Addition to my plans...

As to my Plans post below, a few things to add:

5.5yo will do one more Explode the Code book before we are ready to move up to Grade 1 materials.

I would like to try to implement a time limit to school. Instead of having school drag out for 5 hours (or me going off the deep end and trying to fit everything in...not that I would ever do such a thing!), then I would like to END after 3 hours of work. That's 3 hours total, for everyone, including me - and 3 hours is the maximum figure. We did a trial run and had a successful 2 out of 3 days (and got it all done in 2 hours)! But I also discovered that when *I'm* not on the ball, not prepared, or feeling sleepy, then its more apt that our day will run away with us. I have to keep us focused for that time, or the day is a bust. If we can keep to a time limit, I think everyone will enjoy the free time that that affords us. We'll see...keeping fingers crossed. I don't want to turn into the Time Tyrant, either, or suck all joy out of learning. But, truth be told, my kids don't really *enjoy* learning if I let them run wild and it drags out for 5hours. And truth be told, my kids don't really *enjoy* learning, anyhow...they grumble and complain like any school child, even if I try to make it all fun and games and projects (been there, done that). I've discovered, thus far, on this ever-so-long journey, that we all do so much better if we hunker down to work and get it done, then if I try to make it fun. And the odd thing is: although I get complaints, eventually, the hard work shows up in other things, and the kids show a sense of pride in the things that they've learned. Out of everyone, I think I learned the most this year! I learned just how much my kids need predictability, and someone to give them a good kick in the seat (daily! LOL). I'm not a kick-in-the-seat type of mom; consistency is one of my greatest weaknesses. But - I've been amazed at how much my kids have grown when I set expectations and routine. This is a difficult thing for me to do, and it is not how I imaged our homeschool.

Plans

I finally have my plans figured out for what we will do next. My 7.5yo is one week from finishing her grammar & handwriting books. We school year-round. My goal is to simplify science and history, and focus mainly on the 3Rs.

7.5yo will do:

• BJU English 2
• BJU Reading 2
• BJU Math 2 (already started)
• BJU Handwriting 2

Notice the "BJU" trend? I decided I was tired of trying to find things that fit together, and just decided to go with something already planned out for me. Also notice its 2nd grade, and we've done 2nd gr books this year. My daughter read a selection from both BJU 2 and 3, and the 2nd grade selection seemed a better fit, although somewhat easy. English 2 has the level of writing assignments I would like to use to build up my daughter's writing. We hope to cruise through this level and make it to 3rd grade by mid-winter.

5.5yo will do:

• BJU Phonics/English 1
• BJU Reading 1
• BJU Handwriting 1
• BJU Spelling 1 (? maybe - I think I may just use portions of this & then spread it out over 2 years)
• BJU Math 1 (already started)

Both kids will do:

• Scotts Foresman Science grade 2, but hopefully in a more hands-on way. It'll be the base for what we learn. I have a free copy of this, cutting down on my expenses.
• Story of the World 2 and Activity Guide (just need to actually find a copy of each, since there is a new revised version coming out, and it seems hard to find).

And that's it! The kids have already seen the science and like it. The first chapter is on plants; I thought it would be good to start on plants & then move on to animals for during the summer. Our backyard is a great resource for these topics. We got our garden put in yesterday and will incorporate that in with science.

Weekly Report

We had about 3 days of school and 2 days of adventure.

• 7.5yo learned how to ride her bike. Monday was a holiday, full of bike riding.
• Math: 7.5yo learned to write Fact Families, If...Then statements, and Missing Addend problems. 5.5yo is slowly learning that 1st gr math is harder and that she's actually going to need to pay attention to her mom. She learned Expanded Notation (62 = 60 + 2), Even and Odd with large numbers (62 is even, 65 is odd), and Greater Than/Less Than with large numbers (43 > 37).
• Reading: 7.5yo and Mom tag-team read 3 chapters from the Tiara Club, 5.5yo read 2 stories that Mom made up, and Camping Out (BJU K book #21) Learned wh, ch, th, sh, and ing words.
• Spelling/Phonics: 7.5yo learned about apostrophes in short-cut words (isn't, we're, they're, I'm). 5.5yo finished Explode the Code book 2.
• Handwriting: 7.5yo is continuing uppercase cursive letters - 1 week left. 5.5yo learned to write lowercase p and r.
• Grammar: 7.5yo learned about irregular past tense verbs: buy/bought, run/ran, ring/rang. 1 week left in her grammar book.
• Read-alouds: Wizard of Oz (almost finished), 7.5yo would rather I read "Emma" by Jane Austin aloud (she likes to listen to my books)
• Bible: life of Jesus
• Science: how things work - I had to laugh about the page on Telephones - since I'm not sure my kids have ever seen one (we use cell phones)
• History: Deserts
• Thursday - Nature Center class called Insectigations. Had a park day and visited friends and relatives.

