream fingerpaint, texture tables, etc. etc. So it is a lot of fun for me to do these things with my kids!
In case you do not have the world's best recipe for playdough, here it is courtesy of my friend Susie from the speech and hearing center. We like this better than the store bought, because it is softer and smoother, and it smells really yummy if you put the koolaid in!
Play Dough
3 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2 Tablespoons Cream of Tartar
3 cups warm water
3 Tablespoons oil
Food Coloring &/or a packet of unsweetened kool aid
Sift dry ingredients. (I skip this step :) ) Mix dry ingredients together. Mix liquids and add into dry mixture. Cook over medium heat until thick and translucent (it will look like lumpy mashed potatoes first.) Play dough is done when you can take a smapp portion and roll it in your hand and it is not sticky. Cool slightly and knead until smooth. Store in air-tight container- lasts a long time.
Have fun!
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The Yearbook
One way I know it is time for school to start very soon is that we had our first homeschool group meeting of the year on Thursday night. There are, of course, no other visible signs of back-to-school time around the Incredible home, because I am striving mightily to be the very last HSBer in the world to actually do school rather than just blog about it LOL! (actually I have figured out our start plan, but I am not blogging about it today, because it is still highly classified and sensitive information, which means I could tell you but then I'd have to... well, it wouldn't be pretty...)
Anyway, at the homeschool group meeting, I received our yearbook from last year! What a fun idea for a group of homeschoolers to do... make a yearbook with pictures submitted from all the families and from our group activities! Sometimes, because I actually had a pretty good time in school growing up, I miss little things that are vestiges of that for my kids. The yearbook is one of those school trappings that I loved (could it be the humble beginnings of my Creative Memories addiction?), and so I think it is really cool that my kids get to have a yearbook.
Right away, I noticed that this yearbook, while simliar in format to public school yearbooks, was different in every other way. My first clue was the Bible verse dedication and "thank you" page right up in the front of the book graciously thanking all the parents and students who helped out with our group and/or the yearbook. The "school" pictures were very diverse, many were the beautiful outdoor natural portraits taken by our group photographer, but lots were submitted by individual families as well. Kids were wearing their favorite outfits, which were generally neat and modest and very nice looking.... and the kids ranged in age from graduates to babies! And what a talented and diverse group of kids... there were pictures of every activity you can think of, from scouts to voice to basketball, drama, butterfly catching, and even a section of kids just being kids! And where else will you find a picture of your children snow sledding in the back yard in the section for "sports"? There were lots of pictures of families just doing fun things together, too. It actually was like a typical day of what you will find cruising around HSB, our "day-by-day book"!
So what started out for me as a cool way to give my kids something similiar to what I loved in school became a celebration of homeschooling in all its uniqueness and richness. As I looked through the book I bought to give my kids something I had in school myself, it became evident to me that they will not have that... they will have so much more!
And the last thing I learned from looking through the yearbook...
Whatever you are doing in your homeschool with your children...whatever curriculum, style, etc...and even if you don't feel like it is anything special... you homeschool families are truly (can you guess?) INCREDIBLE! (had to say it.) :)
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My homeschool contest entry...
Click here to enter the contest!
My plans for the year:
1. What type of homeschooler are you? I am pretty eclectic. My friend Jessica calls me "classically eclectic", and I tend to agree: I LOVE literature, especially classic children's literature. I agree with the theory behind classical education, and my heart beats fast for Charlotte Mason and Leadership Education. I do plan for my homeschool, but last year we scrapped the plan pretty early. This year I would like to stick to it a bit more.
