Wednesday 1/13/10

I was hoping to spend the day tyding up the house and homeschooling. We started the morning by doing some chores and then we went to Lind's in search of a Kindergarten workbook for Mara and ended up buying glossy paper for finger painting and some flash cards for learning addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

Gabe is really enjoying Math. Today he asked if we could start with it. After lunch, when the girls were napping Gabe and I started the 2nd book of Hooked on Phonics, which we did for 15 minutes, followed by math, and science. For math he did a worksheet on tens and ones, one worksheet on addition, and made a bar graph. For science we read for 20 minutes about snakes. It's amazing to me how much he enjoys learning about animals, mostly predatory animals of course.

We seem to have found that another good time slot for "school" for Gabe is while Eve is doing her homework after dinner. Last night I sat with them at the kitchen table and it worked really well. Then to fill the requirement for History, and Eve's required reading time we read "The Story of the World".

It's raining right now, but the kids really want to go to the skate park and ride their new scooters. I think we'll go anyway and try it out. Yes, crazy I know, but that's us... we take risks here and there.

Back Home

After a month long trip to California to celebrate the holidays, we are finally home. Yesterday was certainly an adjustment after a month away from home. The girls are still tired and a bit out of sorts after an entire day in the car. Mostly we did errands yesterday, and continued to find places for our new stuff.

Today, Tuesday, we went to Story Time at the local library. The theme was "porridge" and the craft was making instant oatmeal. The kids all spooned quick oats and powdered oats into a zip lock bag then filled it with the toppings of their choice. The librarian helped Gabe find some books on Snakes which will serve as our Science time later tonight.

After we got home I let the girls watch some TV before nap-time while Gabe practiced phonics/reading. Gabe also did 1/2 hour of Math worksheets. We're now onto subtraction which of course he understood right away and was doing happily on his own.

I realize today that I need to be a bit more relaxed about his lessons. I am often take things too seriously, being that this is my first time home-schooling. I think it would be helpful to get together with some other homeschooling moms to get more feedback. I met a girl in Costco on Sunday who home-schools her kids and invited me to a monthly tea that she hosts for homeschooling moms. I think I'd like to go...we'll see. In the mean time I think I'll check out some blogs.

Later than evening...
We read a chapter of "The Story of the World". Did a language lesson, and a couple more math worksheets. All in all it was a productive day.

Turkeys

Today I decided to switch things up a bit. Instead of starting "class" first thing after breakfast I played games with the girls. I did this in hopes of improving their behavior while I work with Gabe. It seemed to work pretty well. There was much less fighting and messes. I also "filled" the chore charts and sent Gabe off to work on his chores while we played. So Gabe happily raked leaves outside.

We studied turkeys today and did a "Turkey craft." All in all it was a fun morning.

We also read chapter 8 of Genesis.

Starting out...

Ok so this blog I'm starting for homeschooling is for me to record my/our adventures in homeschooling. We began to set up our "school" in September on Eve's frist day of public school. Setting up entailed me seeking cirriculum and doing lots and lots of reading. I we've chosen the Trivium (Classical) approach using Susan Wise Bauer's book "The Well Trained Mind" as a guide. It wasn't until just a couple of weeks ago that we seem to have found our rhythm. So from here on out I will do my best to record our journey.

One of the biggest challenges I have faced so far has been keeping Isabel and Mara busy while I am teaching Gabe. An answer to prayer came when a new friend loaned me the book "Managers of Their Homes" by Steven and Teri Maxwell. It gives various examples of the schedules of different homeschooling families, many with as many or more kids than we have. It shows how to create a schedule where you can have time slots blocked out so that the older kids are playing with younger kids while you are attending/teaching another child. I'm working to tweak out our own flexible schedule, little by little. One of the most helpful suggestions that I've found in the book is the suggestion of a "quiet time" with God. Many women said that when they started to make this a priority it gave them more strength and energy throughout the day. I'm also finding this true. Well that's all for now.

Pumpkins

One day in October we had a pumpkin day. Basically we studied a sugar pumpkin by doing the following things:

1. We studied the anatomy of a pumpkin by reading about it.
2. We made paper pumpkins by gluing seeds and yarn on the inside and drawing ribs on the outside and adding leaves.
3. We put the pumpkin in water and found that it could float, cut open a pumpkin and took out the "guts" and scraped it out to be baked (for pumpkin pie later).
The kids had a blast doing this!