BIBLE
Our morning Bible time is working well, now that we've moved our devotion to dinnertime. We practice reciting our memory verses and character traits and then read some related Bible passages. I'm finding that it's better to do just a little bit everyday, rather than skip it completely because time is too short to finish everything.
The one thing I would like to include, though, is prayer at the end. As we wrap up Bible and breakfast together, everything has been a little chaotic, and we (I) frequently let myself get carried to the next thing without stopping to pray.
We are all still enjoying our evening devotion time using Long Story Short. The short passages and simple but thoughtful questions have really stirred some great discussions around the dinner table.
HISTORY
Bearclaw's class covered India, Afghanistan and Africa in the late 19th century over the last two weeks. The section on Africa focused on David Livingstone's work, about which I was fairly ignorant (save all but the Stanley quote).
Shortbread began his study of ancient Egypt with looking at the significance of the Nile river to that culture. I'm sure he's having a bit a deja vu , as I know he remembers quite a bit from when Bearclaw studied the ancient period.
LITERATURE
While Bearclaw finds Abraham Lincoln an interesting study, he is not thrilled with reading a biography. He's slightly more excited about this one than the Paul Revere biography that they read last year, but he's still rather read historical fiction or fantasy.
Shortbread is enjoying The Real Story of Creation, which accompanies the first weeks of digging into the ancient time period in history. The illustrations are lovely, and it covers the creation story from Genesis in a way that could work with almost any Christian viewpoint.
LANGUAGE ARTS
If review is helpful in grammar, then Bearclaw should be gaining a lot right now, since his class has been in review mode for all of these first weeks.
Spelling presents the opposite situation, since the class has skipped from Spelling Workout C to Spelling Workout E. It's been challenging!
Shortbread has also been reviewing, using Saxon Phonics. So far, it's not my favorite, but then, I didn't do a great job of giving Bearclaw a solid foundation in phonics, so I'll wait and see.
MATH
More of the same: review. But next week, Bearclaw starts measurement (length, weight, etc).
SCIENCE
We're continuing to use The Handbook of Nature Study blog (by Barb) for our nature study. Last week, we took a trip to a local park for some hiking/walking and found some items of interest to log as the first entries in our nature journals.
I was pleased with both boys willingness to take a break from their digging, wandering, wading, etc. to focus on sketching. Bradley focused on acorns (which he needs find "further evidence" about). Shortbread zeroed in on the Common Pawpaw tree, which has huge leaves and looks as if it belongs in a prehistoric tropical forest somewhere.
I'm so far behind on Wrap-ups (crud, it's only September), that I can't even link to the other Wrap-Ups.
Category: Bible , History , Language arts , Literature , Math , Nature Study , Science , Weekly Wrap-up
Yeah! We all lived through our first week of school. There were a few scrapes, bumps and bruises, but nothing permanent.
The boys had a great first day at their one-day-a-week program (the dog didn't go):
As for the school work - it went something like this:
BIBLE:
We finally have a plan that I hope will work. We will continue to memorize the verses that our hybrid program sends home, as well as study the Christian character trait they assign each month, but we're moving our daily devotion/study to dinner time. Dh has agreed to lead; he's doing a fabulous job (he's much funnier than I am). We're using a new book called Long Story Short, and it goes through the Old Testament in very short, manageable pieces, while showing how each weekly topic points to Jesus. I was skeptical of it's claim that it only takes 10 minutes a day, but it's true. All of us are loving it!
HISTORY:
The year I've dreaded has arrived: the boys are studying completely different time periods for history. It IS more work for me, as I predicted, but it's also proving to be easier in some respects, because the discussions are a little smoother one-on-one. I guess it's like many things, and much of the outcome will depend upon my attitude.
4th grade - Bearclaw is starting the "modern" time period, from 1850 to the present. This week we looked at the huge British Empire during Queen Victoria's reign and also discussed the increasing tension over slavery in the U.S.
I began reading Courage to Run as a family read-aloud, which is based on Harriet Tubman's early years. We also listened to the beginning of Oliver Twist on audio, read by Dick Cavet. Unfortunately, he read so fast, even I had trouble following it, so we never finished it. We'll try again in a few years.
