Week 4: A Trip to the Moon and More!

I'm going to try to actually post two straight weeks in a row! Let's see how it goes. I can't believe we are already at the end of week 4. For some reason, the school year is flying by this year. Last year we scheduled "light weeks" every four weeks or so, and I was feeling like I really needed it after our first four weeks. This year, I think I can just keep going a couple more! (Let's see how long this feeling lasts!)

This week's highlights...

We're focusing on North America right now in our study of world geography, with U.S. being the current topic. Harry and Ron studied hard all week to review their fifty states of the U.S.; we'd done this last year as part of Adventures in My Father's World, but this week it was time to pull the map out again and see if they could do all 50. And by the end of the week, they could!

Harry also wrote a lovely "thank you" letter to God in his handwriting book...

And Ron, who has also been learning cursive (at his request! He just wants to do everything Harry does!), produced some lovely letter Ls...

Dobby loves to "do work" when he sees the big boys doing school. So he will either pull out his Grasshopper Kit or one of his many write-and-wipe books (used to be Ron's but they have now all been passed down!)...

...or he'll have fun with Play-Dough or other activities that are right for a 3-year-old!

This week, Ron's kindergarten curriculum focused on the moon, so we did a number of activities related to the topic. We talked about how just as the moon reflects the sun's light, so too do we reflect the light of Jesus in our lives when we follow and obey him. Ron also learned that you can fit 50 moons in one planet Earth! But neither the earth nor the moon can outsize the sun! (Illustrated here with the green exercise ball as the sun, the small rubber ball as earth, and the tiny Play-Dough ball you can barely see as the moon!) Not quite to scale, but I think he understood the point!

To celebrate our study of the moon, we built a spaceship and went on a trip! (It's amazing how kids' imaginations can be sparked with just a blanket over a couch and chairs!) Both Harry and Dobby wanted to join in on the journey. I asked what they would need to take with them, and they all promptly went to get 1) their stuffed animals and 2) plastic food.

Ready for takeoff!

Moon, here we come!

I feel as though sometimes I just highlight all the good times here on the blog and say nothing of the challenging days. Well, let's try to balance that out. Wednesday was one of our challenging days. I felt like "mean mom" for a good portion of the day, being impatient and frustrated much more than I know I should have been with the boys. It was a long day, one when my husband wasn't home until well past their bedtime, so those are the days when I wonder if homeschooling is a good choice, that a schoolteacher would likely have been much kinder and nicer to my kids than I was. It was certainly a day when I had to ask my kids for forgiveness for losing my patience with them--they definitely know I am far from perfect!

But then I happened to look outside around 8:15 p.m., and I saw the most beautiful full moon in the sky. Given that we were studying the moon this week with Ron's kindergarten curriculum, it seemed a God-given opportunity. I sent the two older boys outside to see the moon and take some photos while I put their little brother to bed. Something about being outdoors and seeing God's creation always seems to put my kids in a good mood, so they ended up with big smiles underneath a full moon in their pajamas.

(That white dot towards the top of the photo is the moon! It looked more striking in real life!)

So that's how God redeemed our long and often frustrating day, as though He was smiling down on us from above despite my imperfections and failings!

As for lingering questions, I'm still trying to figure out some curriculum issues. For example...should I switch Harry from Latina Christiana to Latin for Children? Should I go from First Language Lessons to Rod and Staff? How will I fit everything in to our afternoon time when we start up with Singapore Math again next week? Come back and visit to find out! =)

Weeks 2 and 3!

I'm so impressed by the faithful bloggers who post every week or more! I just haven't gotten into an every-week rhythm, although I'm working towards it. So here is my update from the past two weeks.

Geography: The kids will never forget the names of the seven continents now that they've sung the song that MFW-ECC taught them (think "Yankee Doodle" using these words: "North America, South America/Europe, Africa, Asia/Kangaroos live in Australia/And penguins in Antarctica.") Even Dobby sings along! They've also learned about latitude and longitude and did several map-related activities these past couple of weeks.

("Mom, I keep confusing latitude and longitude!!!")

Scavenger hunt on our block!

