My First Blog Hop!

What is a blog hop?

A blog hop is a linky list that is SHARED ON MULTIPLE BLOGS.
When several blogs put the same linky list code on their blog, the
exact same list appears on each blog.

Blog visitors can submit their entries on any blog that contains the list.
The entries will appear on each blog where the list resides.

Blog readers see the same list on each blog, and can "HOP" from blog
to blog seeing the same list of links to follow: BLOG HOP!

Enjoy!

School is starting soon...stay tuned!

I can't believe how fast this summer has gone by! In the past couple of months, I have been swamped with writing my book on being a missional mom, such that school preparation has been on the back burner. We are starting one week from today, though, so I better get cracking!

Here is what I have decided on so far:

For Harry (3rd grade):

• Exploring Countries and Cultures, My Father's World
• Continue with Singapore Math
• Latina Christiana
• Spelling Power
• New American Cursive III
• First Language Lessons
• Writing With Ease
• Mandarin and Spanish if we can fit some in!

For Ron (Kindergarten):

• Continue with Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading
• My Father's World-Kindergarten (primarily the character-teaching/Bible lessons, which includes science/nature studies)
• New American Cursive (he really really really wants to begin this program!)
• Song School Latin
• Singapore Earlybird B
• Joining in on world geography with Harry when appropriate

For Dobby (preschool):

• Grasshopper Kits
• Trying to keep him out of the other boys' way when they're working!

So that's our short summary for now. I can't believe how fast it's coming. I know I could just delay a week and start later...but I really don't want to wait any longer! So next Monday it is. Will post more then! In the meantime we will continue to enjoy the last vestiges of summer!

We made it! Year One, Complete!

It is hard to believe, but we have completed our first official year of homeschooling. Since my last update, we spent a week in Southern California, where the kids had fun golfing, enjoying the beach, and visiting Disneyland for the first time...

Then we had to come back and try to make it through two more weeks of school, no easy feat after time with fun in the sun! I do NOT recommend taking a trip so close to the end of the school year, but in this case it couldn't be helped. We came back to a week of extreme busyness, between school and daily rehearsals for Ron leading up to his annual violin school concert at Orchestra Hall...

We did manage to finish school, but I honestly can't remember all we did! Basically, we just pushed through every subject as far as we could go. In terms of photo-worthy efforts, we did some science experiments with air, seeing its effect on falling objects such as crumpled balls of paper versus flat sheets of paper, as well as making homemade parachutes which we attached to some of the boys' Star Wars lego figures...

We also saw our first hummingbird at our feeder, and have been spotting one every day since! Seeing such a special, remarkable bird has been a wonderful way to end our year of learning with all the different visitors to our multiple backyard feeders that we have up in our yard. (We've come a long way since our battles with the squirrels last summer and fall!)

Then, to further complicate things, our annual homeschool state convention landed right at the end of our last week, which meant that I would miss much of the last day of school and also our "evaluation day" which I had planned for the last Friday. So, DH held the fort these past two days and I wrote up an exam of sorts, mainly for Harry and a much shorter version for Ron, for DH to administer while I was at the convention. Both boys passed with flying colors, and I was extremely pleased with all they'd done and accomplished this year! In the next post, I'll go into more detail about what these tests entailed and what the kids have learned. But for now, I think it suffices to say that we have successfully finished our first year of homeschooling, which is definitely cause for celebration and for ice cream!!!

Weeks 30 and 31--The End Is Near!

Is this normal in homeschooling? Suddenly the weeks are whizzing by and I have no idea what happened. We're in the final stretch now, with just three more weeks of our Adventures curriculum to go. Somehow, some way, we went from being a "just thinking about homeschooling" family to one that was "just trying it out for a year" to where we are now, which is that our kids cannot imagine school any other way. Some days I still do wonder if this is truly for the best for them, but I have to just trust that if the Lord wants us to do otherwise, he will make it clear and we'll change accordingly. But for now, it looks like we will continue on! Time to start thinking about new curriculum for the fall...eek!

Anyway, the past two weeks we've just been trucking along. Here are some highlights:

• In science, Harry and Ron continued having fun with the My First Magnets kit, as well as covering topics such as friction, light and color. Here they using a magnetic wand to move boats with metal washers attached in a pie plate with water inside. It sounds so simple, and it is, but the boys still enjoy seeing magnetic force at work.