Finally, we discussed the work of George Mueller in England on behalf of poor orphans. We listened to and audio recording about him from Your Story Hour, which the children enjoyed.
1st grade - This is Shortbread's first year of narrating for history. In the past, he has followed along with our history using coloring pages, maps, and projects, but now he has his own history narration book and he'll be doing the same things he saw his brother doing over the last few years.
LITERATURE:
Bearclaw is reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln. He made the classic "milk carton log cabin" by attaching pretzels to a sawed-off half-n-half container (no school cafeteria to provide the 8-ounce milk carton) with royal icing:
1st grade -
Shortbread's first literature book is The Real Story of Creation. I do most of the reading to him, and then he narrates to me and works on the literature assignments.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
4th grade - Bearclaw is feeling pretty comfortable with language arts this year, as his spelling, vocabulary, grammar and writing curricula haven't changed since last year. He's humming right along with much less dawdling. Halleluhia!
1st grade - Shortbread has not yet started spelling, but for handwriting and phonics, his class is using Saxon Phonics. The jury is still out, I guess, but the work seems rather dry to me. Conversely, I'm a big fan of the grammar curriculum, First Language Lessons. Bearclaw and I used this in first grade, and we both enjoyed most of the lessons.
MATH:
4th grade -
Yeah! Bearclaw has moved on to Primary Mathematics 3B, which is from Singapore Math. So far, so good. Of course, it 's mostly review now. He did manage to figure out one of their methods for mental calculation that I just couldn't get. You know, old dog and all.
1st grade -
Shortbread is zipping along in Primary Mathematics 1A. He is definitely a math guy.
SCIENCE:
With Bearclaw in 4th grade and Shortbread in 1st, I'm beginning to see this year as the last year I'll have "young" children. Because of this neurosis, I have decided to chuck formal, classical science and cling to what's left of their childhoods with nature study.
We're using the "Handbook of Nature Study" blog, by Barb, who is also the Harmony Arts gal, I found out. We purchase her "getting started" packet, with the first 10 lessons and some sketch
pages. I'll try to post pics of our adventures.
Here's our first nature "walk" with some local friends:
It evolved into a sand/dirt castle building session, but we did see a black rat snake slither down the opposite bank of this creek, and then two frogs jumped into the water from the area where the snake was. Later, another snake swam down the creek a little ways from us.
We fear slightly that the next trek might be a bit of a let down. At least for them.
That's it for this week one! Only 35 left...
This post marks the kick-off of our first full homeschool week. I've been wildly preparing over the last month, and I think we're kinda, sorta prepared. Did I finish all the tasks I laid out accomplish last month? Well, no...but the filing has already waited 3 or 4 years, so what's one more?
We always gain energy from fresh starts, so I revamped the kids' schedules, my schedule, our curriculum, the school room, and, hey, even the menu. I stayed away from the dog's schedule. He only has three activities anyway.
Schedules:
You can take a look at our new schedules here.
Don't be dismayed that every 30 minutes of our lives seem to be planned out. We don't really live that way, but it does help keep the kids from lying around complaining of boredom or asking for screen time. Put a schedule in front of them that appears to lack adequate free time, and suddenly they're riding bikes in the driveway, running through the woods behind the house, or picking up a book that isn't assigned reading. They are bound and determined to squeeze in as many unstructured minutes into their structure as they can.
Aside from having so many planned "activities" (is having tea an activity for kids?), our schedules contain a lot of detail this year in terms of what subjects we work on when. I did this to avoid the end-of-the-week discovery that we'd forgotten 2 or 3 assignments that week. Unfortunately, we haven't become accustomed to the schedule, so we're still forgetting things. Sigh.
I used a free five-day schedule Excel template from PEAH's (Parents Educating at Home) website to create our schedules. It's completely editable, I've used it ffor several years in different ways.
School room:
When we decided to homeschool, I thought we'd just work at the kitchen table, on the sofa, on the floor - wherever. My mom asked me if I didn't need a dedicated room for schooling. I thought she was just stuck in her "school" mindset. Until I started reading and checking. Turned out most folks had some sort of "school room".
