As I mentioned in my last entry, the rest of our "summer session" is going to be extremely informal.  However I am still working through the Kid's Cooking Camp.  First we did "blueberries".  I found three books (including the classic "Blueberries for Sal", but the only one Samuel liked was "Blueberry Mouse by Alice Low.  Then we made a blueberry smoothie which he liked at first sip, but then said he didn't like it.  I finished it (yummy!) and decided that maybe what he didn't like was some of the blueberry skin bits - very tiny, but still...he's a kid and can find fault with anything. 

Trying the smoothie did earn him another circle on his "new foods" caterpillar that goes around our kitchen walls.  I started this in January 2006 with a Nutrition Unit Study (before I found that neither one of us wants to read books about only one topic for a whole week).  There are two rules to get a circle on the caterpillar: 1) it has to be a healthy food, and 2) he has to swallow a good size bite.

The next segment was "apples" and I found four books to go with this.  This only one he liked was "The Apple Pie Tree" by Zoe Hall.  We're in the middle of birthday treat week, so we haven't made the apple pie yet, but that is the plan.

He went to VBS this week called "Power Lab".  I'm not really sure what he learned about Jesus because he didn't share that with me and nothing he brought home even hinted that this was a church activity.  However, he does love singing and dancing and they worked on both for a show on the last night, but he refused to go saying "he might get stage fright."  Nothing I could say would encourage him to try.  His compromise is that he will perform one song each day for me.  The songs do have a God/Jesus message.  He really did a good job on the first song...and it didn't seem that easy to learn over 4 days for an almost 5-year old.  We ran out of time today because we had to pick my parents up at the airport and we had to wait for their luggage and by the time we got back home it was bedtime and he was already starting his tired whine, so I didn't even mention it.

I love looking at other family's schedules and curriculum choices.  I get a lot of great ideas from these blog entries.  I have noticed many recent entries for people planning their 2008-09 school year.  This has inspired me to start thinking about ours. 

I actually think learning can and should take place year round, but I also think summer is a good time to just  be very informal with keeping a book basket filled with good books, a few craft and science projects to pull out when the dreaded "I'm bored" rears it's ugly head, and outside time as much as possible. 

Since Samuel will be starting away-from-home-school in September, I am thinking about what we will be focussing on at home.  He will be in school only two days a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, but a long day, 8 am - 3:30 pm.  Those two days I will have a choose-your-own-read-alouds bed-time.  I always have a big basket filled with the books of the week or month, but I usually choose the ones to read at bedtime in order to keep some variety and have him listen to books he may not choose for himself.   School days, I will let him choose all the bed-time books.  I am also thinking (just thinking at this point) about buying SOTW 1 CDs and listening to them in the car ride home, but this may be asking too much for S to concentrate after such a long day at school.

He will be getting all the subjects I would teach at home (here is a link to the basic curriculum), but my plan is to reinforce and supplement.  For instance, I think Bible is important enough for every day and I think it's important to read it as a family and not just leave it up to church and school.  So here's what I have so far:

Bible:  Daily reading and prayers.   I am thinking about using this site  as a guideline for our readings.  He will have memory verses at school and also if he wants to do Awana again.

Phonics/Reading Practice:  My understanding is that his main homework in K will consist of daily reading practice, but I will do this anyway using real books from our home library and the public library.

Math:  We will continue reading living math books from the library (although the "topics" that I choose will most likely coincide with what he is doing at school), as well as practical math (in the kitchen, at the grocery store, etc).

Science: Nature Hour once a week, plus trips to the local zoo and science museum.

Writing:  I will let the school primarily handle this.  I will encourage hand-made cards and notes to family members.

Art:  His school has a program to learn 10 great artists and 10 great works of art each year from K - 2.  I will have to wait and see what I would add to this.

Music: Pick a music style to focus on each month (classical, jazz, blues, folk songs, hymns for now).

PE:  I will encourage participation in a sport, whether a team sport like soccer or basketball, or an individual one like martial arts or swimming.

Literature and Poetry:  Our book basket will be filled with books from various book lists, including Sonlight, Tanglewood, Ambleside Online, as well as all the great recommendations I find by reading your wonderful blog entries. 

There, I said it.  I hope no one shoots me.  Actually, I love looking at other people's lapbooks and always think, "oh, that would be so much fun."  But in reality, neither S4 nor I really like that much structure.  So, I have a couple lapbook kits though that I take things from periodically when he is in the mood for a craft or project.  I then have a binder with plastic sleeves that I store things in.  I'm thinking about getting an accordian style file box for his work so I can put it in some kind of organization that makes sense and also allow for items that are not very flat.

