Two For the Price of One

Well, it has been unbelievably busy here the last two weeks, so I didn't get wrapped up (at least here in the blogosphere) until now. It is really shaping up to be our best homeschooling year ever, despite my new job. I had a feeling it might be. I told Jeff back during the summer as I planned it all, that I was taking all the pressure off myself to look like school, and I predicted it mighy be our favorite year yet. And so far it has been! I think by mentally "letting myself off the hook" I am able to get much more done each week than we ever have. Everyone has completed every task in their core curriculum for 4 straight weeks. Hooray! Here are a few of my favorite moments:

Week of August 23rd

We have a hole scheduled in on Tuesdays to account for our coop classes which will begin in 2 weeks, so that allows us to work ahead or catch up if need be. We took the opportunity to celebrate a few things that happened on August 24th. Did you know that the waffle iron was patented on August 24th 1869? We celebrated by making waffles. It is also the day Mt Vesuvius erputed covering the city of Pompeii in 79AD. We watched online videos explaining how volcanoes erupt and looked at a few pics of Pompeii. This day made me remember why I began this journey in the first place.

I am finding that taking the time to mine the poems from A Child's Garden of Verses by R L Stevenson is yielding wondrous riches. We took the time to find a picture online for every place mentioned in the wonderful poem "Travels." What better way to learn about the Great Wall of China, the Nile River or minaretes? I must confess, until last week, I never knew what a palanquin was. Don't we feel sorry for poor Emily and Blake reading politically correct tripe out of their first grade readers in public school?

Making It Work

Week two here at the hacienda was all about figuring out how to make the schedule work when the pace of life gets in the way. I had to be out of town on Thursday for a meeting, and to my surprise the husband agreed to take the day off and "do the schedule." I honestly didn't expect him to be able to pull it off, but he did! I think it was good for him to see how much planning it takes to keep all the balls in the air.



Here are the highlights of the week:

1. Dad did it!

2. Grace figured out when to use her daily checklist and when to use the weekly reading schedule, and she almost has all the double addition facts learned.

3. Camille got faster on her new curriculum.

4. Ryan finally "got" some basic order of mathmatical operations and vastly improved his hand writing with a new hand position.

5. Joshua asked me to find out how two of our elderly friends were doing, so he would know what to pray for them. He asked my two days in a row until I did it.

6. Hearing my children sing the words to O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing My Great Reseemer's Praise.



Thank you Heavenly Father for the privilege of teaching my sweet children myself. How precious these days are! Your care for the smallest details of our lives is overwhelming. I love you!

Heather

First Week of School

the littles

the bigs

the crew

Don't we just look like homeschoolers?

No new outfits or back packs needed here!

We had a great first week of school. I must admit I was very apprehensive about how we were going to get everything done this year with my new job responsibilities, but God was faithful again. He smoothed out the bumps, sweetened our attitudes, and generally gave us all joyful hearts about getting back to school. We started out with our traditional go out the front door, get your pics taken by Mom and then knock on the side door and be welcomed into "school." The littles love it, and the 12 year old tolerates it.

One thing that I was counting on to simplify our days really delivered on it's promises. After week one, Switched On Schoolhouse, has been a lifesaver. Camille is doing the entire 4th grade curriculum, and although it took her awhile to get in the swing of things, she enjoyed it. I was available to troubleshoot "what does it want me to do?" questions and the grading took me about 5-7 minutes a day. YEA!!

Ryan is doing the Language Arts and History/Geography parts of the 8th grade curriculum. He is breezing through them, and we have supplemented his history readings with the American History suggestions from the 9th grade curriculum from amblesideonline. His online Biology course from Veritas Press has not started yet, but he and his father have begun the VideoText Algebra Module A without killing each other. :) He will plumb the depths of Dante's Inferno in the coming weeks as well. We found an excellent article at wikipedia.

