Our School Journal-Entry 24
07 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Our School Journal Tags: journal
In my life this week…
We had a Bible conference at our church this week, and Dr. Jerry Vines was one of the speakers. At the end of the service, our son wanted to get his picture taken with him.
What a special memory for him!
In our homeschool this week…
Though all the lessons have gone well this week, and I’m really happy with what we have going right now, it has been a more difficult week in the school room. Because of the Bible Conference, we’ve had a lot of late nights. And the result has been a lot of whining and pouting from the little one and a lack of focus from my son. But we’ve pressed through this week, (a little more slowly and casually than normal) and finished for the better.
Filling shape mats with Teddy Bears
The little one has been reviewing the Letter E and her vowels this week. And in Kindergarten, my son has been learning some tough three letter blends: “scr,” “spl,” “squ,” etc. He’s done much better with them than I’d anticipated. We’re still spelling the sounds and words on the chalk board and on the felt board. He loves doing this and it gives him great practice.
Spelling "mash" on the chalk board
He also memorized the countries of West Africa to our fun geography songs. And we played “store” and “bank” with our coins.
My favorite moment…
The little one surprised us this week with a performance of the geography song of the countries of Southern Africa! My three year old has been walking around the house singing: “Malawi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Lesoto, and Swaziland: these are the countries of Southern Africa. Comoros, Seychelles, and Madagascar and Mauritius are islands to the east.“
Most of the time, she doesn’t act like she’s even listening to the songs during our school time. She rarely sings with us, and I’m okay with that. I rarely force her participation. She’s along for the ride, and I’ve figured she’ll pick up what she can along the way. I just had no idea how much that would be!
Upcoming attractions…
My mom is coming to visit this next week! I’m so excited. It’s been nearly a year and a half since we’ve seen her, and it will be the first time she’s seen our house, our church, our school room — and it will be the first time she’s seen me in person with a pregnant belly. So, we’ll be partying at my house this week!
Have a great weekend and thanks for taking a peak at our week.
Praying for Unreached Peoples
06 Oct 2011 2 Comments
in Crafts and Activities, Geography Tags: geography, missions, Nigeria, prayer cards, unreached people
Geo card and prayer cards for South Africa
One of my favorite aspects to our geography study is praying for the unreached people within the countries that we are studying.
In college, I had put together a country notebook of different places I wanted to pray for, and one aspect of my notebook was finding the population of a country, finding the percentage of Christians within that country, and doing the math to find out how many people that left within the country who were unsaved. For instance, if a country had a population of 1 million with 20% Christians, I’d multiply that 1 million by 80%. I’d let that number sink in, trying to comprehend how many people within that particular country were going to hell. It was extremely moving, especially when some of those numbers were too large to even figure on my calculator.
Sharing that burden with my children has been such a unique privilege, and seeing their tiny hearts grasp the need and be moved by that need brings the burden fresh within me. The shocked look on their innocent faces when we talked about our prayer card for the Duwai people of Nigeria, and I explained that these people had no Bible at all—it truly stirs my own heart.
And my son, touched with the needs of the people he is praying for, will say, “They need to come to our church” or “How can we tell them about God if we can’t drive our cars there?” My four year old son, not yet saved himself, is moved by the fact that there are people who have never heard about his God, moved to the point of wanting to do something.
Their daddy is planning a mission trip to Honduras. Last year, the trip was to an orphanage in Peru. And part of my goal for geography was to provide a context for the kids, to help them grasp what it was Daddy was trying to accomplish. Another goal was merely to give them a vision for how big their world was and a vision for reaching that world with the Good News. The result I didn’t expect—how their tender hearts would touch and convict my own.
How long has it been since I worried about how far my car could go?
Silly Sentence Copywork
05 Oct 2011 2 Comments
in Academics, Handwriting Tags: copywork, Handwriting, kindergarten, silly sentence
One of the things I have added to our schedule for the sake of variety is some silly sentence copywork.
- My First Sentence Building is one fun activity we have included about once a week. The different sentence parts are color-coded, so it is simple for my four year old to match the color-coded word or phrase to the multi-colored bar, creating his own silly sentences. “The rat hops.” “His dog swims.” “A cat naps.” Then, my son writes his silly creations on the wipesheet, and I inspect his copywork after I finish working with his sister.
- Another favorite are some silly sentence puzzles that my mom picked up for us. It basically works on the same concept as above, except that, instead of color-coded, the pieces are shaped to only fit together a certain way. “The pig ate peas in a hat.” “The fox made jam on a boat.” “The frog drove a tractor on a cake.” Then, my son writes his silliness on either a wipeboard or some tablet paper for me to inspect later.
He has worked very well on his own with this activity, though he has a very hard time doing it silently. After all, it’s just too funny to keep it all to himself.
