still chugging along

So I started working part-time from home in mid-October (the astute among you might notice that that date coincides with the date of my last blog post here), so it hasn't left a lot of free time for blogging. Yes, I do set my own hours, but with money always managing to find uses for itself, I don't spend a lot of free time blogging or otherwise enjoying the internet like I do when I'm not working.

Homeschooling is going well, though. I introduced "Independent Folders" to each of the school age kids, into which I put any of the stuff for the day that they should be able to do without my assistance. It has really helped us get started more smoothly in the mornings, as they can just open their folders and get to work. Then I can jump in between assignments if I want to do some of the work they need me for. Right now, Spud only has math, a maze (for fine motor skill development plus some fun), handwriting practice on a lined white board, and Explode the Code in his folder, but it is enough to get him going. Then we do reading time and a computer program for reading together.

Noodle has her math, cursive, Latin worksheets (2 per week), spelling, and sometimes math or Latin flashcards in her folder. She also does her piano practice and independent reading time on her own as well. I work with her on grammar and writing, and we all do history and science together.

I am feeling pretty good about our current curriculum setup. It is always a temptation to see if the grass is greener on the other side of some hill, but there is SO MUCH OUT THERE that I find it is better not to look for something new unless there is a legitimate reason to do so. So, I try and not look for problems. I am trying to figure out an approach to geography, though, as I'd like to do more of that.

We've started working with Sprout to learn his ABCs, and he seems really interested. he calls letters "ah-ees." I made a simple ABC book that I'm having printed, and I also compiled an ABC playlist on youtube. Youtube Playlist It's my hope that with a lot of exposure he might just kind of "pick up" on reading a bit more than the other kids have. It has been quite a bit of work getting the other kids to learn to read, so anything that makes it easier I figure is worth a shot.

Term A, Week Three

Highlights from the week:

We have been getting together with some homeschooling friends in the neighborhood one or two mornings a week for some "P.E./recess" type fun, and this week we biked down the River Trail to Utah Lake. I had never biked out there before, and it was really fun and beautiful. The kids did great. It was 4 miles round trip but nobody got too tired or complained (I think that's an advantage of doing these things with friends). It took a couple of hours, and we didn't get started doing "school" until after 1, but it was worth it.

On Friday we had arranged a field trip up to Tracy Aviary with the Boys Club I coordinated. It was a follow up activity to our owl pellets a couple weeks ago. David was able to come with us and we had a great time. My favorite parts were seeing the birds in the bird encounters (a red-crested turaco and an American Crow), seeing the HUGE Andean Condor basking with his wings open (very zen-like) in the sun, and hearing the family of five kookaburras laugh and laugh and laugh. I don't know if I knew (if I did, I'd forgotten) that they are called Laughing Kookaburras.

Kookaburra

Red Crested Turaco

Kookaburras have long been one of my favorite birds. I think they are just so cute and chubby. I learned that older offspring often stay around and help care for their younger siblings. David said he read that on a couple other bird species' signs, too. So neat! The kookaburras at the Aviary were a mom and dad and their three youngsters, all hatched this past spring. The chicks were already full-sized, though.

In other news, Spud is doing really well reading his beginning reader books. We have quite a number of Bob books, which he likes okay, but he really likes the Clever Critter books by Nora Gaydos. We only have the Advanced Level One set and one of the Level Two sets, but I am tempted to get more because he likes them so much. I think I should probably just check out other first readers from the library and save the $. I've reinforced to him over and over that if he doesn't know a word he can either sound it out or ask me (or both), so he has stopped doing his, "Uh, uh, uh.." pathetic thing when he gets stuck. That is big progress!

Noodle finished her math on the Green Track (I'll explain more later) so she was able to earn the cute hedgehog she'd picked out at This is the Place Park gift shop, plus an extra four dollars. The idea is that she controls how quickly she moves forward with math and if she can master the material faster, and have a Green Level Effort (finish with minimal mistakes in an appropriate amount of time without needing reminders to focus), she can earn rewards. If she moves at our old pace, one chapter a week with many "focus reminders," that's a Red Level Effort. In between is a Yellow Level Effort. Probably sounds a little more complicated than it is. Anyways, her math covered some new ideas the last three weeks and she is doing well at understanding them. I think she needs to solidify her add/subtract facts, though, so this next week we are going to do review and drill. I'm hoping that it will be easier for her to stay on task when the small tasks that make up the problem can be completed more automatically.

