What a week!

We finished our first week (3 days) of homeschooling and both D&K are loving it while I'm enjoying the curriculum and quality time I get with the kids each day.

K repeated her "A-A-Adam" rhyme last night to daddy. She acted out each animal (ants, alligator, anteater, albatross, etc.) and I'm excited for our field trip to the zoo next week.

This morning she was delighted to do the rhyme again, read a Bible story (she loves the pictures in her Bible Story book). Her project was to glue beans to the letter "A" and when I first gave her the cardboard, I placed it so the "A" was upside-down on purpose. She quickly corrected me. She's learning - yeah! D helped make large glue puddles on the cardboard for her.
D's favorite subject right now is Phonics (as he told daddy on the phone at lunch today) with math coming in at close second. I have strayed from the math in the LHFHG guide since he had used Math-U-See last year "just for fun" and loved it. A lot of the math activities suggested in the guide are fun and so I used yesterday's idea this morning - I filled ziplocs with hair gel and both kids enjoying making numbers and letter "A" this morning.

D and I made a timelime for history - we drew the hourglass, cross and cloud (these match the pictures in his book timeline) and he labeled each one in his own handwriting. We used sticky tack to place them across the top of one wall in our school area with extra space between each picture to add more as we study history this year.
We also talked about what makes a year (earth goes around the sun 1x) and so he held a flashlight in the dark area of the playroom while I (the earth) went around and sang "Happy Birthday, Earth" It was silly, but he now knows what a year is. ;o)

D begged me to the do the "beanbags" again for his Bible Verse, so we did (see day 2 blog). He knows his verse but still enjoys erasing the words on the markerboard. K wanted in on the action, so I had her hold the eraser and she is beginning to say the verse, too!

I'm surprised at how "easy" this week was - the kids are not fighting and are playing better together. Our day is more "scheduled" in that we do school in the AM and by lunch we're done - which will be good when I begin teaching reading courses next week!

I'm thoroughly exhausted at night, but when I look back over my day I'm so thankful for the time I was able to share with the kids learning God's Word, HIStory and all the academics.

And oh, C is taking good naps (not as long as the first school day morning) but at least an hour which allows us to get a lot done!

Our Second Day!

We had our second day of school which was successful and a little shorter than our first day. When we were done, D said, "Did we do everything?" I'm happy and I really LOVE how everything is laid out and we just work our way through the boxes. I cannot say enough good things about HOD!

I let the kids play an extra hour this morning as I had work to do and D complained yesterday about not playing in the morning. We began our school day at 10 a.m.

K was delighted to STOMP all over the A that was taped on the floor. She was shouting "A-A-A" while stomping. There's no question about it - she knows what sound "A" makes! :o) D got in on the stomping and "A" shouting, too. (No wonder C didn't take a long nap this morning!)

K's one project was to draw colored circles on her paper and find items to match. She did a great job making circles - though they weren't an exact circle, she did draw each line to meet up with the beginning line! :o)

She filled the circles with colored LEGOs that matched the colors in the circles (she knows her colors!). The LEGOs just happened to be nearby - spread all over the floor thanks to D's morning playtime.

For math, she drew five "caterpillars" (green squiggles) and I helped her write the numbers underneath each one as we counted 1-5...obviously the writing #s is a bit above her ability at (almost) 3, but she can definitely count the objects herself.
We took a 15 minute break and then began D's school day. I tried to occupy K by sorting fun erasers ($1 Store find a few months ago) but then D wanted to join in, instead of paying attention to his history lesson. K then went and played with file folder preschool games for awhile on the floor. D made this collage after his history lesson where we had talked about Jesus being the middle of our history (everything prior to his death/resurrection looks forward to it occurring and everything after looks back to what was done on the cross). He cut the cross out all by himself - following the black lines I had drawn. As he was doing it he commented "my cutting is really getting better!"
He also loved Phonics today and read another story in the next lesson. After he was done he begged to do another lesson (he really does love it!) but when I showed him the story that was printed on two pages (instead of the usual one) he said, "I'll wait until tomorrow!" I will try to get a video of him reading one day - he's picky about getting his picture taken which is why there aren't more pics of him on the blog today.