Our long, but happy day

With gas prices on the rise, I'm determined to fit in all that I can whenever we go somewhere. Today, in a town 30mins from here, we had our bi-yearly Clothing Swap. This is where you bring your used clothing to donate, and then pick up used clothing to wear. It has been a great, free way to pick up clothes, and a wonderful way to help others. Since we were going in that direction, anyway, I hooked up with a friend, who had all sorts of fun things planned for us! Here's our day (I think we got our "gas" worth in this trip):

• 9:30 - 11:30am Nature Center class called "Insectigations" for homeschooled kids.
• During the kids' class, my friend and I took her 2yo across the street to play at a park.
• 11:45am - headed over with all the kids to the park, and we had pizza for lunch.
• 11:45 - 2:30 ate lunch, played at the park, and played some soccer.
• 3 - 3:45pm went to the clothing swap
• 4pm spent time visiting with my husband's grandma
• 5:30 - 6pm went shopping at the grocery store (just needed a few items)
• 6:15pm - arrived home exhausted!!

In 2 hours

I've realized lately, that when I'm not allowing umpteen-zillion drink/bathroom/play breaks, that we can actually get all of our school finished in 2 hours, or less. I've also realized that we have an incredibly light load (even if it doesn't look like it on paper). Here's how it goes (when we aren't temper tantrum'ing, taking long bathroom breaks, or running off for spontaneous playtime):



7yo & I work together on the math lesson. When she's good to go, I start on the 5yo. This takes about 30 minutes total.



7yo triumphantly finishes math, and moves on to spelling. Sometimes I give a prequiz. The 5yo dorks around.



7yo finishes spelling in her workbook (3 days per week), then moves on to grammar. I introduce the concept, and she flies thru the work. 5yo finds her place in Explode the Code and I help her through it (or play freeze tag, or twiddle my thumbs).



7yo does half a page of handwriting and is ready to read aloud to me. I'm not ready yet, so she twiddles her thumbs. The 7yo has now done approximately 45 minutes of bookwork (or less). I help the 5yo through handwriting, reminding her to pinch her pencil & to start at the top. It has effectively been about 45 mins - 1 hour.



7yo and I tag-team read a book. The 5yo listens. Then the 5yo reads. Then I read our Sonlight books: Bible, history, science, and read-aloud. It has now been about 2 hours or less.



Of course, there are many times that the same light workload takes 5 hours - but I think that happens when I allow too many breaks, tantrums, or other interruptions.



Also, we usually finish our spelling lesson, complete with test, within 3-4 days. We finish our grammar lesson within 3 days. Thursdays are light, and Fridays are even lighter.

Yay! No training wheels!!

My 7.5 yo learned how to ride her bike without training wheels this weekend. Now all I hear is "can I ride my bike?" At one point this weekend, she went really fast, lost control, and had quite a fall. Her knee is skinned up, but she managed to escape from worse injuries. I now understand why kids wear helmets when bike riding (I grew up in a no-helmet era).

This was a big goal I had set for this summer. Next comes getting the 5.5yo to be able to swing on the swingset without being pushed:)

Weekly Report

7yo

• Math: review, test on addition, expanded form, greater than/less than. Began review of basic subtraction.
• Reading: began reading the Tiara Club; Alice & the Magical Mirror. Reading Garfield comics in bed at night.
• Spelling: aced test on ar/or words
• Grammar: verb endings, adding -ing and -ed to silent e words, doubling the consonant with CVC words.
• Handwriting: cursive capital letters - 1 sentence per day.

5yo

• Math: addition concepts - order of addends, adding zero, making addition word stories
• Reading: we got ahead in our BJU readers but don't have the phonics knowledge to keep up. Oops. Working on sh & ch words.
• Phonics: Explode the Code book 2, almost finished - 7 pages left.
• Handwriting: lowercase letter p

Both

• Monday - went to the park. Attempted teaching the 7yo to ride a bike without training wheels. I am determined. This is *the* summer. But we're not there yet...A girl with several pet rabbits came to the park, so we chased them around and held them.
• Character Club classes at a church
• Piano lessons
• Science: how things work - helicopters, trains, bicycles, construction vehicles
• History: mountains - glaciers, Mountains on the Moon in Africa (cool place, by the way!)
• Read-aloud: still plugging thru Wizard of Oz, even though I'm sick with a sore throat and the chapters are long. I like the book, though, and the 5yo does, too. The 7yo still won't admit to liking it.
• If the weather is nice: we'll have Park Day with our local homeschool group & TBall (at the same park, how convenient!!)