• Also, Harry revisited studying a number of birds this past week, which coincided nicely with our growing hobby of bird watching. We began bird-watching as part of the Adventures curriculum, and for me and the kids it has become a fun activity to enjoy together. (My husband is bemused by all the attention we give our regular feathered visitors as well as by all the feeders that are now up in our yard!) Recently, we put up a platform feeder to try to attract both the blue jays (which we pictured in the last post, clutching precariously to the side of the house feeder we had put up) and cardinals, who we often see in the yard but never see eating. It took about a week for the birds to get used to it but now we do see both those species of birds coming regularly to eat on the platform; they are both too large for our other feeders so we are learning that it takes different feeders and food to attract different species. We haven't yet been able to take a photo of either bird on the platform, though, so we'll just have to keep waiting for that right moment!

• Harry completed his final spelling test from Rod & Staff's Spelling By Sound and Structure, scoring 98% so we were both pleased. I felt this year the words in the book were not all that challenging, but in an attempt to ease into spelling I used the curriculum anyway and I think it just helped to boost his confidence in spelling. I've also learned that Harry likes getting grades and I think it helps give him a sense of accomplishment when he scores well, although my first inclination was not to push grades so much this year. But hopefully we're finding the right balance of using grades as guideposts to help us see what we need to learn and not as the basis by which he receives affirmation based on performance.

• Speaking of spelling, I'm totally befuddled as to what to do for spelling next year...I think that because Harry was largely a self-taught reader, his spelling is actually not strong in general. We'll probably do some remedial phonics work this summer and hopefully I'll pick a good curriculum for him...Spelling Power? All About Spelling? Spell to Read and Write? Arghhhh!! So many choices! I need to start praying for wisdom as we speak!

• Mathwise, I've discovered that having the Singapore Extra Practice books is really helpful, especially now that we're getting into addition and subtraction of three-digit numbers with renaming. We'll definitely continue doing math over the summer, albeit at a slower pace. I think a 2 1/2 month break would completely be detrimental to our progress this year!

• For history, we've been studying pioneers on the plains, and some of the suggested reading have come from the American Girls series of chapter books. I didn't think Harry would actually get into these books, but he LOVES them. He had enjoyed the three Little House books we read this year so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, and there doesn't seem to be anything comparable book series for boys....so Kirsten and Josefina it is for now! (I probably won't let Jason know that there is the huge American Girls store in downtown Chicago. It might make his dad a little nervous if Harry wants to go visit!)

• As for brother Ron, he has been faithfully working through three main areas at home: reading (he's a little more than halfway through Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading), writing (I just use an off-the-rack handwriting book from the local learning store), and math (he has recently finished Singapore Earlybird A). He joins in with Harry when we do geography (he really enjoys coloring the U.S. state sheets that come with Adventures and learning their location) and science. But mostly he likes to run around and play with his big brother. He has unequivocally stated his preference not to go to kindergarten at the local public school. So, I'm trying to figure out whether to get him his own kindergarten program or do something more informal. Decisions, decisions!

• And although this doesn't have too much to do with school, the boys and I made what we called our "Fruit of the Spirit Pizza" for fun this week...I saw a recipe in an old Family Fun magazine that looked appealing, so tried it out with them. The dough ended up being a little thicker than I would have liked, but overall it tasted good and was a fun activity. Plus, it gave us a good chance to review the fruits of the Spirit, which is always a good thing!

• Harry and Ron's last homeschool co-op meeting for the semester was last Friday, where they enjoyed parents vs. kids dodgeball, learned a few more karate kicks, and made some lovely gifts for me for Mother's Day! I'm so grateful we have a wonderful co-op so close by where the kids can do things that I just cannot handle here at home. It's been a true blessing!

Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful moms out there! Thanks for stopping by.

Light Week, 48 Hours Away, Week 29!

Last week was one of our scheduled "light weeks" which coordinated perfectly with my trip away for two days to the biennial Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing, a conference I've wanted to attend for YEARS. My gracious hubby took a day off work and took care of the boys while I scurried away to Grand Rapids, MI for my getaway, and it was a fabulous time. I didn't think about homeschooling once while I was away! And I think that was actually a good thing. We all need breaks once in a while!

But this week, it was back to the normal swing of things, even though I do have to admit it was like pulling teeth to get our plans together. I was so tired by Sunday evening that I was falling asleep just trying to do lesson plans! But, somehow, by the grace of God no doubt, we made it through the week. Highlights include...

• Ron (DS, 5) continues to truck through Singapore Earlybird Math A. Sometimes the lessons are geared more for a full class, so it takes some adapting, but Sean still managed to have great fun with the section on capacity. Anytime "free play with water" can count as a school activity, kids are bound to have fun!

• Harry started using My First Magnet Kit as suggested by our My Father's World curriculum as an optional science activity, and I'm glad we've done it. He's really enjoying the short little activities to show magnets in action. Ron joins in when he can, and both particularly loved seeing the two magnets of the same pole repelling one another. "Oh, magic!" they said. "No, magnets!" I would have to correct. That didn't stop them from pulling out their makeshift wands and pretending to be the cause of the top magnet floating seemingly in thin air.

