it's tuesday, two days after we returned home from the state convention. and i'm still reeling with excitement for next year. it feels like we've stepped into a new realm of homeschooling...because i think adam will be more involved, as will kenny. 

we actually attended more of the talks this year and are excited about some of the information we got. kenny did a lot of the sciencey talks, and i did a lot of the "homeschool support" type talks - for homeschool support group leaders and for mothers. i return home ready to run, to teach, to lead, to parent with energy. :)

what our year will look like next year (with rowan and sawyer. i'm still working on pulling together learning resources for adam, which will largely be homemade):

Spelling and Grammar: Spell to Write and Read by Wanda Sunseri this came highly recommended by four families within a month's time - none of them know each other, but all recommended it highly. i love what i'm reading about it, and it looks like it will be good for all leveslof grammar and reading for a few years.

Math: Right Start Mathematics - another recommendation and we loved the private demonstration we had at their CHAP booth.

Bible: Children's Story bible and family devotions. We might even do more memorization of the Westminster Catechism (although I wonder if we should start with the children' version first? Dad, your thought?) along side of more bible memory verses.

Science:  various nature studies. nothing structured - just fun facts about nature and the world around us. the boys like journaling, so we'll be keeping a nature journal. currently they're still studying insects.

Latin: Songbook Latin (it's never too early to start memorizing latin words!) I think we'll use the cd as a fun music cd to listen to in the car, during breakfast/lunch/ and art time, but we won't do structured latin lessons until the following year.

Art (and music?): Sawyer has been asking me to show him how to draw certain things lately, so we found a great resource for his age called Draw Write Now. (each word in the title links to a different book - i got the first three in the series). they have lessons along with drawing and writing fun! we'll work with these as well as the Ed Emberly books my mom got for Sawyer. he's certainly our little artist.

the year will be a bit more structured than this past year, but we plan on keeping a lot of play time around the learning time. i can tell that both boys love to sit and do lessons, but they NEED time to run and play and be imaginative on their own. and i whole-heartedly believe that is part of the learning process any way. they won't be sitting for long periods of time. :)

since we've finished our "offical" curriculum a few weeks ago, kenny's been having fun with the boys teaching them all about insects. they're creating their own folders with bug pictures and charts and they've gone on a few bug hunts already.

it's perfect timing as our painted lady butterflies have emerged from their chrysallids and our ants came in the mail last week and are hard at work building tunnels all over thier 'hill."

this morning was the first gatheirng of our new homeschool group. we met at the library, had storytime (two of the older students read outloud to the younger students) and then planted seeds in a peet pot for arbor day. we then had impromptu playing and then singing time.

i look forward to seeing how this group grows and how we evolve over the months!

Susan Wise Bauer's latest blog post made me SO EXCITED that it's convention time again!  i think i just might have to make the cinncinatti one next year - look at that vendor hall!

We attend the CHAP convention in Harrisburg, and while the speaker list does not include Susan Wise Bauer this year, I am not going for the presentations. We love walking around the vendor hall and just looking at everything that is available for homeschoolers. 

I'm excited this year to be meeting an old friend there for coffee during one of the days, and kenny and i have the rest of the weekend to saturate ourselves in planning what our year will look like next year.

i've been doing a lot of research and picking of brains lately about homeschool cooperatives and support groups from homeschooling families. there isn't one within an hour's drive of us, and it was starting to wear me out.

i am the type of homeschool mom that wants to be with other homeschool families - no matter what their slant or curriculum choices are. it's important to me to get to know other parents that have made the lifestyle choice of homeschooling their chidlren. it's important to me to have my kids meet and befriend other kids of all ages that are homeschooled (in addition to their friends that go to school, not to replace them!).

i also love the idea of a cooperative group that pools together the talents other homeschooling parents and puts them in a group where our kids can benefit from their teaching style and expertise.  i dream of the day that there is a local co-op that our family can plug into.

but for now, there is nothing in our area. so a few weeks ago, i sent an email to a group of families that are part of a yahoo group in our area about getting together formally and we have started to meet already. right now, i think we're all fairly new homeschoolers (with the exception of a few seasoned parents - of whom i'm very grateful) so we're all kind of stumbling around trying to figure out what this group will look like.