Grace had a great week and was so excited to be a first grader. We are doing the Charlotte Mason 1st grade curriculum found again at amblesideonline.com. She has learned to count the minutes on the clock, even numbers and begun work on the doubles addition flash cards. Her poetry selections inspired wonderful discussions about how the Sun rises and sets and the water table at the seashore. We are doing a poem a day from A Child's Garden of Verses by R L Stevenson. We learned about the balen inside a whale's mouth thanks to Kipling's Just So Stories. She handled the big girl narrations from Fifty Famous Stories with no problems.

My baby is a Kindergartener! He was beyond excited about it all. He loves having books and folders and a real live schedule just like everyone else. He did nice work in phonics this week and was very proud that he read The Little Red Hen online all by himself. My baby is growing up, sniff.

We are also learning the Charles Wesley Hymn, O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing together in bible time. The Joni Erickson Tada Hymns For a Kid's Heart is a wonderful resource.

Here's to more adventures in learning next week!


Heavenly Father, You are so merciful! Thank you for the things You taught each of us this week. Help us not to waste them. Amen.

This Week at the Hacienda

Spring is bustin' out all over! And so are the littles. I could hardly keep them inside. Every time I turned my back I would find them sitting on the rock wall. Hiding in a bush, in the fort or woods. According to Charlotte Mason you are supposed to send them outside as much as possible at this age - so I did. They used LOTS of imagination and in general were happy to be alive. Now for a book work wrap up.

Grace can just about read anything and everything now. She reads every sign, label, etc. She even read a Little Bear story independently to Joshua on Thursday. We are working on counting money, and place values in up to 3 digit numbers. I made her some flash cards for the facts from one of her ABEKA worksheets. We began subtraction. She can count from 0 -100 by 2's. Grace continues to "make" things out of cups, boxes, paper, tape, etc on a daily basis. She created a surprise box for us all earlier in the week with special gifts for us to choose from. I got a really nicely colored camera and a note. She and Camille entered Veritas Press' coloring contest. I will try and post pics of their artwork later.

Camille's new Switched on Schoolhouse curriculum arrived and she spent every free moment this week doing it. This may change our lives. I ordered this Language Arts curriculum as a trial balloon for next fall. If we continue to like it, we are going to be very switched on next fall. She also picked up Pilgrim's Progress to read for fun and enjoyed comparing the ABEKA illustrations to Milton's. In math she learned about carrying and estimating.

Joshua and I switched from the "Blend Book" to ABEKA's Handbook for Reading. He felt very gown up. We stuck to short vowels for this week. He surprised me with his new found ability to "skip count." He can count the odd numers to 19. He says he learned it from his Batman game. He so wants to do everything Grace does. He is trying to do addition facts.

Ryan is still floundering due to his inability to keep up with things. Math is slow go when you lose the solution book! Proceeded with reading and written narrations as scheduled.

All in all we had a very good week. We just kind of went with the flow. Kept the schedule in our peripheral vision and kept our eyes open for opportuniities to learn nwe words and concepts. I LOVED it. Might be food for thought.

A few Fridays Behind

Skipped a few weeks here, but we have been working hard. Josh and Grace are making great strides in reading. Grace spent a precious morning reading her Beginner's Bible to Josh outside on our first warm spring like day. She feels so grown up reading it to him, and he is listening HARD. Josh has mastered the long vowels and is really trying to keep up with his 15 month older sister. Last week at the hair salon he ticked Grace off by reading a few words on bottles before she did. He is a really good guesser. She is actually following the phonics rules and it takes a moment longer to decipher rather than guess. Grace has moved up to Abeka 1st grade math and is taking it all in stride. Joshua is ready for the K5 book. I think I need to place an order! Grace has spent the entire week so far making animals out of plastic cups. It is a very involoved process using strips of paper that have been colored painstakingly. We have about 8 so far with more promised by the artist. She actually allowed Josh to color one strip!