He did another page on place value in his Math-U-See book and did great - he just has to count by one's and not two's as he has a tendancy to RUSH his work.

He knows his Bible verse (Matthew 19:14) but to review it, I wrote it on the markerboard and had him toss beanbags into a crate. For every beanbag in the crate he was able to erase several words from the verse and continue to say it. It was something so simple, but he loved it. I will have to remember this when AWANA begins in a few weeks and he is learning lots of verses for Sparks. :o)

For handwriting, he reviewed making A, B, C & D (upper & lowercase). This is something I have to watch closely...he has a tendency to make the letters "creatively" - for example, for "d" he drew half the line down, stopped and drew a circle and then drew the line up from the bottom to meet where he had left off. I explained that he has to make his letters correctly so when he begins to write faster one day, it will be the correct way to form letters and not slow him down. I'm not sure he fully understood, but I made a mental note that we'll have to review all the letters again & again until he makes them correctly every time.

Our First Day!

Our first day of school is complete - we did it and all survived! ;o)

The morning began with homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast - the kids LOVE these and I try to save them for special mornings (holidays) because they're so rich. It was definitely a treat for the kids to have this morning as they had been talking about it all week.

Here is the "first day" picture with the kids holding their curriculum guides (K is using LHTH and D is using LHFHG w/several first grade options). :o) I'm so very thankful God led me to this curriculum. There are "boxes" for each subject of the day which makes it easy to accomplish everything whether it's all in one sitting or with a few breaks in between. But the main reason I love this curriculum is that is based on the BIBLE and I can only pray that God will allow this to influence their lives and point them to HIM daily!
After the picture, we "officially" began the school day around 9 a.m. with these activities:

The Weather Wheel: K proudly said, "it's hot & sunny" (she was right) and she had the arrows pointing to the correct words/pictures. The wheel has been on our wall for a month and I've told her specifically not to play with it because it's only for school so I think this morning she was delighted she had the "okay" from mommy to touch it! :o)

The Calendar: I wrote it on our markerboard for the morning and pointed to each word/number. Then D said the month, date, year and day of the week then found it on the calendar (K pretty much copied whatever D did :o).

The Pledge: D held the flag up and proudly said the pledge all by himself with K attempting to join in.

Counting Money: Every morning I will write an amount of $ in green on the board then it's D's job to find several ways to make the amount...today it was 5 cents so he found a nickel and 5 pennies. I did this daily with second graders when I taught years ago and their money skills grew quickly!

D then told me "I thought school was going to boring and sitting at a desk, but I love doing this, Mommy!" I smiled and thanked him...thinking & praying he will continue to enjoy school as the day went by.

We then went right into K's curriculum (LHTH) and D participated in a few things with her as I gave him the option...She loved the "A-A-Adam" rhyme and both kids loved acting out the animals. I'm hoping to print pictures of the animals for them to look at tomorrow when we do the rhyme.

Her letter for the first unit is "A" (obviously!) and here she is proudly displaying her flashcard (I took the flashcards from the website, printed, cut and pasted them on green cardstock, then laminated them so they'll last.


Her activity today was to draw things God has made with white crayon and then paint over it with black paint to reveal her pictures (like God creating the world...only He did it out of nothing :o). I realized when I went their paint box on the shelf that I didn't have BLACK paint...so we had to improvise a bit...I mixed a few colors together and came up with a brownish/gray color. It worked, but I put "black paint" on my list for the store. :o) D enjoyed this project, too.We ended K's school day with the song from The Singing Bible (I love it!) and she had fun dancing around while learning the days of creation. I'm hoping to draw pics of the days so we can point to them when we sing the song tomorrow. The main emphasis of her first unit (5 days) is that God made the world. We were finished by 9:30 a.m.

After that, I told the both the kids that they could have a break. I needed to put C down for her nap (she had been "playing" content in her pack'n'play just a few feet away from where we had been working), clean up the paint and then get ready for D's day. This delighted them so they found toys in the other half of the room (we do school in the front half of our basement playroom) and played for about 30 minutes.