i am hoping for a full-on co-op someday. we'll just have to wait and see what this group wants to do. because it all depends on the desire and talent of the parents involved.

i'm pleased to announce that we're DONE with school this year.

it's a sunny afternoon in early april, and my two kindergartners are happily playing together. they're done with "school," even though we didn't technically finish the entire curriculum.

phonics and reading: we've been breezing through the phonics and writing lessons in a few days' time, with both rowan and sawyer reading at the same level. we also continue to supplement with the Bob Books - both boys take turns reading a book a day from each of the three levels we have outloud.

math: rowan has already adding and subtracting numbers - even double digits. we haven't done one math lesson, but with the questions that he asks on a daily basis about numbers, he's gathered and deduced enough to figure it out himself. sawyer isn't as interested at this point. i'm sure he'll pick up when we start "official" math curriculum - which will probably be in the fall.

science: we are watching five pupae "painted lady" butterflies begin the chrysallis stage in a glass container and we'll be putting the "cocoons" into a butterfly environment when they've spun. i'm excited to see this take place. we'll release any butterfly that submerges and hope to see them work their magic in our flower beds. 
we're also waiting on ants to arrive in the mail at which point we'll add them to an artificial ant hill that we have to study how an ant builds tunnels and "works hard to live."
in addition to these, we'll be getting new honeybees in the mail in two weeks and each of the boys will be able to observe the hives up close in their child-size bee suit.
kenny is also planning on starting a BIG bug collection this summer - the old fashioned "pin and cardboard" kind.
science is so fun during the warm, sunny days of spring and summer!

bible: i can't believe how easily memorization comes at this stage in rowan and sawyer's learning. it's proof that the trivium makes the most sense in learning (at least to me). we memorize a new verse every other week. we read a lot of bible stories to the boys in their bible storybooks. i hope to begin reading from actual scripture and incorporating drawing and more artwork into their bible learning.