Camille has increased in speed on her math speed drills. The addition and subtraction facts facts are finally sticking. She is able to do a few sets of multiplication facts as well. I am thinking of ordering a Switched on Schoolhouse math unit to see how she does and to see if we like that curriculum. I am leaning in the direction of a computer based program for Ryan for next year.

We took an afternoon trip to a nearby small town to check it out. It was our impromptu "adventure". We went to Slocomb, AL, locally famous for it's tomatoes and a country-style buffet restaurant. The kids enjoyed the local flavor of the restaurant but got the biggest kick out of walking around the town. We went in a few shops and drove around to see the sights. We learned about tin ceilings. They had not noticed one before.

Everyone but Camille skipped coop this week as we were waiting for a delivery man.

Goals for next week....

Josh - find a real book that he can read.
Grace - move into harder math concepts, drill basic facts.
Ryan - will have a math week to catch up on what he has been ignoring.
Camille - prove that she has her add/sub facts down so we can move on, spelling review, and produce an excellent writing sample.

Me- patient and submissive heart, lose 2 pounds, exercise 5 days.

Weekly Wrap Up - snow and angels

Well, it was our first week since the first of the year NOT to stick with our carefully laid out schedule. BUT we did have a couple of "first" experiences. We took school off on Monday to drive 2 hours to hear the angelic sounds of the American Boychoir. It was without a doubt the best concert I have seen in many years. I loved spending the day with just Camille and Ryan. It surprised me how much more relaxed I was with just 2 kids in tow than all 4. I think they noticed too. Ryan even auditioned for the group afterwards and did a GREAT job. Sweet and super competitive Camille just KNOWS they will call him any day now. She was completely in love with the cathedral style church we were in. She took lots of pics. It was the most fun I have had in quite awhile. It did make me wonder if I am doing right by my super artistic children. Ryan's comment after we were leaving was, "So Mom, basically Dothan is a cultural black hole, right?" Camille after finding out that her father and I had once been members of the beautiful church we were in could not imagine why we ever left. Camille still doesn't get that job=where you live.

Tuesday was coop day and the children insisted we go even though we did not arrive home until 11pm. Wednesday was Daddy's at home day and consisted of alot of music practice and some reading. We took Thursday off because I spent three hours at the dentist. Then on Friday it SNOWED ALOT. It rarely snows in south Alabama so the whole world shut down. No school, no work, so we enjoyed the bonus day as a family.

What did we learn this week? How beautiful choral music can sound when performed by fine musicians and that snow, however pretty, is wet and cold.

Not a great "do the schedule" week but we had 2 unforgettable experiences. I think that counts.

Friday Wrap Up

Okay here is an attempt to follow the example of other awesome homeschooling Moms and make myself accountable for the week. Here is brief is what we did.

Ryan 's writing continues to improve by leaps and bounds. He over shot the coop writing assignment and did a paragraph instead of an outline. He with his already super analytical mind sees no point in outlines. Handwriting is more uniform but not beautiful. He took apart an old intercom speaker which we had removed while redecorating the dining room and sucessfully attached it to his stereo. He is really enjoying his current event websites and his summaries are good.

Camille is attempting to shove all the addition facts into her brain so that we may move on to borrowing and carrying. She is having some success. Spelling test was a B this week. Handwriting is better since we added pretty notebooking pages to the mix. She created a "newspaper" about Jupiter. Camille needs more review on cursive writing. She will do first dictation next week.

Grace is reading Abeka 1st grade reader #4. We reviewed blends like squ, fp, fl - all the blue Abeka phonics cards. She can count by nickels, pennies and dimes. Began copywork on a R L Stevenson poem and did very well. She is memorizing A Swing. I am reading Stuart Little aloud to Grace and Josh.

Josh can read any 3 letter, short vowel soud word. We began to work on long vowels in earnest. Flash cards with long vowel marks over them worked well. Counted objects and selected correct numeral very well - up to 12 and 13. Wrote numbers very well. Loves Stuart Little.