Roughing a First Draft
04 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Academics, Writing Tags: Growing Your Homeschool, writing
I’m continuing my series on teaching writing over at Growing Your Homeschool. Come join me!
An important part of making writing fun is getting rid of the dread, making the activity unexpected and engaging and opening a world of expression for your child. We’ve discussed a great deal about brainstorming, and now it’s time to head into the first draft.
Next Stop, Nigeria! (day 1 & 2)
03 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in Crafts and Activities, Geography Tags: geography, Nigeria, Usborne
We officially wrote our “exit date” on our passports for South Africa, concluding our 2 week tour, and began our new study of Nigeria this week.
Day 1, we reviewed our continents/oceans song and our Southern Africa song before beginning our new song on the countries of West Africa.
“Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia,
Guinea-Bassau, Guinea, Sierra-Leone, Liberia,
Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso. Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria,
and the islands of Cape Verde.
Hundreds of different ethnic groups are living in West Africa.”
(from Geography Songs)
Next, we officially stamped our passports with the flag sticker of Nigeria.
On Day 2, we had a blast learning to use our atlas and discovering the new geography terms for Nigeria. Our Essential Atlas of the World has a topographical map and key that we learned to use, and then we turned to our book Geography A to Z to find the definition for the topography terms that were used in our atlas. “Savannah,” “plateau,” “gulf,” and “cape” were the terms for this week (cape and plateau are review). I was thrilled to see my books working so well together.
(Sometimes, it’s a little scary to piece together your own curriculum because you don’t know how well everything will fit together. I feel greatly relieved!)
After reading our terms, I took the kids back to the atlas and had them find all of the capes along the coastline of western Africa. It was thrilling to see that even the little one was very quick to find them all, including ones that her brother didn’t find. Both of them had a lot of fun, and it was a terrific lesson in maps and atlases.
Next up, some notebooking pages on the country and the flag of Nigeria, as well as some fun fables from the land.
Our School Journal-Entry 23
30 Sep 2011 7 Comments
in Our School Journal Tags: journal
In my life this week…
I’ll be 16 weeks pregnant on Tuesday, nearly 4 months along in this 9 month journey. And let me just tell you, all I ever think about is food (and Zantac, for the heartburn after the food). It’s so funny to me how, in the first three months or so, the thought of food is extremely repulsive and in the next 6+ months, I’m eating constantly (even in my dreams). Nothing too bizarre really, just Mexican food, chips, and ice cream.
Though with fall in the air, I’m beginning to have pumpkin bread cravings. But I have those even when I’m not pregnant.
I do miss my coffee, though (and all the cream and sugar I use to make it palatable). I forego caffeine while pregnant and nursing, which means I have roughly one more year before my next cup. The home-brewed decaf is far from the real deal, unless I add a considerable amount of chocolate syrup to the cream and sugar. And by then I might as well have chocolate milk, which is the morning routine I’ve swapped for—a big glass of chocolate milk instead of the old friendly mug of coffee.
So, to sum up this section: In my life this week, I’m trying desperately to revamp my voracious appetite and intense cravings to something even slightly resembling my old healthy diet of steamed vegetables, stir-frys, baked salmon, and George Foreman-grilled turkey burgers.
In our homeschool this week…
I’m loving our adjustments to kindergarten. We’ve finally got school to where Mommy is enjoying it, which is important, you know. As far as my once-beautiful-now-grossly-disorganized lesson plans? My new system is to check off with a pencil each page that we do in each subject, then check off the week when every assignment (that I’m going to do) has been completed. The result is that I’m in Summer: Week 12 in Phonics; Fall 2011: Week 1 in Math; Fall 2011: Week 3 in Critical Thinking and Geography; and totally off the cuff for handwriting and art/music. But I couldn’t be more pleased.
The nice thing is, since I decided at the beginning of the year to only schedule 6 weeks worth of school at a time, I only have three more weeks of this mayhem before I reorganize.
- We’ve wrapped up our first week in Nigeria and nearly learned the countries of West Africa.
- We’ve begun our study of Renoir’s “Still Life with a Bouquet” and continued our music theory. (I’ve misplaced my Vivaldi CD and may have to resort to a youtube.com playlist if I can’t find it soon.)
Picture Study of Renoir's "Still Life with a Bouquet"
- In K5, we are on Abeka ”I Do Read, Book 3″ and loving the reading journey. He spelled “mash,” “smith,” and “twist” this week as part of our lessons on his phonics sounds. And in math, he’s flying through addition, writing and recognizing his numbers up to 100, and working on counting by 2′s.
Math skills worksheet
- In PreK, the little one is finishing up with the letter D and working on number recognition and counting for 1-10. Along the way, we’ve also had fun with fine motor skills, shapes puzzles, and color recognition.
Size sort and threading buttons
My favorite moment…
Holding my son in my lap for reading time with the little one cuddled beside me to hear his story. He always adds more expression if she’s listening in.