Weekly Review

Here's our weekly report:

• Great-grandma spent the week at our house; it was a nice visit.
• Extra-curriculars this week included a library trip, store, Character Training class at a church, and TBall at the park
• Math: 5yo learned even/odd numbers and addition stories. 7yo has been review: renaming (16 ones as 1 ten 6 ones), even/odd, skip counting, one less/one more, ten less/ten more, greater than / less than, expanded notation (26 = 20 + 6)
• Reading: 5yo is working on sh, ch, and th (ahh, what a hard thing to master!), 7yo discovered she could read a whole chapter of Rainbow Magic Fairies all by herself!
• Phonics/Spelling: 5yo steadily working thru ETC 2 (about 2 weeks left!). 7yo's spelling words were c having the sound of /k/ and /s/, and the /k/ sound being spelling c or ck.
• Grammar: 7yo learned how to add -ed to an action word to make it past tense (basic - no letter dropping or adding yet!)
• Handwriting: 5yo mastered her letter Y which is an awesome thing! She has a "y" in her name and yet has spent this past year making the funkiest ys ever. But now she can do it. yay! 7yo began uppercase cursive letters and must copy a full sentence in cursive. She is almost done with her cursive handwriting book.
• Science: how planes, jets, hot air balloons, and space shuttles work.
• History: Mountains - living in the mountains, plants on the mountains, avalanches, and things to do on a mountain
• Read-aloud: Almost half-way thru the Wizard of Oz. The 7yo complained at first, but is now, sort of, unadmittedly...starting to like it (maybe just a little). The 5yo likes it quite a bit.

Weekly Report

Attack of the Unifix Cube Monsters. Ahhhh!!!!
We did a lot of work with unifix cubes this week. We played a fun game with dice and a hundreds/tens/ones mat - we rolled dice and received as many blocks as on our dice. When we had too many ones in our ones column, we traded up to ten. The first person to reach 100 won. We also tried this game going backwards (subtracting the number from the dice), and borrowing tens (this game got interrupted by the neighbor coming over to play). Here's our week in review:

• Math: 5yo learned 11-20, 7yo learned how to "rename" (i.e., regroup) unifix cubes. If I gave her 2 tens and 19 ones, she learned how to rename them as 3 tens and 9 ones.
• Reading: 5yo read "Big Clam" book#20 from BJU, 7yo tag-team read "Princess Katie and the Silver Pony" with Mom.
• Phonics: 5yo is still working on blends in Explode the Code book 2
• Spelling: 7yo learned ch and wh words
• Grammar: 7yo learned how to use apostrophes to show possession.
• Handwriting: 5yo is writing short lowercase words, 7yo finished up lowercase cursive - next week she'll learn uppercase cursive.
• Science: reading about "Things That Go" which is really boring.
• History: Wild Places, reading about Mountains
• Bible: we started the life of Christ
• TBall at the park, then a nature walk, and playing at the park (saw at least 20 turtles)
• Character training classes at the nearby church (replaces AWANA)
• Piano lessons

The Tiara Club

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

My 7yo and I "tag-team" read the book Princess Katie and the Silver Pony (book 2 of the Tiara Club series). She read the even-numbered pages and I read the odd-numbered pages. It was a good starter novel (first novel) for a girl who likes sparkly, princess-y type things. I wondered if it would have the type of snotty attitudes prevalent in today's popular first novel books like Junie B. Jones, but I am happy to report that it was quite a sweet story (sure, its pure twaddle, but it was nice twaddle). It has the typical bully type personality, but - from the one book we've read thus far - it would be very easy to turn this into a character type of lesson and delve into it from a moral perspective (if that's what we were aiming to do). It is pure twaddle (the cover has sparkly glitter on it!) so if you are looking for some deep compelling living book, this is probably not it. But for us (a rather twaddle-y type of family) it was a very nice book to read together. My 7yo did have some trouble with some of the words. There are words like "chandelier" and "curtsey" and "pirouette" (of course, its a book about princesses). And some of the other words she had trouble with - sniggered, decided, fantastic, gorgeous - there were enough words to give her some difficulty on every full page she read. I'm not sure how else to teach her these words other than to have her actually read them in real literature.

Wordless Wednesday

Before... After...
Answer: lost tooth

Where are we?

This is more for me than anyone else, but thought I would do an analysis of "where are we?" in our school books.