Now, of course, I realize that most of us (me) need a school room to keep the school stuff in. School work is fine for the kitchen table, but school books/supplies/projects/etc. are not. Especially during dinner. We spill.
I do enjoy having a school room, and I found a ton of fantastic ideas on various blogs that inspired me. Over the past 4 years, the converted bedroom has gone through a few reorganizations, but I think we're set for this year:
When I'm working with the one or both boys, we generally sit at the table in the middle of the room (which is getting a bit cramped for my big guy). During their independent work, I really "encourage" them to go somewhere else (upstairs, kitchen, neighbor's house), so that I can work with the other child uninterrupted.
Needless to say, their work areas in the school room don't see much action, but they are great places to keep more stuff and hang schedules!:
So with all of the planning and preparation out of the way, we started school! How did it go? Read my weekly wrap-up to find out...
This is the first time I've logged onto blogger in over 3 months. When I know I'm behind on something, I tend to avoid it, which is not very helpful in terms of getting un-behind.
When I last posted, I was already doing a poor job of posting timely wrap-ups, but since my main goal in maintaining this blog was to log our homeschooling progress, I wanted to keep going...and then May hit.
I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but I've pretty much forgotten everything from the last six weeks of school about which I intended to post an update. Still, in order to avoid huge loose ends flapping wildly in the wind, I will provide a brief synopsis of (what I can remember from) those last weeks of school. :
BIBLE:
In May we focused on encouragement. Sort of. Looking back, something tells me I was probably less than really focused on it, since I'm sure I spent most of May rushing us from one event to another. I tend to "encouarage" cooperation in those times with the volume of my voice. See who needs a morning Bible revamp?
HISTORY
We finished up SOTW Volume 3, minus a few chapters. We covered such topics Mexico and the movement west in America, which includes discussions of the Alamo, the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush. Bearclaw enjoyed the novel, Moccasin Trail, which he finished just recently. As a family, we read The Boy in the Alamo, which we would all recommend, especially for boys. Perhaps the title makes that obvious.
LITERATURE
Bearclaw finished reading Seaman's Journal: On the Trail with Lewis and Clark as well as completing his final project for the book. The project entailed constructing a fictional dialogue between an interviewer and both Lewis and Clark. It made for a fun and relatively easy assignment, since the students were permitted to dictate their imagined dialogue to an adult, who would then type it. Any guesses as to who did most of the work on this one?
Shortbread and I really slacked off with our reading in May, which makes me sad, because it makes for such wonderful memories. I hope the busier first-grade schedule won't exclude time for reading aloud non-curriculum related books.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw finished up his final essay. He wrote a persuasive essay about reading as "the best pasttime". I was certainly persuaded.
Shortbread covered the rest of the "Letterbooks" for Kindergarten. I think I'm even happier than he is about that.
MATH
We did not finish Primary Mathematics 3A by the end of the year. (In fact, as of today, we're only about 3/4ths of the way through.) The remainder of the book covers those multiplication facts we have yet to learn.
Shortbread is almost finished with his kindergarten math book...time to order Primary Mathematics 1A
SCIENCE
We finished our science curriculum around week 27, so we're done with "official" science until fall. Of course, we're always involved with random nature study.
So that's it. No photos. No link to other Wrap-ups. Just a few final notes to tie up those ends before we move on.
Category: Bible , History , Language arts , Literature , Math , Science , Weekly Wrap-up
BIBLE:
We still focusing on forgiveness, and also reading from our Jesus Storybook Bible. In the evenings, we read Amon's Adventure, which ties in with Lent, Holy Week and Easter.
HISTORY
We've conitnue our study of the U.S. in the early 19th century with a look at our country's interactions with Native Americans in this period. This includes the study of Tecumseh and the tragic "Trail of Tears". Since we are in Georgia, the study of the Cherokee and their removal is all the more interesting for us. In a couple of weeks, we'll travel to the actual New Echota Historical Site for a field trip.