2. Are you using a specific curriculum, a conglomeration, or none? A conglomeration, most definitely. We will be using Sonlight Core 1 again for the first half of the year, because I bought it last year and we didn't get through the whole core. We are using Math-U-See for the first time this year, which I am pretty excited about! Also, I am adding in FLL for the Well-Trained Mind and the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading along with ETC for phonics, Handwriting without tears, and Story of the World. We also use History Pockets and Story of the World alongside SL history and Bible. I am also drooling over artistic pursuits and some other art stuff, but our budget is TOTALLY maxed out- even though I bought the SL stuff last year, we didn't have much in the budget to start out with, and MUS plus the SOTW and WTM stuff added up fast. So I am waiting for Christmas for my wish list! OK, can you see I am a curriculum junkie? LOL! Actually, the heart of my homeschool is reading. We read the Sonlight books and gobs and gobs of library books. We are always reading!
3. What is my plan? I made it up as we went last year, but I was not happy with what we did... I know in my heart I didn't give Violet my best last year- maybe justifiably with new baby and all, but still, I don't want to do that again. I am taking more care to plan things this year. I am going to block off a time every day to set aside only for school and being totally available during that time as best I can. I will have goals of what I would like to get done, but I am flexible enough that if we decide to take rabbit trails, we can do that. Mostly, the schedule is for ME to carve out my time to give my best to my children.
4.What are you most excited about? I am really excited to share learning discoveries with my children. Being there the first time they hear Charlotte's Web, do a "hard" math problem mentally with no finger counting, see a Monet, write a story they are proud of, or discover that a cup of water can look different based on what container you pour it into, but that it is still the same amount, the "I did it!" moments...those are the things I live for in homeschooling. I am most exctied about being on a learning adventure together.
5. Are you going to teach each child in their own grade level or multi-age teach? I don't really know. Right now, I will teach each child at their own level simply because they are VERY different developmentally at the moment. 1, 3 1/2, and 7 1/2 all do VERY different things! but in the future I probably will stick to one historical period and then vary the assignments based on grade level, and do separate levels for math and LA.
6. Where do you homeschool? All over the house! I have decided I would like to have a room set aside in our finished basement, but it has not happened yet.... I will get back to you on that!
That's it! You should definitely enter, it was fun to answer and I would love to read what everyone is doing! (So I can steal your ideas and add them to my long resource wish list!
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A great deal this morning!
A fellow Homeschoolblogger, Kerry Beck, launched her ebook package on Leadership Education yesterday. If you have read my blog, you already know that I LOVED the Book "A Thomas Jefferson Education"... well, Kerry and I share a passion for raising leaders in our homeschools, and she has written an ebook package to share practical ways to make it happen day by day! I talked with her on a conference call the other night, and that got me even more excited about her package.
She is running a first 24 hour special where if you purchase by noon today PST (so 3pm for those of you EST), you get a nice bonus package of resources about entrepreneurship written by Kerry's husband Stephen Beck, who was just interviewed in TOS magazine. (I am just as excited about the bonus package as I am about the leader package!) You also get the lowest price ($27) that will be available on the resources, as the price is increasing by $5 every day until it ends up at $49.
I am not receiving any kind of kickback or anything from Kerry, I am just really exctied and thought that some of you might be interested in getting this great deal.
You can go here to read more about it and order
http://www.CurriculumConnection.net/raisingleaders.htm
Or here to visit Kerry's blog.
Let me know if you get it, and we can read it and talk about it together!
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My confession for the day...
is that I cannot decide when we are going to start school!
What on earth is wrong with me... goodness gracious, you would think this would be a very easy decision to make. But, I am a most frustrating combination... a disorganized perfectionist. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Well, I can assure you it truly exists, because here I am!
So, I have waited until now to finalize my curriculum decisions and am, as a result, just now making my final purchases. So, even though I have 90% of what we will be using, I am procrastinating starting until things are "perfect"... which will be never, since our basement learning room is never quite finished in my opinion and I don't have every second planned out (which I would not even follow more than a day anyway, don't ask...).
BUT... (drum roll here)... remember that I said that I didn't think Violet had such a great grip on her math facts because I dropped the ball last year? Well, she got out the flash card set of subtraction facts tonight and "played" me, and she got 100% right with no counting on her fingers!
That girl.... somehow, despite me, she just gets it!
So when are we starting? hmmm... I don't know! I think this is the point last year at which I started reading unschooling books.... ;)
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Need some great ideas...