The crowning geography-related activity, however, was our "world cake." We were supposed to bake a round cake then attempt to create outlines of the continents and color in with frosting. I'm not quite sure anyone would identify our cake as being a map of the world, but it didn't last that long around the house anyway! We made one then I wanted to try again and see if we could improve it, and Harry had the idea of taking that second cake and giving it to a family who recently moved to our street. A great idea, and I love that one my kids came up with it!

This year has been tougher because although I try to include Ron on all Harry's geography and some science-related activities, he also has his own kindergarten curriculum to follow. I do his reading, writing and math separately, but use the MFW-K for Bible, science, and kindergarten-appropriate activities. Last week, he studied the seven days of creation, making his own "Creation Book" which he proudly displays here:


And he focused on the sun this week, which MFW ties together with the idea that "Jesus is the Light of the World." Although Ron doesn't need the phonics in MFW-K, I do love the character-building/biblically-focused theme studies which was the main draw for me to select it.


Occupying little brother Dobby also takes some effort. Thank goodness for Grasshopper Kits!


And he also likes to join in on the art projects!


We also received our live caterpillars and started watching their eventual transformation into painted lady butterflies!


The big boys also made some nice bookmarks with the name "Matthew" on it, which is Harry's Bible focus this year in his curriculum. (Here, Harry has attempted to write "Matthew" in Greek, the language that Matthew used to write his Gospel.)


In addition to these subjects, Harry does his usual math, handwriting, writing, grammar, and spelling. I've switched this year from Classical Writing Primer to Writing With Ease 2, trying to do more than one lesson a day to get through it quickly and move on to Writing With Ease 3. I realized this year that we hadn't been doing narration quite the right way, so Harry still needs practice with this skill. But WWE is a much more teacher-intensive program than CW Primer and so I'm finding I need much more alone time with Harry in the afternoon when the little guys are asleep.

My biggest struggles right now are how to fit everything in; how to manage Dobby who is at an age in which he can take a great deal of energy and needs more attention; and what to do about Harry's Latin curriculum. I'm not feeling great about Latina Christiana right now so I'm considering a switch. We'll see what happens next week!

I can't believe that three weeks have flown by! I remember last year after three weeks, I was ready for a break! But right now I still have the stamina to keep going before we take a break, which is a good thing because we're not scheduled for a break for a while! I have light weeks scheduled as we did last year, but fewer of them and more spread apart. We'll see how long we can last at this pace. Thanks for visiting our blog!

Our First Weekly Report of the 2010-2011 Year!

It's hard to believe that summer just came and went so fast! But here we are, finished with our first week of our second year of homeschooling. This year, we are continuing with My Father's World and using their Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum, which will give the kids a great foundation in world geography and hopefully a heart for missions as well, which is a strong emphasis in the MFW curriculum overall.

As we did last year, we started off the day with new school supplies--always a hit!--and the boys enjoyed personalizing their bins with stickers they each chose for the occasion. And this year, we added in "school photos" which I have seen many other homeschoolers do and which seemed an excellent idea. So here are our three students:

"Dobby", our 3 year old/preschooler



"Ron", our Kindergartener/5 year old



And "Harry," our 3rd grader/8 year old

(My attempt at making cute name tags with their grade levels didn't quite work!
Better luck next year!)

We started off the year by having the boys apply for "passports" to allow them to visit all the countries we'll be studying this year. Hanging up on the wall in the top row is a group of photos of children from around the world that I found on sale at Lakeshore Learning last year and that came in handy!

In the meantime, little brother Dobby was having fun discovering his new Grasshopper Kit. He seems to really love them so far!

Harry and Ron also created posters with images of people from around the world, to reflect the truth that God loves the entire world, and did an investigation of our backyard habitat as a way to enter into the subject of ecosystems, which we'll be studying in science this year.

We also dug up earthworms after a rainy morning for another science experiment, and Sean was brave enough to transfer them to the bowl we were using:

And below is the container where the worms will happily burrow and mix up the sand and the soil as they are designed to do!

So, as you can see, Ron joins in on science and geography as much as he can; I also spend some time with him in MFW-Kindergarten activities while Harry is doing his independent work. More next time on specific curriculum choices, but for now, suffice it to say that we are still finalizing some of our choices!

Nevertheless, the boys seemed to have a good week. Harry and Ron even gave me lovely drawings to thank me for a fun week of school. These kinds of mementos make it all worth it!

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.