Around 10 a.m. we began D's curriculum with his memory verse and song (Hide'em in Your Heart Vol 1 - we've had for a few years & LOVE it). But then we had a bit of a meltdown. D wanted to play and was in tears over it. I had to explain that this is school and according to the law he has to go to school this year or do school at home, but the option of "no school" and play all day isn't there. He finally dried up his tears and sat back down to work. I let him choose what "box" he wanted to do next and this worked well until noon.

In the picture below, D is blindfolded and having to feel and describe various objects (soft, hard, rough, smooth, wet, dry, etc.)
He then wrote 4 words from his science book (rough, smooth, hard & soft), then he looked at 8 pictures in the book and made tally marks next to the words for the number of objects each word described. (This was a variation from the book. The directions were to write the words under the objects, but his writing skills are not that advanced yet...I was just going to have him point to the word that described the picture but he wanted to do tally marks.)

After science he picked "math" so we moved on to the first lesson in his Math-U-See Alpha book and watched the DVD of the lesson. It was a review of Decimal Street (place value) from his Primer level book - a concept he enjoys. Below he's doing the workbook page and then building the numbers on our "Decimal Street" poster.
During this time, K was playing a computer game and then moved to PlayDoh and then sat with me for a few minutes. It worked better than I thought it would! C took a GREAT nap this morning which helped us accomplish a lot of school!

Around noon, we called an end to our school morning with 3 boxes of D's curriculum left to finish (it took more time today than I thought). I think we did the blindfold lesson awhile longer because D enjoyed it so much and we had a fairly long discussion after our reading in the devotional & in Luke 12 about heaven and our souls. He knows for sure where he's going when his "history" here on earth ends and I'm so thankful!

Daddy called as lunch preparations were being made and D's descriptive word of his first school morning was "Sweet"and then went on to talk about the blindfold activity and his math blocks. I LOVED hearing the positive comments about his morning. I kept thinking "We CAN do this!" We just have to take it one day at a time. :o)

After lunch, I put K down for her nap and then D and I resumed our school day with the final 3 boxes.

For Phonics we went away from the guide and are finishing Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We worked through Lesson 77 today and I was amazed at how well D read, not having done this in a few months (though he reads everything else in sight). We began working our way through this book over year ago when D showed interest in reading, doing a lesson whenever he asked to do it with me. When we're done with the 100 lessons in late September we'll be moving into Phonics Pathways and reading beginning reader books from home or the library.

Next was History, where D and I read about history being God's Story ("His Story") beginning in Genesis 1 but how God does not have a beginning or an end. I could see his mind working, trying to comprehend our incredible God always being never having a beginning or end. After the reading, I helped D draw a picture of his family tree (similar to the one in the book, only we're not writing in the book). It helped him to see that all people came from Adam & Eve, only there are a TON of generations between Adam & Eve and his grandparents. ;o) He colored the tree while I read to him The Adventures of Reddy Fox which was the "Storytime" box. I love the short chapters - it saves my voice!

After discussing the chapter, he said, "Are we done with school?" I said, "yes" and he raced off leaving his tree to be finished later (it was just the coloring, so I didn't keep him at the table for it).

Whew! What a day! Having this curriculum is a lifesaver! I wouldn't want to try to homeschool without a guide - it would be too much work & too overwhelming!

One day to go...

Today is "getting-ready day"...cleaning up the area of our playroom where we'll "do" our school, moving in a table from the garage (it was supposed to be painted but life happens and so we'll paint it at some point in the future :o), hanging the marker board & bulletin board, making cinnamon rolls to have as a special "first day" breakfast tomorrow...

I'm excited to begin our curriculum and I'm praying this will be an enjoyable year!

Here are my kiddos on the morning of their last day of summer vacation for 2009...

Counting Down...

...until the first day of school! Originally I was thinking we'd begin August 31, but the kids are anxious to begin (especially when daddy brought home a recycle bulletin board & marker board for our wall last night)! We may move our start date up to August 26, next Wednesday...we'll see?!?! :o)

Paperwork & Excitement & More Supplies

Our state requires a bit of information prior to the start date of the school year including an outline of the curriculum as well as a list of curriculum & materials used for the year. I worked tonight typing everything out. It's obviously not an exhaustive outline & list, but since this is my first time submitting the paperwork I'm a bit nervous as to whether or not I did it correctly.