You all have such wonderful ideas and have been so helpful to me, I thought I would ask your opinion on this: I have not started school officially yet, but we have begun just working on handwriting. Already, we have a problem.
Violet, who is a very loving and sweet child, turns into a bear when we are "doing school." She does not want to listen to my teaching, grabs the pencil from me, and throws down her pencil when she gets frustrated. I am not requiring a lot...like tonight we worked on a half a page of Handwriting without Tears (which is, incidentally, causing me tears.). In that time, she did all of the above.
She wants to do school, she is eager to do things with me, but once we sit down it is often frustrating like this. It is awful, because I just get so excoted thinking about all that we are going to learn and do together, and then it turns out like that.
I have told her over and over, "We are practicing. You are just learning, it is ok to make mistakes. It is my job to show you how to do stuff, and your job to be the learner and try your best. It is ok to not have it all down yet, that is why we are LEARNING." But no, it remains frustrating. Not all the time, but often.
I know it is a discipline issue, but it is a tought call for me to know what to do. It is my heart's desire that she LOVE learning, so I don't want to turn it into drudgery. But there are things that just need to get done.
Help! I need some creative ideas from you geniuses!
Thanks!
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Math Facts: A High Priority
The next part of my On-The-Edge-Of-Your-Seat-Exciting Series entitiled "High Priorities" is this: Math Facts; meaning, memorization of the addition and subtraction facts 0-9.
I guess that was so self-explanatory that I will stop here at two sentences... a rare treat for those of you who are used to wading through this bog... oh, I mean my blog. ;)
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Handwriting: a high priority
I love to write, and I love handwriting. So, you can imagine what a shock it was to me when handwriting was our biggest school subject of struggle last year. My daughter, who loves to draw and paint, hated handwriting.
My solution, after the famed Handwriting Without Tears even produced That-Which-It-Was-Supposed-To-Be-Without, was to drop it.
But I am back on the warpath again, so to speak. I feel strongly that it is time to focus on handwriting. I was already thinking that, but it has been confirmed this week in that I have had the opportunity to view the handwriting of several children Violet's age or younger, and they are all writing decently. Violet does very beautiful drawings and loves art, and I know she can do it.
I read through the Handwriting Without Tears Teacher's Manual and found lots of helpful hints. Most of all, I can see that I will be best off limiting the time we learn and practice to 15 minutes or less and then laying off any criticism the rest of the day. I have not criticized her at all, I don't want to convey the wrong idea... but it is just that I think I will have a tendency to think that I need to demand perfection all the time on the letters that we have covered.
Can I ask those of you who have been through this process a few questions? 1. Should I start with the first book again since we have not been through it and then move to the second, or just start with the second since the only difference is narrower lines? 2. Her pencil grip has been a problem... should I be correcting that at times other than specifically designated for handwriting or not? I am worried that it will not change if I don't help her with that all day long. 3. Has anyone else struggle with this like I have? It seems like such a "small" subject to make into a priority; however, I feel that if she does not learn good penmanship, she will struggle to write as she grows up and will hate it. Also, having taught scrapbooking classes for nearly a century now (LOL), I know that 98.5% of people hate their handwriting. I don't really want her to be one of them.
Please let me know that this will get better!
Thanks!
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High Priorities...
I have been procrastinating about posting my priorities for this year, and I suddenly realized why: I am being perfectionistic, thinking I have to have the entire thing all thought out before I can post any of it.
Since I have a newfound resolve to conquer perfectionism in my life, I decided that I will just start posting about my homeschooling priorities as I think of them, and not in any particular order. Than when I am done, I can "rank" them.
What a perfect plan! (oops;) )
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My thoughts on my educational philosophy/ theory/ style(s) :)
I already mentioned that we were pretty unschoolish last year... and I want to say thank you to everyone who was so encouraging and made me feel less like a slacker:) I am a very odd combination, though, in terms of my thoughts and goals for the education of my children. Here are the philosophies and styles that I want to incorporate.
