This week's theme at Homeschool Memoirs is Homeschool Agendas. Since I haven't entirely figured that out yet for myself, I thought joining in and writing it all down might help me get my thoughts together.

We are on day 33 of our 2008-09 school year. And so far everything has gone smoothly. I planned the first 20 days out and now i am going week by week with some monthly and yearly planning too. I have yet to find a curriculum I love in it's entirety. I like some parts of a lot of different things. And it seems I tend to come back to me for most things we do. My kids are young, it's easy to do. I am sure as they grow I will turn more towards a premade curriculum, but for now this is what is working. We have a school day from 8:30 to 11:00. All actvities must be approved. Basically they have free choice from the playroom/classroom minus one shelf that has the cars and more toy-like activites. All the other kits, puzzles, art, practical life, etc is available. My oldest has a checklist of what he is to do that day on the dry erase board, once that is done (in any order) he can choose what to do off the shelves. Same for my 5 yr old- except no checklist, we cover the basics I set out and then he chooses. But here is the basic rundown for the year:

So for  my oldest son, 7 yrs old, in 2nd grade:

Math: he is finishing up his Subduing Subtraction book from Mastering Mathematics; doing a lot with Montessori-inspired math manipulatives made by me. Reading higher number and getting ready for multiplication. I plan on starting multiplication when he is done with the subtraction book. We will still be using a lot of Montessori-inspired activities and manipulatives, aswell as his Multiplication book from Mastering Mathematics.

Language:  He is doing Easy Grammar, supposed to be daily but usually just 2x a week. He is also working through Explode the Code 7. 2x a week. He is doing weekly spelling lists of about 10 words, organized by a phonogram. He is working though HWT Cursive, 2x a week and a self directed 15 min writing session of his choice the other days. He has one read a loud of my choice a day. Any other language is free choice from the language shelf (which isn;t quite finshed) but will contain a lot of word study materials: homophones, antonym, synonym, plurals, abbreviations, compound words, prefix and suffixes, alphabetizing, syllabication, etc...

Science and Social Studies: These 2 subjects are done in units with the whole family doing the same things- just more indepth for the older. Usually we don't do both subjects at once. We will study government, ancient cultures, the history of the earth, volcanoes, animals, and some others that I can't think of at the time and I don't have my planner here with me right now. I also have basic sceince equiptment on our shelves: microscope, telescope, magnets, electric kits, classification work for everyday use. He is also required to do georgraphy work 2-3 times a week. If I have nothing in particular planned then he chooses from the shelf. Our geography shelf is still a work in progress too. My plan for him this year is to cover N.America geographically. Countries and US States as well as other marks of interest.

Art: This year I have chosen 5-6 artists to study. So far we've done Kandinksky- which went wonderfully! We will also study various musicians from the classical composers to the Beatles. Art supplies are always available and we will be covering some different aspects of art composition this year in addition to free art. Music is an area in which we are seriously lacking- I really want them to learn an intrument but so far that isn't working too well.

Now for my 5 yr old, in K:

Math: We are covering the Kindergarten basics. Money, measuring, time, calendar, beginning addition and subtraction. The goal being to get him counting to 1000 and thoroughly understanding numbers and thier meanings and well into the mastery of additon during the year. He's got a couple books, which he chooses from. We do mostly hands on, manipulative based work, and a lot of Montessori inspired work too.

Language: He is working through the HWT printing book, he can form all uppercase and most lowercase. So our goals are to get the letters neater and on the lines. He has a weekly spelling list of 5 words, mostly CVC words right now and I will increase them as I see fit. He also is working though explode the code 2 1/2 and 3 sporadically. He really enjoys his work from the Language Shelf which he does daily during his free choice school time. His portion of the language shelf consist of words/picture matching- CVC, blends with short vowel and phonograms- word/item boxes, simple syllibication and alphabetizing. He also does one required read aloud to me a day.