Questions to ask…
Since food is ever on my brain, what are your favorite fall snacks?
Renoir and Vivaldi
29 Sep 2011 2 Comments
in Art Study, Crafts and Activities, Music Study Tags: harmony fine arts, picture study, Renoir, Vivaldi
We’ve initiated our new art and music study over the last several days, beginning with Renoir and Vivaldi in these first few weeks.
Renoir
Our first assignment was a picture study and coloring page of Renoir’s “The Girl with the Watering Can.”
What do you talk about in a picture study with a four year old and a three year old? I keep it pretty simple.
First, I usually ask them questions about the picture. Who’s in the picture? What is the girl holding? Where do you think she is? What makes you think she’s in a garden? etc.
Next, I ask them about colors, lighting, or anything unusual about the picture. For this one, the kids were fascinated that that her boots were black and her dress was blue. My fashion-conscious daughter really thought she ought to have had blue boots.
And last, I have them choose a part of the picture that is their favorite. The whole exercise probably takes us maybe ten minutes. I don’t drag it out. I just want them to get used to looking for details.
Over the next few days, we continued our picture study by coloring a picture of Renoir’s painting. I love this exercise because it really gives me a good look at the different personalities of my children. My son is Mr. Meticulous, and he scrutinizes every inch of the original to match it as closely as he can. And he does fret if he can’t find the right color to use to match the picture. My daughter, on the other hand, is a true artist and balks at the thought of anyone telling her how she ought to color her picture. She HATES to match the colors, and in this instance, showed her distaste by purposely scribbling outside the lines. And, I might add, included all the colors of the rainbow in the margins around the picture. But regardless, I know she will remember that blue dress with the black boots for a long time to come.
She finished her picture in two days (she was done with it after the first day, but I stretched it to two days). My son, however, took the whole week. And why not? It was because of his precision that it took so long. I just gave the little one some extra coloring pages to make up the difference in days.
Vivaldi
For Vivaldi, we’ve danced to the music, listened to it a number of times, and read his biography in Lives of the Musicians. Our facts to remember: He was called “The Red Priest” because of his red hair and red robes; he worked most of his life in an orphanage for girls; and he played the violin. I picked simple facts that I knew would stand out to my kids.
Next, we’re tackling a little music theory this year, too. We clapped out quarter notes and half notes and will gradually add in the rest as time allows.
Art and music time is my fun time. I’m not at all worried about sticking to a schedule; it’s just a fun subject to open our day with.
Casual Fridays
28 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Crafts and Activities, Geography, Science Tags: animal study, baking, casual Fridays, Expedition Earth, fall cookies, mammals
Last week, I initiated our first casual Friday, primarily because my children can’t remember anything we’ve studied during the week. I finally concluded, why not learn casually instead of fighting the trend?
Thus, on our first casual Friday, we made fall-shaped gingerbread cookies.
And, we worked on our animals of South Africa. First, we made a flip book of our animals.
The little one was able to review size sorting.
And we learned one interesting fact about each animal, such as every zebra has a unique pattern. The little one also thought it was hilarious that the lion was part of the cat family. She nearly fell over with the giggles.
I made a pocket by glueing an envelope (sealed and cut to correct height) to a piece of paper. That way, instead of a bunch of flipbooks littering the bedroom floor by the end of the year, they’ll at least have a place to put them in their notebooks.
Next, we took a second set of pictures of those same animals and classified them. For this lesson, all the animals were mammals. So we spent some time talking about what mammals are and how each of their animals fit into this classification. This page also went in their notebooks behind the mammals section.
It was a fun first for us, and a great start to our casual Fridays.
Adjusting Abeka Kindergarten
27 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Academics, Handwriting, Math, Phonics
For those of you following along, you know we’ve had some issues with Abeka Kindergarten. We are on lesson 119 in Phonics and lesson 95 in Numbers, and the pace has been murderous—even with minor adjustments. So I thought I’d update you all on what we’ve decided to do differently.
Handwriting
Handwriting has been a continual adjustment. My first adjustment was to shorten the assignments. For instance, on some days, the assigments would require two pages (one page front and back) from the handwriting book in addition to about five lines of copywork. I found the copywork alone to be more than sufficient handwriting practice on those days.
My next step was to shorten the assignments to just one side of a page. First, because my poor son would work furiously to get the handwriting done and run out of time to color the pictures—a real bummer for a kindergartener. And second, because I really felt that he was getting more than enough practice throughout the day in his other exercises.
Then, Abeka started assigning “seatwork.” In other words, a child was now expected to do his handwriting and much of his phonics worksheets all by himself. “Great!” I thought to myself, “that will allow me plenty of time to work with the little one.” But that was only great in theory. The “working on his own” just wasn’t happening, even after moving him to his own special handwriting seat in the next room. My solution? Supervise handwriting and give him easier activities for his independent work (i.e. the lacing cards he begs me to do, some cutting practice, number puzzles, etc.; I’ve got files full of options).