LITERATURE
Bearclaw is reading Seamon's Journal: On the Trail with Lewis and Clark for literature right now and enjoying it.
Shortbread studied the letter "J" this past week; we read Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? and If Jesus Came to My House. (Which you should try to find in the original 1956 version, if you can, because of the wonderful sweet and simple illustrations.)
LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class continues to work on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper. He's writing a persuasive paper about "why reading is the best pastime". This week, we have to edit his rough draft, but we have two weeks to complete that, so we probably won't look at it for awhile.
I'm so very ready to move on from what the hybrid school is doing for kindergarten with Shortbread. They had us purchase Explode the Code, but we've hardly used it, so I think I'll start working on that with him this summer.
MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still focusing on reviewing addition and subtraction. Next week we pick up where we left off on the multiplication tables.
Shortbread is also working on addition and subtraction. At least I can handle both boys' math lessons for now.
SCIENCE
Since our chemistry lessons wrapped-up last week, we took a field-trip this week to a farm. We saw milking and egg collecting and got to pet some of the young animals.
Here are the boys this year (at 9 and 6 years-old) and below at the same farm three years ago (at 6 and 3). Why did I look at this!?
You all can go check out some more Weekly Wrap-Ups. I'm going to get my tissues.
Category: Bible , History , Language arts , Literature , Math , Science , Weekly Wrap-up
BIBLE:
We started a new "Christian character trait" for April - Forgiveness. While focusing on Scripture related to forgiveness, we've also been reading The Jesus Storybook Bible. I've been struggling with offering something more structured for awhile, but for now, this will suffice. Bible is one area where something is always much better than nothing.
HISTORY
We've kicked-off our study of westward expansion in the U.S with a unit on Lewis and Clark. This is where my own history studies must have gone from poor to nonexistent. My misconceptions about Lewis and Clark are too embarrassing to mention here, but lets just say that the work "Louisiana" in "Louisiana purchase" led my images of their expedition astray. There are so many great options for reading and listening on this topic that we couldn't begin to cover them all.
Since the events took place during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, we read A Picture Book of Thomas Jefferson. How We Crossed the West was a fun summary of the Lewis and Clark journey with lots of interesting details and fun, cartoon-like illustrations. Although we haven't gotten to them yet, we plan to pick up Bold Journey and The Cabin Faced West for family read-alouds as we continue to look at the movement west.
During lunchtime, we've enjoyed listening to Jim Weiss's "Gone West" CD and "Sacagewea: Her Story" by Your Story Hour. I'd love to see the Ken Burns documentary, as well, but it might be a little slow for the kids. Maybe hubby and I will rent it ourselves...
LITERATURE
Bearclaw has a break from literature right now, but he is slowly reading his way through Stowaway, based on my "suggestion". He's also enjoying the second set of books from the Sugarcreek Gang series.
Shortbread studied the letter "Q" this past week, and I never really found a great picture book to go along with it. I think he was happy to just pick his own favorites!
LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class continues to work on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper, and this week he had to finish his rough draft. Let's just say that "rough" fits for the process as well as the end result.
I've really fallen off with Shortbread's kindergarten work. We're just doing enough to get by and turn in what's due for his class. I'm bored and so is he, so I need to find something a little more challenging for summer.
MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still focusing on reviewing addition and subtraction, which has provided some much-needed practice for Bearclaw. I think some of his skills had gotten a little rusty, but he's humming along now.
Shortbread and I had a knock-down, drag-out, teary, screamy math lesson this week. It all started when I pulled out the unit cubes and used them to count out subtraction problems. He protested that that was what babies do and he would have none of it. So much for "hands on"; I guess he's been watching big brother focus on written math for awhile and associates that with more difficult math. We'll be going ahead to first grade math this summer.
SCIENCE
We wrapped up our Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry book this week by making bread. Our experiment involved a comparison of dough allowed to rise in a warm place and dough put in the refrigerator to rise. Although there was a marked difference between the two loaves, both were deemed edible and then fully consumed.
That's all for this week, and I'm so late publishing, I missed the Weekly Wrap-Up link. Oh well...