Science, Social Studies and Art will be the same as above, since those studies aren't seperated by grade. Overall his year will be simple, more child-led, where if he doesn't want to do my chosen activity he can counteroffer a new one. If he's having an off day he can read to himself or do other approved acivities.

For Cohen, age 3:

I have no real plan for him, other than to spend more time working with him in general, covering things of his interest and mine: counting, letter sounds, basic preschool stuff. I try and get him focused on a few things per day. Pouring, sorting, coloring, lapbooks, being read to and "reading". But he is there with us for all our studies so he absorbs what he sees.

Today we decided to try out the boys new baking set by making some tortillas for lunch. It's a really easy recipe I found on a blog somewhere: 2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 2 tsp oil 1 tsp salt 3/4 cup warm milk Mix the first 4 ingredients. Slowly pour in milk while stirring. Knead for 2 minutes. Rest in bowl under plastic wrap for 20 min. Break dough into 8 balls and rest for another 10 min. Roll out to about an 8 in diameter. Heat a pan to med-high and cook each tortilla for about 30 seconds on each side. Keep the cooked ones wrapped in a napkin while you cook the rest. First I rewrote the recipe step by step in a way my oldest could read it. They measured and stirred everything. The boys wanted to actually knead this. It is a very stiff dough so there was a lot of pushing on a ball and not much kneading. After about 2 rounds each they took it to the Kitchen Aid and let the dough hook have it.

Their favorite part is of course the rolling. These are really yummy and tasted great with our fresh egg burritos for lunch.

And upon close inspection, we found about 6 of these hanging on our fence:

So this year I made this:

Our animal classification box. There are divisions for Invertebrate/Vertebrate/Arthropod, then into the classes: mammal, bird, echinoderm, insect, etc...

Here is the control chart. I downloaded it from here.

Then there are animal picture cards 3-4 for each class. I based them off the ones available at the above website. I didn't like them so I found my own pictures and printed them on business card paper (makes it so much easier!)

Then there are reference cards that tell a few facts about each class:

We've been working through it together. So far sorted all the animals into their Phylums and the vertebrates into classes (no I didn't actually use the phylum/class terminology with them...) Tomorrow we tackle the invertebrates, before they choose which animal they want to do their reports on.

We were talking about the different types of scientists last week, Wednesday was Archeologist day. I have seen this project a couple of times, on a few different blogs over the past few weeks, and when I looked on my schedule I thought that it would be the perfect activity for a "dig".

It took a few days to prepare since I wanted the items fairly hidden. I covered the bottoms of 3 large containers with water and froze them. Then I placed more water and a few objects and froze again. I did this 3 times before topping with water. The items were just small ones from around the house. Mini-cars, pennies, buttons, shells, tiny plastic animals. etc.... Then I took them out on the back deck, where there was about 2 ft of shade handed them butter knives and forks and let them dig.

They concentrated very hard...

These were pretty solid blocks of ice and they had a blast breaking into it and finding the items inside. They've asked to do it again and I think next time I will be better prepared and bring out their hammers, some brushes, salt, maybe some water for them to see how different items work with the ice. But it's a great activity for a near 100 degree day.

Geography is a subject that is often overlooked in schools today. I know when I was in school all we were taught were the continents, oceans, US States, we needed to know the major countries around the world and that was all. A handul of seas and other countries, maybe. My plan this year is to have more geographical items in our school room. We have maps, a globe, puzzles of the states and a puzzle of the world. We talk about individual countries as we do our studies but I want a little more. I want my kids- and I will be learning right along with them- to know where Guatemala, Nigeria and Romania are. Not just a vague- they are in Central America, Africa or Europe....but I want them to be able to point to it on a map,see it's place in the world. So my first step was to make and add this to our shelf:

I got the printable from a free Montessori resources website- I would love to share it and credit the person who made it, but I don't remember where I downloaded it from. It was simple to make....just a printable map with the country borders shown. One blank and one labled. Then I cut out the names of all the countries, seas, and other noteworthy places and taped them onto straight pins to form flags. There are 26 flags. The control map is to help the boys be independent while working on this, and so their concentration isn't broken while waiting for me to come and help.  The map and flags are places onto a corkboard piece and the control map is free beside them.