(making a homemade compass, above)

• This week our Bible theme was "Jesus the Good Shepherd", and we're reading Mountain Born by Elizabeth Yates, which is a lovely story of a shepherding family and just another example of the ways in which MFW ties together various aspects of the curriculum to reinforce each other. I wouldn't say this has been our kids' favorite read-aloud this year--they prefer something a little more action-packed, such as Stone Fox which we read together for fun recently--but I think it's great for them to hear a mix of different writers' voices and styles. Hopefully one day, 20 years down the road or so, they'll agree! =)

• We continued through our tour of the U.S. by covering Nevada, Kansas, West Virginia and Nebraska. As we discovered that the first Pizza Hut location was opened in Wichita, Kansas back in 1958, it only seemed fitting that we should order pizza that night to commemorate it--and so we did!

• Harry is choosing to write more and more of his assignments in cursive, without my even asking, so that's a good sign that he is becoming more comfortable with it. No arguments here!

• We were blessed with yet another beautiful spring week so we had to enjoy it! We ate lunch outside on Wednesday, then the younger brothers had fun playing while Harry was doing an online class on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I always listen in on the class and am so happy that Harry gets a chance in this virtual way to participate in a class discussion. He never hesitates to raise his hand and even though he is the youngest in the class, he makes good contributions to the discussion. How could we homeschool without the Internet???

We are really coming down to the home stretch here for our school year, which seems just insane--the year has gone by so fast! We have five more weeks left in our MFW/Adventures curriculum, with a week break for a trip to California to visit my folks, which means we'll officially be done the first week of June. Just in time for the annual Illinois Christian Home Educators' conference which takes place ten minutes away. Another blessing! Thanks for visiting. =)

Ron's birthday, Easter, and oh yes, Week 28!

The weeks are flying by here, and I can't believe we are heading into the final stretch with our first year of homeschooling. I was tempted to take it easy on Monday, as we had had a very full weekend between Easter and Ron's 5th birthday, but I pushed forward and we did manage to get a good week of school in, despite my feeling utterly exhausted on Monday morning!

Speaking of the weekend, although it doesn't really have anything to do with school, I thought I should include some photos. We had to be at church early on Sunday and as a result, we just didn't have time to take any photos of our dapper boys! (Well, dapper for about ten minutes until they began to run around and be boys!) One of our church friends caught them enjoying the Easter Egg Hunt after church, and these are the only photos that show any evidence that we did try to dress up for Easter!

And here's birthday boy Ron, enjoying his moment of being the center of attention:

As for school, we were scheduled for week 28 in our My Father's World curriculum. In honesty, I feel like the curriculum has slowed down somewhat; the creative activities that were present in the first half are not as prevalent now, so I don't feel like I have as many picture-worthy opportunities. I also wonder if I need to be taking more initiative to come up with creative ways to reinforce what we're learning, but I don't know that I have the energy or time to do so. The challenge with homeschooling is that there is no end to the research and preparation you can do, and I do feel at this point in the year that I'm basically just doing what needs to be done to get by on a daily basis. Are the kids still learning? They are, but I do feel like I could do more to help those lessons sink in a little more. (I have to say on a side note how much I love the Ordinary Parents' Guide to Reading. I wasn't sure how it was going to work at first--it looked so boring and scripted--but this program has done wonders for Ron and has truly opened the door for him to read. Short lessons, a straightforward phonetic approach--I've learned as much as he has this year!)

The other challenge for us is time. Despite the fact that I don't feel like we have as many activities to do as before, at the same time it feels like we are so crunched for time now to get everything done! (Now I'm wondering if this was the great wisdom of the Hazells, the creators of the My Father's World curriculum, to start slowing things down by this point in the year because everyone is feeling crunched for time as the year goes by?) Our schedule now looks something like this every day:

8:00-8:30 a.m. Breakfast
8:30-9:30 a.m. Piano time for Harry, violin time for Ron (then somewhere in here Harry usually takes......ahem.....a bathroom break that seems to last forever!)
10-11:15 a.m. Harry's independent work (changes every day, but includes some combination of spelling, handwriting, math, history or science reading, and either Latin or Chinese; I help Ron with his math, reading, and writing during this time)
11:15-11:45 a.m. Bible and other activities (i.e., science or history) with Ron
11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Break/Lunch then naptime for Dobby and sometimes Ron
1 p.m.-1:45 p.m. Quiet reading time
1:45-2:15 p.m. Math
2:15 p.m-3 p.m. Finish anything that has to be done

I always like for us to be done by 3 p.m. at the latest, because it just feels like to go any longer would be too long for everyone. We could probably start earlier in the morning, except for the fact that I am not a morning person by any means; we could also probably tighten up our lunch break, but it just always seems to take that long! I wonder what our school days will be like as the boys get older??? (Assuming we manage to last that long!) And how will it become more complicated when Dobby starts getting involved? I cannot even imagine yet! But we'll just meet that challenge when it comes!