Right now, structured school just doesn't work at all for us.  But I really don't think of our style as unschooling either.  I have a list of books, activities, projects and we just work on them when the mood strikes. The only thing that we do every day is Bible and read-aloud.  We also do phonics and practice reading almost every day.  But even that is not really scheduled.  For instance, in my January curriculum checklist, I wrote that we would read from the children's bible every day and the NIV once a week.  But S4 has decided that he loves Matthew and John, so each night he makes sure we read something from both books.  If that's what he wants to do, why should I say, "oh no, we have to read these pages in The Beginner's Bible because that's what's on our schedule"? We actually get to most of the items on my checklist, but I allow him a lot of freedom for when and for adding things in that he is interested in.  That doesn't make us unschooled or child-led, or does it?

I really liked the unstructured days of December and we still covered lots.  So I have decided to switch up my schedule to monthly goals, although I still like starting at the beginning of a week, so some "months" will actually cover a few days in another month (for instance, I am starting January on Sunday).  It's so funny, I started "officially" homeschooling last January with a daily schedule, which I quickly changed to a weekly checklist.  Now, in my evolutionary homeschooling journey I am moving into a monthly goal list. 

These are some goals for the month of January:

• Bible:  Read two passages a week from the NIV Bible (one OT and one NT) in addition to daily stories from The Beginner's Bible.  Memorize Awana verses.
• Phonics:  S4 to choose daily from Progressive Phonics (3 pages minimum), Sonlight Fun Tales (whole book), or any other reader that we read from together (him reading the words he can and me reading the words he can't).  The goal for January is to work through 4 -5 new beginning blends.  Weekly sight words posted on the white board - these are a combination of what I find in our reading together and what he tells me he wants to learn how to read.
• Literature and Poetry:  Poetry from "Language & Thinking for Young Children" by Ruth Beechick.  The following books:  books by Maurice Sendak; books by Ezra Jack Keats; books by Jan Brett.
• Math: Two lessons on Measuring from Making Math Meaningful - Level K. Any living books on measurement I can find at the library.   
• Science:  Read-aloud "Old Mother West Wind" by Thornton Burgess - internet research on animals as desired.  Winter lapbook from Hearts and Trees.  Winter Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt from Hearts and Trees.
• History:  books and DVDs on Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Art:  Paul Signac's Boulevard de Clichy, Paris; cool colors; and cool colors winter tree crayon resist project (with my help).
• Music: Vivaldi and the Four Seasons, specifically "Winter"
• Handwork:  Candle-making Kit; Sewing project from an Usborne book I checked out from the library and S4 swears he can do.  Possibly the fleece hat from the Hearts and Trees winter kit mentioned in the Science category.

Again, I will post at the end the month what actually occurred.  I fully anticipate that we will not finish everything on the list, but also that we will do some educational activities that are not planned in advance.

So excited for my little reader.  He just completed the Short "U" book of the Beginner set of Progressive Phonics readers.  Book #6 is the first book in the Intermediate book set and teaches beginning consonent blends.  It is also much longer than Books # 1 - 5, so I anticipate being on this book for several weeks.  There are Most of the short vowel beginner readers took us 2 - 3 weeks each.  They do recommend reading each reader 3 or 4 times before moving on which I am not doing.  I am just providing other reading practice on the concept during read-aloud and game time.  So far we only read 3 - 5 pages at a time (I started with 1 - 2 pages for the first 2 readers)

Looking forward at the readers, I will probably take a break after 3 more readers (maybe completed by or during summer) and focus more on actual easy reader books for a while after that.  The advanced set looks pretty advanced for a 4 year old who is not even writing yet.

For those of you who want to teach reading by reading (instead of one of the phonics manuals), give this a try.  You can try for free, but the whole set is only $19.95 (plus your paper and ink).

I have decided to depart from my planned curriculum for the month of December.   There are several things I want to do and I don't want to overwhelm either myself or Samuel.  So here are some of the things I am planning on:

So far I have wrapped 17 Christmas books, most from the library, and placed them in a nice red and green basket I just bought at Garden Ridge for half-price.  I've got a few more on request at the library and will wrap them as they come in so we will have enough to unwrap one book a day.  After they are unwrapped, they go into our normal read-aloud basket to be read anytime during the month.

1. Samuel will practice scissor skills by helping me wrap gifts.
2. I have ordered a new nativity advent calendar and we will do a devotion verse each day.  I'll blog what I end up doing.
3. We are going to attempt a gingerbread tree kit and a candle-making kit.
4. I have ordered the new Hearts and Trees Winter Kit.  I loved her Fall kit, and this will be a primary focus of our December learning.
5. We will also  do kitchen math, a la the Cracker Math from Thanksgiving, most likely from Christmas cookie making.
6. We will continue reading as desired.  I have started posting sight words on a white board in our kitchen.  I was surprised (but maybe I shouldn't have been) that he read this morning's words without any trouble - "baby Jesus".
7. The goal on music is to teach him one new Christmas song...I'm thinking Joy to the World, but I may let him pick from a selection.
8. Plus as many Christmas activities as we both want to do.

I am definitely going to put away the formal reading lessons for now.  I am going to focus on playing games to identify the ending sounds of words since it seems that's where he gets frustrated...he'll read the beginning sound and then just make up the end of the word. 