ETA I found it....this map is from Polestar Montessori they have a N. America and a World map available to download.

Today I finished up this project to add to our shelves.....

It is for writing a book/stories. Like a lot of boys, my oldest is somewhat of a reluctant writer. It takes too long is his number one complaint. While he is getting better at writing longer sentences he still doesn't write a lot. I want to encourage them to write down their stories and get their imaginations running. So here 's what is in this "kit":

First I made these books. Simple folded in half cardstock, with 3 sheets of paper inside. One is blank for a title page, 2 are lined on the bottom, front and back to form 8 writable pages. My stapler wasn't long enough to staple the binding so I sewed them...and I think they turned out nicer that way...

Then I made some story starter cards, in case they needed them. They are fairly generic...."One day I..." and "This weekend I...". I sewed a little pouch for the cards. Then I made a little information card with basic instructions...pick a topic or starter, write and illustrate your story, think of  a title. Then a basic template for a cover and the information it should include. I stuck it all in, well actually it is a "mailbox" they made at Lowes, on the shelf with a jar of fancy pencils, colored pencils and my pens.  

Cale has plans to write a story about a cat tomorrow.

I mentioned last week that I have a new interest in the Montessori way of teaching. I love the preschool ideas and the practical life instruction. I have found in the past week that information on the elementary- or 6-12 class- is hard to find. There is a wealth of information on setting up a 3-6 classroom, but not so much on the older kids. So I have been adding things to our "classroom" and rearraging our existing items in more appealing ways. 

One thing I have been making is this:

The beads are a major mathematics manipulative. And if you buy the ones through the Montessori stores they are ridiculously expensive. We actually don't really have much in the way of manipulatives. My kids have never used them much for counting. They just learned by counting things; while building, reading etc. I like it that way. Rylan was a natural when it came to addition and didn't take long to go counting objects to abstract problems. We own cuisenaire rods, but they aren't marked so it makes it hard to know which rod is 8 and which is 6. I can see a lot of uses for these beads. Montessori uses them for everything from counting to understanding higher numbers, to mulitplication and square root. So I went to Hobby Lobby- lucky for me the beading section was in the flyer last week and plastic beads were all 50% off. So I bought a bunch and used some wire left over from the chicken coop and started stringing. I made 10 sets of the bead stair (above) and I also am working on long chains- about 10 long- of each number for use in skip counting. Rylan need some work with that- esp since he will be coming into multiplication before too long. I set the beads out and they have loved "play" with them so far.

And Cohen has taken to these changes like a moth to a flame. He is at the perfect age for this. He's pouring and counting and scooping. I made him a salt tray to write in. He has actually been trying to write some letters- can do a c, o and i. He was so excited and ran to find his dad after each letter, yelling "Daddy, come see my "o"!!"  Today I made this sorting set and he wanted to use it immediately. (excuse the smile, he's at the stage where he puts this grin on when he hears the camera...I tried to get one of him actually working but he would here the focus and look up with this smile)

Once he was done, I asked him to roll up the mat and put it away, which he did, but then he wanted to use the red mat. So I found an old counting game we made last year. An egg carton, numbered to 12 and enough beads to fill each with the appropriate number. I think for a not quite 3 yr old  he is an excellent counter. He did all of them. A little help near the end keeping his 1:1 correspondance straight but overall he did it alone, counting the beads one at a time to put them in the right spot.