I’m going to make one more adjustment, I think, before I’ve got this subject where I want it. I like having the copywork; I think it is an important skill. I also like having the handwriting sheets because it gives him a chance to write some of the words and specials sounds he is learning in phonics. But I think I want to vary those essentials by adding some other fun handwriting activities. I’ve got a “My First Sentence Building” game that has a handwriting wipe sheet for the child to copy the sentence he has made with the game pieces. And I have another similar activity with “funny sentence” puzzles to piece together. Each is providing handwriting practice but varying it so that we don’t feel like we are plodding through with no time to get to “the fun stuff.”
Phonics
My son’s main problem here was that the pace just went much too fast for him to master one thing before he was learning another. So I’ve nearly scrapped the lesson plans entirely and am making use of the materials in my own way. And, at least for now, I’m not worrying about the graded sheets; I’m treating them just like regular work sheets.
Additionally, I’ve added a few fun activities to vary our review of the material as well. For instance, one thing I noticed was that, although my son could rattle off all of the special sounds flashcards, he was not identifying those sounds when he saw them in words elsewhere. I’ve been combatting that problem in a couple of different ways. First, he does spell the sounds when he says them on the card: “s-t says st in stop.” Next, we play spelling games on the chalk board and with our felt letters to reinforce his knowledge of what letters make his special sounds.
I’ll call out either a word or a special sound, and he has to write the word or select the letters that make up the sound. Within just a few days, I saw a drastic improvement here. He still has trouble with “th” and “sh” sounds, but most of his other sounds he is grasping much better.
Spelling "pray"
Spelling "my"
A third activity I have done here is to reverse his special sounds flashcards. On the back of his cards are lists of words that begin with the special sound that is shown on the front. I show him the list of words, and he has to tell me what sound is on the front. And, of course, I have super dramatic reactions when I “try to trick him,” and he gets it right anyway. The first day we did this, he was rolling in the floor with delighted laughter. It was very rewarding to see.
Math
This is still my work in progress. He is acing his graded sheets still and doing well with flashcards and charts, but again the pace is so furious that we have no time to incorporate “living math,” the fun practical lessons of measuring things or playing dice games, number puzzles, money activities, etc. My goal here, even though I have yet to fully implement it, is to slow the pace where we cover the different sets of flashcards and charts on different days of the week instead of all of them every day. Next, I want to have work sheets on some days, computer math games on other days, and living math lessons on still other days.
Math adjustments are probably most difficult for me because I lack confidence. I’m not great in math, and I’m always afraid that my adjustments will cause him to miss out on a major step in the process toward understanding math. However, I feel strongly enough about what is missing from his Abeka math work, especially after comparing it to other curriculums, that I’m willing to try this adjustment. Abeka is miles ahead of everyone else on number recognition, addition, and counting; but I believe it’s rather at the expense of some of these other lessons—at least, from a homeschool point of view; a classroom approach might be totally different.
Praise the Lord, it has only taken me a couple of weeks to identify the trouble spots and find the adjustments I want to make! Last year, it took me nearly six months. We are well on our way, and every day I’m a little more satisfied with what we’ve got going.
And my son, he probably never knew we weren’t happy. The kid is wild about learning.
Preschool Magnet Pages
26 Sep 2011 2 Comments
in Crafts and Activities, Preschool
I’ve started using a fun new activity for my preschooler. Confessions has a magnet page for each letter of the alphabet. I knew this last year, but failed to see the potential since I really didn’t want to invest in the power magnets that she uses for the pages and wasn’t really sure what I’d use to make any kind of magnets stick.
Then, suddenly the Lord gave me an epiphany. I have magnets that I made for the little one this summer, to keep her out of major trouble while I worked with her brother’s school. It was a simple project. I hot-glued pom poms to some cheap circle magnets that I’d picked up at Wal-mart. And the inside of our chalkboard opens up to reveal a magnetic whiteboard. All summer long I’ve had her play with her pom pom magnets, making worms and caterpillars and pictures.
And yes, it finally dawned on me that she could use these for Erica’s magnet pages (probably after reading one of her posts that suggests this…I’m really slow sometimes). The magnet board isn’t a perfect fit, but it’s much better than my discolored baking sheets. And the activity itself? What a hit!
Personally, I gauge the success of an activity by how long it holds her attention. This one kept her busy for 15-20 minutes for two days in a row. That, my friend, is a definite “10″ on my scale of success. We’ll be printing off more of those darling magnet pages in the future. Thank you, Erica!
A word of caution, however. If your child insists on picking up the magnets by the pom pom, you will need to keep the hot-glue gun handy. As for me and my house, we are trying to remember to pick them up by the magnet, not by the floofy part.