For instance, we have a placemat map of the US.  We have been using it to talk about our state and the states we visit.  Well, he pointed to the star labelled "BOSTON" and said, "Look, there's the state of Boxer Shorts".  After I picked myself up off the floor, I tried to correct him, but of course, having made Mommu laugh once, of course it will also work the 100th time he says it.

And tonight, we were looking at the Zoo page in Usborne First Thousand Words, and I pointed out bat and cubs were both words he could read, and then he started "reading" other words.  So I think I'm just going to have to wait until I can make him think it's his idea to learn to read.  I'll re-evaluate at a later date. 

As much time as I spend looking at curriculum and reading HS blogs and posts on HS Yahoo groups, and reworking and revising our own HS schedule, I have now come to the realization that I can be prepared, but I really have to relax about this whole HS thing.  The bloggers and posters who are CM followers and Beechick followers are the main ones who are helping me develop this attitude.  Others are helping me continue on my path for more and more input!  Thanks to everyone who homeschools and shares their thoughts because it is really helping me develop my own philosophy and style.

After today, I am ready to postpone "official" reading lessons.  He wiggles around too much.  He gets frustrated at sounding out a word, even when I isolate the words and letters from each other.  What he's doing is just looking at the first one or two letters and then saying a word that starts that way....or he says all the letter sounds and then huffs and pushes away the book before even trying to blend the word.  The most success is when we use the magnet board and letter tiles, instead of a book. 

I keep telling myself, he's only 4, but then he does read some words, and I feel like I should teach him phonics before he just has all these sight words.  I'm definitely going to have to do some thinking on this.  Maybe just slow it down to one lesson a week?  Hmmm...

I spent 10 minutes last week using Phonics Pathways to teach S the vowels and work on the short vowel sound (which he already knew, but just didn't know it was called the short vowel sound).  In this session I realized he confused the sounds for "e" and "i".  Also, it didn't seem like he was getting it, so since we were going on vacation and he just turned 4, I thought I'd put it aside for now.  The main reason I thought to try teaching to read at all is that we have been watching Between the Lions and he seemed to be responding pretty well, sometimes reading the "Gawain's Word" before the two knights crashed together.

So anyway, I figured I'd put aside this idea for a few months and just keep working on the letter sounds.   But then S told me that he "taught" his Dad the vowels, so I guess he got it.  We were on vacation this last week, so I guess I'll start Phonics again on Monday.  With my teaching style, I'll just go with the flow as to how much he's actually ready for.  He's only just turned 4, so I'm not about to push it.

The Checklist

This is so timely for me.  Here I was just thinking about how my teaching style is more of a checklist system and I find this website by following a link for a zoo unit we're working on (more on that later).  This checklist is designed by Cindy Downes who is a former HS mom and now I think is helping to homeschool her grandchildren.  She lists has pages and pages of ideas, facts, and people organized in a great outline-type format.  Next to each is two blank lines to check or initial with each child for when you cover an item, one for elementary and one for Jr/Sr High (because some items you would cover twice, like each type of science).

I think this may be especially good for me, because I am more of an afterschooler, and this would give me a way to check off what I think is being adequately covered in school and then focus our home learning on those areas that are lacking.  It would also maybe give me some ammunition if I feel nothing if being adequately covered in PS, but I don't want to put the cart before the horse.

When I first started my formal HS journey in January, I began with Amy's Theme schedule for SL Pre-K found on SL Preschool Yahoo Group.  (Amy has the Bow of Bronze blog here...I'll link her as a friend when I figure that part out).

It's a really cool schedule and I fast realized how we could make it our own, but I never followed the daily schedule and sometimes took more than a week to complete each weekly theme.  I realized in May that I was really using the schedule as a checklist.  Also, at about this point, S decided he didn't want to read anything that was "school" and unfortunately, I had put all the SL books on a special shelf so he knew which ones were "school".  So, I started looking for booklists online and also checking out the books that are included in some of the collections (sneaky me).  And slowly but surely, the "school" books have made it off the special shelf and into his regular book shelves

In looking for booklists, I discovered Charlotte Mason and Tanglewood (those sites mentioned in the last entry).  And realizing that we (read "I") are not structured enough in our school (and I can't even call it that!), I made a weekly schedule checklist.  I am not going to worry about doing math on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 am; I am just going to have a list of what skills, chapters, poems, stories that I want to work on for the week. 

I am also easing into each "subject".  We already do Literature and I continue to use booklists I find on the web and interest books (the last two weeks have been books with a zoo theme).  This week it is Bible...every night will be one story from The Beginner's Bible.  We also did one page in the animal notebook (planning on one page a week).  Next week we are going on vacation, so I won't add anything new. 

I have already told him that when we get back from vacation we are going to begin learning more about letter sounds and how they go togther (reading...which is another word I can't use since he says he doesn't want or can't learn to read).  I haven't quite made up my mind between Ordinary Parents' Guide to Reading and Phonics Pathways.  I have checked both of them out of the library and will decide which one to purchase soon.