I have always been interested in the Montessori Method of teaching. I like the ideas and the tools. We have gotten the catalogs in the mail and order from them for gifts and my boys seem to really enjoy the Montessori inspired activites we do....I stumbled across this blog the other day....and I read a lot, and looked at her prepared enviroment pictures. For a few weeks I have been itching to reoganize our play/school room. They have too much stuff, too much clutter. Some days they go without playing in the playroom at all. So once they went to bed I started clearing. I ended up boxing up 3 tubs of toys, cars, etc. More if you count the art supplies I put up. I don't plan on getting rid of them- yet. Rotate them as needed. See what really gets played with. Drop some off at the camper up in the mountains for recharging playtime. Probably donate some to a friend whose house recently burned down. But the point was to simplify. Put things in order. Keep everything clearly visible. I don't have a before picture, but this is our arts shelf. Other than Rylan and Cale's school book shelves, before were jammed packed with coloring books, paper, boxes of collage fixings, a lot of stuff that frankly was never seen. This is what it looks like now:

I left a smaller amount of different papers, organized. I DRASTICALLY reduced the playdough toys- rolling pins, hammers and knives are all thay is left for a packed box. The top shelf, and 1 from the next level down, are for rotating. Currently there are the rubber band board, rubber stamps/ink, paper punches and cutting activities. On top is the color mixing set my mom got for Cohen last year for his birthday. They spent a good hour this morning punching shapes into paper. But it is so much cleaner and nicer looking and easier for them to pickup afterwards (we do still have our hanging shoe organizer with the paints, crayons, pencils, markers, etc...)

I also added a couple things from around the house:

I inherited this very old silver sugar/creamer set from a great great grandmother.  I had forgotten it was stuck in the bottom of my china cabinet. So I filled it with beans and set it in front of my almost 3 year old. He loved it. Sat for a long time working with the tongs. They were tough for him to use on such small beans but he did great. I also added a little silver spoon which he used after he got tired of the tongs. All 3 used this today.

And I added this:

The Montessori catalogs have a lot of practical life items such as pouring. And I actually own a few little pitchers- but they come from the fore mentioned great grandmother and I am not sure I am ready to hand them over to my kids. I even have a small pitcher/bowl set like they used to use to wash hands. Again I am not ready to hand it over. But I do have this. I don't think it is old...seeing that the pitcher has mints on it. I am thinking it was probably from some holiday set. But I filled it with water and set it with a little tiny goblet and let them pour with it.

They also got out their older sets:

So they had a busy day. They used their hands a lot. They swept up their holes from punching and nut shells from cracking. They dried water spills. I am still reading, doing more research- esp on using these ideas for kids older than 6. But I have my head filled with ideas on what things I want to change in our home.

This year I have planned  to study a handful of artists. This week we began with our first artist: Wassily Kandinsky. His abstract art and use of color and shapes seemed to be a good first choice for my boys. In my planning I discovered that our library is not a good resource for art prints, so I had to improvise. There are a number of online galleries- this one was one of my favorites- so I set my printer on 4x6 photopaper and saved a few images from the galleries. They turned out nicely- with the exception of the one print I really wanted. Farbstudie Quadrate wasn't avaiable in a good print size. I did manage a smaller one though. So throughout the week we have been looking at the prints, discussing colors and abstracts, narrating a few of the prints, and today we got out the paints to make our own "Kandinsky". So after blocking their papers and a brief discription of concentric circles they went to work.

Here is the print I chose for them:

Hard at work:

And here are the masterpieces: (Cohen, Cale, Rylan) 

And finally the little artist. This is the first time I have let him go all out with the paints. He could pick and choose just like the bigger boys and he had a blast (was a mess by the end too) 

Today finished up our first official week of school. The entire week went as well as the first day. It was an amazingly easy week. Here is a some of the stuff we did:

Spelling: Each had a list. Cale's were all short A, Rylan's were double consanants at the end. The each spelled all their words correctly today.