1. Charlotte Mason- I love reading Charlotte Mason, and I agree with most of what she writes. She really understands children, and I love her approach because it allows them to be children.... to delight in learning and have fun with it, and because she so deeply values parenting and building deep bonds between parent and child. Those are really important values/goals of mine. I also love her thoughts on living books and narration. The emphasis on nature study and being outside all day is not as important to me, although I do want my kids to be able to be outside playing a good deal and they are interested in observing nature.
2. Classical/Well-Trained Mind/Thomas Jefferson Ed.- I read a lot this summer in the classical vein- Thomas Jefferson Education and The Well-Trained Mind were my favorites. One thing to know about me is that I am a true "nerd" at heart, LOL! I LOVE to read and am a complete bookworm, I am a history nut, and I also really like math and science. Proper grammar and spelling, along with memorization of math facts and multiplication tables, etc. are very important to me. When I initially chose Sonlight, it was because I loved the books- the reading list. And even when we dropped the Instructor Guide, I still loved Sonlight for the books. I feel that last year with what I did, though, I missed a couple things that I would like to focus on more: grammar, phonics and spelling rules (memorizing them and focusing on them, not just given in passing), and math fact memorization (as in knowing the math facts cold.) Also, delving deep into history really excites me!
3. Unschooling- I always say that I am somewhat unschoolish... and I am, but I don't think that is necessarily totally accurate. What I mean when I am saying that is that a. I agree with the philosphy that learning should be found in all of life, not just segmented off into "school", b. I want my children to love learning and follow their God-given interests, talents, and gifting, c. I know that we all learn better and more completely the things that we are interested in and choose to learn, and d. we have not had any sort of school schedule whatsoever. ;) Of these 3, I like two (life learning and the delight-directed parts) and one needs to change... I feel that we need some sort of schedule and list of goals/objectives that we want to achieve. I have found, thought, that I am definitely not even close to an unschooling purist, because there are lots of things that I want to teach, and lots of things that I think it is very important to just sit down and learn/practice/memorize. So, I think the term relaxed suits me a little better, but whatever LOL.
Let me also say I think Unit Studies sound very cool, too, so we will probably do some at some point ;)
So, to say the least, I am certainly a weird mix! When I pick a category for hsb blog, where is the Charlotte Mason/ Classical/ Unschooling/ Eclectic/ Bookwormish/Up for Anything category? ;) But one nice thing I am finding out here on hsb is that there are lots of moms who are a mix, not so many who fit perfectly into the categories of the homeschool books... which is very comforting and encouraging to me.
I am going to move from theory to my actual goals and priorities for the year in my next post... then on to my practical plans!
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My evaluation on our first year...
What was great:
* We really had a good time just being together, reading books together, and learning/ playing together.
* Violet's reading skills grew by leaps and bounds, and she read a TON of books!
* History sparked Violet's interest... she loved learning about the ancient world!
* Our bonds with grandparents were strengthened. We had "Grandma Day" twice a week most weeks, and Grandma came and played for a few hours those days. They did cooking and art projects together, and got so close. It was wonderful!
* We made a few good connections with other homeschoolers. Violet found a few homeschooled friends in a homeschool dance/voice class she was taking, as well as through choir and American Heritage Girls. And I connected with my next door neighbor, a wonderful homeschooling mom, and a couple of the moms of Violet's friends.
* Violet loves learning.
* Violet is growing tons in her faith She accepted Jesus as her Savior and is learning so much about the Bible, prayer, and memorizing Scripture.
What I wish would improve or change:
* I didn't feel very consistent. In fact, I wasn't very consistent. There were lots of times we skipped something for a long time or didn't make time to sit and "do school". My efforts to get some sort of schedule didn't work very well. (I tried MOTH, but just couldn't get it to work well.)
* I didn't like Singapore or Miquon Math the way we did it. Neither one really came with a teacher's guide. While I am very good at math and enjoy it, I would have liked some clue as to how to best teach the concepts to a first grader. For this reason and the fact that I loved the sample DVD they sent, I am thinking about Math-U-See for this upcoming year.