7yo
Handwriting Without Tears Cursive - 15 +/- days left (finish mid June)
Grammar - 4 weeks left (finish before mid-June)
Spelling Workout B - 15 weeks left (finish in Sept?)
Math - new book, just started, probably finish in Jan/Feb?
Reading - we're just using library books as interested

5yo
Handwriting Without Tears Printing - new book, many lessons left
Explode the Code - pg 71 out of 94, approximately 12 lessons left (mid-June)
BJU K Readers - book 20 out of 36, approximately 15 weeks left (early Sept)
Math - new book, just started - don't know when finish

Both
Sonlight Core C - finish in August?

As you can see, our books will be ending in roughly 2 big clumps of time: beginning of summer (June), and beginning of Fall (Sept-ish).
June - 7yo's handwriting, 7yo's grammar, & 5yo's phonics
Sept - 7yo's spelling, 5yo's reading, 5yo's handwriting??, and science, history, bible, & lit

And the answer is "yes", we do school year-round...
And the odd thing is, its looks so rigorous on paper, doesn't it? I'm always amazed at how I look like a slave driver on paper, but look like a slacker mom in real life:) Of course, the kids would say I'm a slave driver. But really I'm not. Honest, I'm not.

I wish...

I sometimes wish...

that I could look through a spyglass and see my daughters in their teens years. I would like to see that the things I worried about when they were little were not a big deal, after all. I would like to see my older mind thinking back to when they were younger, and treasuring the memories of childish antics. I would like to see my older self enjoying a close relationship with my teens, and maybe seeing myself hit my head against the wall about a new issue, not the same old ones I battled when they were young.

And then I'd like to look again and see them all grown up. I'd catch a small glimpse of the people God shaped them to be. I'd like to look back on their growing up years and ask, "why did I worry?" I'd like to know that God was with them the whole time, and His work in their life was awesome.

And after these 2 brief glimpses of the future, I'd like to continue on, carrying this torch...but a little less worried, a little less concerned about knowing math facts, or how to write all your letters going in the same direction, or how to read. Sometimes I just need that reassurance that its all going to be OK.

Weekly Review

This was our M&M Color graph from Math 2, last week. We're supposed to use everyone's favorite colors from a classroom setting, but with our students of, uh...2...it didn't make much of a graph. But that's OK, because M&Ms are much more fun.
This is the kids "reading" all the books I ordered from the library. The 7yo was having trouble getting interested in any books, so I said, "gosh darn it, I'm going to order a ton of books from the library with different genres, levels, and topics." So here it is. The 5yo was thrilled with the books on bats and frogs. The 7yo liked the Garfield comic book (see her reading it below). She likes anything with word bubbles. I'm trying to learn to speak in word bubbles so that she'll pay attention to me.
Now, I need to remember everything we did this week. It was packed full. Daddy went to Microsoft Expo in Las Vegas, so we spent the week doing "special stuff". Here's our "special stuff" and "school stuff" in review:

• Monday - Playdate with our friend E & her 6yo daughter, 2 yo son
• Tuesday - oil change that lasted 2 hours because they had to run out and buy a filter. We filled up on the station's hot cocoa and popcorn, and played with their toys.
• Wednesday - Playdate. Had great theological discussions and I learned that my brain actually does still exist. Always a good thing.
• Wednesday night - AWANA awards ceremony. Cookies & punch afterward.
• Thursday - Library and post office. Phew! Getting worn out...
• Friday - TBall practice & piano practice.
• Math - fit in about 4 days of Math. The 5yo took a short "test" but I didn't tell her it was a test, and I helped her get the right answers, so I guess it wasn't much of a test:)
• Reading - Garfield comics, and the 7yo helped me read a chapter of our first chapter book together - "The Tiara Club" about princesses as a boarding school (think easy-to-read Harry Potter with glitter). I was blown away by the 5yo insisting that she read A Dragon in A Wagon, which was wayyy above her ability, but she gave it a most excellent shot, and I was rather impressed. She also read "Trucks", book 19 of BJU K.
• Spelling - a rather hard list. The 7yo got 100% by Day 5. That's the only school we did on Friday. The 5yo did 3 days of Explode the Code (the 7yo took sooo long on her math, that the 5yo just didn't get my attention on those days).
• Grammar - 3 days of Commas in Dates and Places
• Handwriting - The 7yo was excited to learn cursive z. The 5yo is doing great copying words.
• Other: got about 1/2 week done of Sonlight week 24. Why do we only get about 1/2 a week done per week??? This is taking forever! But the books are good, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Still, I'm feeling rather ansy.
• Oh yeah, and 5 nights of Women of Ninja Warrior, our new favorite TV show. Hey, its sort of educational...we get to watch great phys ed feats done by female competitors, its all in Japanese, so we are hearing another language and getting "cultural appreciation", and there are subtitles, so we're getting some reading practice in there. Its all good. And now we like to challenge each other in our own Ninja Warrior competitions. Its a great way to get kids to move a little faster:)