Language Arts: In addition to the 1 required book to read each day, they did activities like these: 

The first one was an idea from this fellow blogger, and I also saw something like it in the Montesorri catalog. Most of the words were CVC- cat, pin, bug, top, etc....some were harder for my almost 5 yr old, But he did very well.  The second was for my 2nd grader. It is a little kit on syllables....1-4. I downloaded one of the Evan Moor Phonics Center bools off of Google Books. It he did very well reading the longer 4 syllable words. Most of thier writing this week was done in the All About Me Lapbook.

For math we mostly focused on add and sub facts for Rylan and counting 1:1 and writing the numbers with Cale. This went over really well with Rylan and he loved doing it.

For the past few days our afternoons have been filled with june bug catching. It is a new favorite for them. They take their jars and lids and a big  pitcher and we go out. Once we get about 50 of them we stop and throw them into the henhouse. The birds, and boys, love it. So it was only natural that our nature notebook entry for this week was the june bug. My boys are not natural artisits, at least as far as sketching goes, so a couple times this week I have had them actually pay attention to detail and draw what they see. Rylan especially lacks the confidence in himseft, plus his perfectionist nature wants his drawing to look exactly like what it is. I guess that is why he likes photography. But here are their June Bugs: (Cale's, Rylan's)

And the final project was our lapbook....

and the details of those I will post separately

We started our school year today...I am now officially homeschooling 2....2nd grade and Kindergarten. I have days 1-20 planned; completely planned. Which books they will read, which chapter book I will read, pages in workbooks, games, activities. And today went really well. They both sat down and didn't complain at all this morning. Cohen colored and worked with is Cars tot-book, which he loves to read through, plus it helps him feel a little more involved in general. Lakin is finally old enough to sit at the table so coloring holds his attention a lot longer....he was using stamp markers this morning and he ended up with a perfect star stamped on his face. They we did it all, the LArts book work , reading their readers, me reading 2 chapters, math activity and their address/phone/DOB/Name minibook. They were done before 10:00 am. So we all went out to play soccer, collect tomatoes and raspberries, exercise the rabbits and collect eggs. It was a very stress free morning.

Cale has been asking to start school all weekend. And we did cut out all our "All About Me" lapbook pieces yesterday. He is a good student and that really encourages Rylan to be a good student too. Hopefully they will use their brotherly competitivness for a good use. Rylan also has his incentive to be good: we finshed reading the first Harry Potter book on Saturday and on Friday if he has a good week he gets to stay up late and watch the movie.

Rylan found this yesterday on my green pepper plant. Paul and the boys left it there to devour my plant until I got home. I went to look for it but all I found was the top half of my plant missing. Paul went out and picked it right off. For a caterpillar of this size- about 3.5 inches- it is suprisingly hard to see. It's a Tobacco Hornworm. The moths are huge. I think this little big guy is getting close to full grown. I am not sure if we will be able to trick it into pupating in artificial conditions but we are going to try. These caterpillars burrow down into the soil a few inches. I read that some you can trick by adding a bunch of paper towels. The pupa stage is variable too. It can be as long as all winter or a few weeks.

I have wanted to make a solar oven for awhile now....and a solar heater....but that one hasn't happened yet. A month or so ago I got a Family Fun magazine in the mail and it had plan for a solar oven. All laid out, using a pizza box.  Finally last week while visiting Paul's grandmother we ate pizza out in. So I had the pizza box.

All it took was the box, foil, black paper, tape and some type of plastic....I used old page protectors from a scrapbook. And here is the finised product ready to go:

Then you close it up and set it so the sun reflects off the foil into the box.

Then you wait. But in the summer you should really plan ahead- I didn't- because as you know...chocolate melts a whole lot quicker than marshmallows..... I should have thought about that more when the chocolate was melting as I unwrapped it....but anyway.....the marshmallow was warm, but not gooey, the chocolate was almost a puddle....but it was still yummy when it was all said and done.

We will try again to capture the sun this winter....when I fully intend to make the solar heater to heat our play/school room.....