* Handwriting was very difficult. I want to make it more pleasant, but also focus on it more this year.
* The Sonlight LA was a bit confusing, and I think I would prefer a more clear cut LA program. (Or figure out how to better use Sonlight's!)
* I need some kind of plan for what I am going to do with Dash and Jack-Jack during school. Dash will be involved on a preschool co-op two mornings a week this year, but I need a plan for the rest of the time and for Jack-Jack. I have all kinds of ideas, I just need to decide what I am going to do and do it.
* I need to do a better job of organizing our calendar. Violet ended up with an activity 2-4 nights a week (too many!). And, my business really suffered from neglect last year.
Now, as to how I am going to do that...??? Your thoughts are welcome... and I will post some thoughts on how I am thinking of doing things this year next philosophically. (I have since read the Well-Trained Mind and thought through some other things.)
What I would LOVE is some advice on scheduling our day in a way that will help us to get things done and have kids know what to expect, but still be unstructured and flexible enough most of the day to allow for my more spontaneous nature to be ok.
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The story of our first year...
First, a brief recap:
We began "First Grade" with Violet the day after Labor Day. On the day we started, Jack-Jack was 5 weeks old. We had purchased Sonlight, the complete core 1, LA2 adv., Sci., everything, along with Singapore Math, Miquon Math, Explode the Code and A Reason For Handwriting.
In the beginning I got the Instructor Guide out each morning, piled up the huge pile of books we would need, and sat down with Violet at the table. The first thing I noticed was that I felt like school time was really long. It was hard to make anything work while running around trying to corral Dash and stopping what seemed like every 5 minutes to nurse Jack-Jack. And by the time Dash was down for his nap in the afternoon, I was so tired I couldn't see straight, much less do anything with Violet.
When I had thought about homeschooling before actually attempting it, I had imagined the children and I learning together, discovering the delights of hearing classic and wonderful stories, doing experiments, learning about the world. But just two weeks into actually homeschooling, I was hating it. And she was not loving it either. To my surprise, some of the things I thought she would love were the very things she dreaded: handwriting was one of them. We struggled and struggled. I remember crying and telling Mr. Incredible, "I think I made a huge mistake! I think we might have to send her to school after all." Whenever I expressed any of these concerns to the very few homeschoolers I talked to about them, they always said the same thing, "Oh, you just had a baby. Don't worry about it!" But, worry I did.
Finally , Mr. Incredible stepped in. "If the Instructor Guide is stressing you out," he said, " Why don't you just stop using it?"
STOP USING IT? How could I stop using it? Isn't that illegal or something? How would it be school if I didn't do it the way the Instructor Guide said? And one of the arguments I had used to CHOOSE Sonlight was that , "it is all laid out for me in an easy to follow plan!" Now I was thinking of scrapping the plan. It scared me to death, but Mr. Incredible came to the rescue again.
"Why don't you just read the books together and learn from there?" he asked. "You can just open the math book and do some most days and it seems like you will get it done." "Is there something I'm missing here?"
So, feeling like a total slacker, I put the Instructor Guide away. We used the Sonlight books, reading together, and Violet reading lots on her own. She read, read, read, not just the Sonlight books but just about everything else she could get her hands on. I got her math out with her and taught her the best wasy I knew how... I adore math (and pretty much every other subject, too), but Violet did not like it very much. We actually ended up tabling the handwriting thing- I felt she just might need a little more growth in her fine motor skills before she was really ready to work on pretty handwriting. She could write every letter, just not the way the handwriting program wanted it.
So, effectively, we fell into the "very relaxed"/unschoolish category for our first year. It wasn't what I had planned, just sort of what happened. That't just the way it was, I will do my evaluation in the next post.
(I can tell these posts are going to be long! I am sorry, and completely understand if there are no readers left by the end... but as I said before, this is something I need to do for myself to clarify my thoughts as I look towards the upcoming year.)
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