art: sawyer and adam are the biggest advocates of drawing, coloring and painting. rowan is happy to sit and do whatever the other two ask, but he doesn't ask to do it. he's much more interested in looking at pictures and through books (or being read to). we might take a saturday morning art class in the fall at a local art center.

~~~~~~~~~

all in all, this was a really fun year of homeschooling. for all of us! i doubt that we'll finish this early every year! especially when i add another level of learning (adam) to the official curriculum-learning. we'll probably do some year-end field trips before it gets too hot: the zoo (wild animals) and a local sheep farm (farm animals).

kenny and i are gearing up for the state homeschool convention at the beginning of next month. we're scanning web sites of curriculums that we're interested in for next year. we had a great experience at the christian classical education conference in february, and we're excited to begin incorporating what we've learned.

rowan and sawyer have techinically finished kindergarten and will begin first grade level lessons in the fall - depending on the curriculum we choose. i am happy not to start anything with adam yet - he's happy enough to sit with us and learn simple alphabet lessons, draw faces and sing our phonics songs.

we're beginning to be able to go back outside and play. this week, the boys run around outside for half an hour or so, and then come back in, ready for some learning. i'm thankful to be able to see the grass again.

we're breezing right through the weekly unit studies in our curriculum, and i have to say that we're all bored. the exercises that are provided for reading are getting too easy and the boys both breeze through them quickly. schooltime is only 15 minutes a day!

while i'm all for boys their age being able to run around and play for the majority of the day, i'm finding that they're bored a lot. they enjoy schooltime, and are surprised when it's over so quickly. so we're currently on the hunt for a new curriculum.

My Father's World came at such a high recommendation, and perhaps it will be a good curriculum for adam when he's ready for kindergarten. i think we liked it for the first two or three lessons, and then it all got monotonous, and not challenging enough. homeschoolers might argue that i shouldn't be challenging my 4- and 5-year-olds so soon in their early life. but why not? they have plenty of time for imaginative play and exercise during their days, why not give them something to really exercise their brains? especially when they crave it? it's not like i'm forcing them into suzuki music lessons (which i'm not against...it's just not a style i think fits us).

kenny and i are attending a classical homeschooling convention this weekend and i can't be more excited about it. i'm excited to talk to the curriculum vendors, to listen to a defense of classical education, and to have lunch with kenny while the kids play all day with their grandparents. :)

for the remainder of the year, i hope to incorporate much church calendar learning in our days. with lent upon us next week, then easter, and then the early stages of ordinary time, i think it's the perfect time to do lots and lots of family activities revolving around the church calendar.

i know it's been forever since we've updated. of course the holidays find everyone busier than usual, and if you read my other blog, you'll know that every common illness has hit all of us since christmas, and we're still dealing with it! we took a nice long break between thanksgiving and new years, and now we're back in it. and it's good to be back after such a long, unplanned, break.

i'm very impressed with sawyer's progress. i didn't think he'd be reading as well as he is at this point. rowan's doing very well with the kindergarten curriculum - i think it's too easy for him. sawyer's getting the curriculum right on - i think it's perfect for his current level.

we're thinking about switching to a more challenging curriculum in the fall - a completely classical approach which will include latin on the 2nd grade level! i'm torn about this decision because i was really looking forward to the next few years in the My Father's World curriculum (our current curriculum). but i'm sure the curriculum we're looking at will be just as fun, and our extra-curricular field trips and activities can certainly add to any curriculum.

the only real steady thing we do outside the curriculum is read the Bob Books. we have the first three series. sawyer is happily reading through the first series while rowan is into the third series now. i love how these books work right along with our spelling/reading lessons in our curriculum.

since new year's, the boys have been watching all the different birds that come to our feeder. winter birds are so beautiful and they're gorgeous to watch fly, land, and fly away against the thick layer of snow in our back yard. kenny feeds them once or twice a day, so we get "regulars."  i started making a list of all the regular ones that we get and rowan and sawyer have started their own bird books. we color one bird from our list each day, copying it from the pennsylvania bird book that we keep handy. they know the names of the birds better than i do!

adam has since stopped napping, so he's with us at the table during our lessons. fortunately, he loves the math blocks and the alphabet puzzle and those keep him busy while i need to be one-on-one with the older two boys. it's a bit more challenging for me to keep my focus, but i know it's all part of being a family that schools at home. why keep him out of it even though he's 2 1/2? he's still at a great age to learn, and i love that he is learning his alphabet and counting instead of watching videos while we do school (which crosses my mind from time to time when it gets too hectic!).

we are two weeks in, and i'm glad to report we made it through the first two weeks! the curriculum stretches the days of creation (genesis 1) over a ten-day period, but we had two road-trips book-ending our first two weeks of school, and rowan and sawyer were bored with the letter and number recognition, so we went through the 7 days in 7 days, reviewing and "resting" with God on the 7th day.

here they are, standing in front of their creation chart (there are two numbers for each day since both boys wanted to color a number - i had to improvise for sawyer).

i was really excited to begin our first day of unit studies (which was today!) the activities and reading and math start this week, and the boys already loved the different schedule we started. i showed them a short clip from britannica.com of a young girl narrating a short 1-minute video of the sun. they watched it twice and when we got back to the table (from the computer), and began some of the work, they were both able to tell me a "sun fact" and since then, they've repeated it to kenny, and to each other.

we practiced writing the capital and lower case "S" on a dry-erase board, and i read a few other "sun" facts from a kids science book that we bought two years ago. each day this week, we'll present different activities relating to the sun, the letter "s", and i can bring in the extra math curriculum and music/art curriculum.

we met with our co-op last week at a playground. our co-op is for the kindergarten-first grade level, but there were kids from 6 months old to 9 years old at our gathering. we plan on getting together again next week for an apple farm field trip (we study apples in a few weeks), and again to a pumpkin farm in october.

all in all, the boys (and i!) are really enjoying our time. they can't wait for us to start school every day. we've been starting once adam is down for his nap, and we generally last 60-90 minutes a day. we've been playing chutes and ladders at the end of school every day and they're learning to recognize numbers, and count higher and higher by groups of 10s. this is a fun way to add to the math section of our day.

i'll update again when something new comes up. otherwise, we're busy studying the sun! and next week the moon! and then apples! and then.....stay tuned!