I will say I was excited as I flipped through a few of the books D will be using - especially the science & history books! I had looked through them briefly when they were delivered a few months ago, but didn't take the time to read certain sections. I'm excited to re-learn & review with him! I'm not sure who will get more out of homeschool...D or me?! :o)

Last night I began reading through D's first few weeks of curriculum - I love the daily layout! We will just open & go! He will be doing all kinds of fun things. It's all I can do to wait a few more weeks to begin! Good thing our vacation is this next week, otherwise, we'd probably be starting 2 weeks early with school!

Strawberry was whining the other day (she's a drama queen at 2!) about how she doesn't want to do preschool but wants to do "kindergwaten" this year just like Racer. He assured her that she'll get to kindergarten in a few years, but that he will help her with her preschool this year. I'm hoping that attitude in him remains as we go through the year. :o)

Our school area is getting finished - I bought a pencil sharpener, pencils, new crayons, markers, colored pencils, glue and folders the other night (love W's 15 cent school supplies price!). I couldn't help getting new school supplies - that's definitely the teacher in me! My reasoning...the kids don't want to have to use their "play" creative supplies for school. Also, we can never find a regular "RED" crayon in our huge crayon tub - there's magenta, brick red or 1001 orange-reds but never just plain old RED. :o)

Now we have a plastic caddy (recycled from my scrapbook supplies) to hold all of our pencils, coloring things, glue & scissors that will be strictly for our school work.

I finally remembered to buy a small US flag at a nearby craft store - we can't say the pledge of allegiance to the blank wall! I also bought a package of plastic (looks real) coins for counting money each morning. I had found (looks real) paper money at the Dollar Tree a few weeks ago. I wanted to make our "calendar" time similar to what I did in my classroom when I taught years ago (goodness - has it really been 7 years?!) I had the kids count money every day - whether it was coins to match the date (5 cents for the 5th) or an amount I wrote on the board. It was amazing to watch their $ skills develop over the year. For D&K, I'll start with just identifying the coins and matching the value then moving to counting cents and dollars.

Getting Ready...

We're getting ready for school to begin! Our start date isn't until the 31st, but the teacher in me is loves seeing all the supplies in the stores just can't wait to get our room decorated! I've decided most of our work will be done in the front half of our basement playroom. It already contains two large white shelving units with books, curriculum and creative materials as well as small table with the kid's computer they use almost daily for educational games. Most of the schoolwork will be done at a table we have down there already (like D's math and creative activities) but floor pillows will be fun to lounge on while reading. :o)

I'm hoping C will be contained in the play gate and that K can entertain herself in the other half of the room with all the toys while Dand I work together. Otherwise, some subjects with D may wait until the girl's naptime. D is excited to help K with her work for LHTH.

The other afternoon K&D both helped hang up our school posters by playing with the sticky-tack so it was warm enough to press onto the back of the posters and then onto the walls. We hung up 3 posters:

• the Clifford calendar (last summer garage sale find for $4 - was laminated with all the number dates, months, holiday cards, etc.)
• our weather wheel ($2 at United Art & Education - laminated for a $1)
• our handwriting poster ($1 at Dollar tree and laminated for $1)

D sat down to admire the wall and asked if we could start school that day. I said "wish we could" but that I wasn't ready yet. I'd love to start now, but honestly want to hold out until after our vacation and need to read through a few things yet just to be prepared (that's the teacher in me). We also need to purchase a few supplies - like pencils! I'm glad he's excited to begin so I may move our start date up a week to the 24th, we'll see...

We picked up D's glasses on Thursday this week. It is fun to watch him wear them and discover "new things" he can see! He should wear them all the time, but to begin I'm asking that he wear them to read, watch TV and whenever he's on the computer or playing video games. Sometimes I find that he forgets he's wearing them and will leave them on through meals or when playing with K&C.