Otherwise, we did a fun activity with gravity yesterday, in which I really tried to hammer home the idea that objects fall at the same speed regardless of their weight. We took two empty bottles and filled one with plastic counters, weighing them to prove that the one with counters was definitely heavier. Then we held both bottles at the same height, let go at the same time, and watched the result. The boys got a kick out of dropping the bottles, so much so I'm not sure they even cared so much about how they landed!


Last week, one of our friends from church gave us a very unique ant farm, filled with a special gel that has all the nutrients and water that ants need. Over time you are able to see the tunnels they create through this gel, which should be fascinating! This week the big harvester ants to use with the farm arrived. We set it up and have been taking photos of the ants' progress every day. Here are some photos; the first one of the ant farm is how it looked on Day 1, and the second photo of the farm is how it looked 24 hours later. The ants have been busy!


And in other animal-related news, this week we were able to capture on film the blue jay who's been visiting our feeder with whole peanuts! This took numerous attempts and conquering the challenge of being at the window at just the right moment. Here he is!


To end our week we took advantage of IHOP's "kids eat free" April promotion, and while we waited for the food we talked more about gravity and as we took turns dropping Mighty Bites on the table. Homeschooling doesn't just happen at home! =)

Week 27: Spring is here!

This was one of those weeks in which the weather was truly the star. Spring does not always last long here in Chicagoland, or it can be suddenly replaced by unexpected winter weather (as happened last Saturday--snow appeared after several days in the 60s!) so we tried to take advantage of it when we could! We spent tons of time outdoors, even eating meals outdoors, and just soaked in so much sunlight. I have read that due to parents' worries about exposure to UV light, kids are actually becoming deficient in Vitamin D and developing rickets in some cases. Well, at least for this week, we didn't have that problem!

Schoolwise, some of our highlights were...

• Harry participated in an online class about Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Homeschoolers from all over the country sign on and participate in a group discussion, facilitated by a teacher, and this was Harry's second time doing so. He is the youngest in the group but hasn't hesitated to "raise his hand" and make comments, which is great to see. I was always the kid in class who never wanted to raise my hand, and so I have tried to encourage our kids never to be afraid to participate. The result has been almost the opposite problem, that my kids will be the ones to raise their hands even if they don't know the answer! So we're still working on learning when to raise hands...but at least they're not afraid to speak up!

• In science, we focused on solids, liquids and gases, and did a little experiment to determine what happens to substances when they are put in the freezer. Both boys were surprised to see how little oil changed after a few hours in the freezer and how milk and juice became something entirely different!

• In the hopes that we find our digital camera soon, I won't go into great detail about this here, but we found out that whole peanuts are the way to lure blue jays into our backyard and we saw more of them this week than we had all year. The boys were thrilled by this large, colorful, and noisy bird, even if our smaller feathered friends flee at the first (loud!) sound of the blue jay. Hope to be able to capture them in a photo soon!

• Speaking of birds, we are still enjoying watching the live feed of Molly the Barn Owl. It's been amazing to watch her transform from nesting owl to mother owl, with now four out of her five owlets out of the shells. The boys have been amazed at how carnivorous owls are and how they swallow their prey, fur, bones and all! I think the educational value has been unbelievable. You'd never get to see this in a zoo, the kind of live biology lesson we've been experiencing over the past couple of weeks. The owlets will be in the nest for a couple more weeks yet before Molly teaches her owlets to hunt and they leave the nest to make their own way into the world. Here is a photo with at least a couple of her owlets visible:

• This Sunday, in addition to celebrating Easter, we will also celebrate Ron's 5th birthday! He is adamant that he wants to do school at home instead of going to kindergarten in the local school. So, this coming fall should be interesting, if I continue to use My Father's World's Exploring Countries and Cultures and also a separate kindergarten curriculum. It's already feels tough to fit everything in as is, so looking ahead, the coming fall will be quite the challenge! I marvel at veteran homeschoolers who manage way more kids than I do in their homeschool. Right now, I mostly hope that I'm not completely messing up my children's educational future. Thankfully, I know God is bigger than any of my mistakes. =)

Thanks for visiting, and have a happy Easter!