We are using Prima Latina for Latin this year (only Noodle and I, though Spud does listen in some), and I am really enjoying it. I think Noodle enjoys that we are learning it, though she kind of grumps when it is time to do it. As we learn a bit more vocab and can talk "secretly," though, I think the allure will be stronger. But I'm enjoying it a lot!

Term D, Week 5 Report

We had a pretty good week last week. I hadn't gone to the library to get the extra books for our Science & History topics, but I figured it was not going to kill us NOT to learn extra. But since we were learning about Buddha, and I like Buddha a lot, I picked up some books near the end of the week, and we'll read those this week.

Noodle has been reading Rascal, a book from The Puppy Place series. (She finished it today.) I'd read her the first book in the series a couple of years ago, but we opted to start with this one (#4 in the series, we don't have #2 or #3), rather than reread the other one. She liked it, and I thought it was good because it actually has some training pointers. Since she'll be getting a puppy for her birthday this summer, it seems like a good idea to read some puppy related books. There weren't any pictures inside the text, but that didn't bother her too much after the initial disappointment wore off.

I also asked the librarian a couple of weeks ago for a selection of books at the level of the Rainbow Fairies and Puppy Place books, and the librarian was so helpful. Last week, I picked up some "graphic novel/comic book" style books for her to try. Today she read from Fashion Kitty versus the Fashion Queen for a half hour during Reading Time. That is something we started last week, too. We didn't do it every day because of some other schedule constraints, but we did it 3 times. I started with just 15 minutes, but soon bumped it up to 20. I think we'll stay at 20-30 for now. Spud looks at books or listens to Noodle read, and I read a book silently to myself, but I'm available to help Noodle with any words or meanings she needs explained. She was not super keen on the idea of MORE reading, but she seems to be warming up to it very nicely. I sure like it. I'm making steady progress through Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook, and he's the reason that I felt okay getting Noodle these comic-type books to read. She is such a visual/picture-oriented kid that it seemed like a good fit. And Mr. Trelease says the most important thing is to get the kids hooked on books, even if those books aren't classic literature. If they develop the skills and stamina required, they will eventually be interested and able to read the classics. I read scores of Babysitters' Club books in grade school, and it didn't ruin me as a reader, so there must be something to that notion.

Oh, two weeks ago we attended a Lego Party at a homeschooler's home in the next town. I didn't know either of the other families who attended, but the kids had a great time and I really enjoyed talking to the other moms. We oddly had quite a bit in common. I guess similar types are often attracted to homeschooling. It was really fun, and the hosting mom said she'd like to do it again. The kids were introduced to Bionicles, which they now think are the coolest thing ever.

Last Saturday we went to a St Patrick's Day activity at a local learning center/preschool. Even though we had to wait quite a while for the "premier" attractions, the balloon guy and face painting, the kids had a fun time and I was glad we went. Plus, we found out today that Noodle's name was drawn in the drawing for a prize!

So, things are going well. We are trying to get outside on the warmer days. It gets up to low/mid-50s sometimes lately, so that's been nice.

Term D, Week 1 Report

This was a ROUGH week. We had a couple different activities going on (Noodle had Imagination Club on Wednesday and we had a homeschool co-op President's Day party on Thursday), and silly me decided to get creative at the last possible minute and make up little Valentiney things. We made bean-bag hearts for all the kids in Imagination Club, and Teddy Roosevelt valentines (he was our selected president to share information about) for the co-op kids. So, we did very little actual "school" on W/Th.

Other than that, we started our Space half of our Earth Science study. Hopefully we can have some fun with it. Space is always so fascinating to kids.

In history this week we did the People of the Americas. The Story of the World does a good job to point out that the reason we don't know much about these people is because we don't have written records. I guess some of the Central American people did keep written records, but we don't know how to read them. It was kind of an epiphany to me to realize that. Yeah, I should have thought of it earlier, but it hit me in a different way. I guess that's why we are encouraged to keep a journal....so our existence is documented. Hopefully the internet and Google are here to stay (*wink*) and my blog will live on after my demise....future generations can read my random thoughts, I will speak like a voice from the dust! Or whatever.

Also, Sprout had about a five day streak of TERRIBLE nights. By Wednesday, I felt like the living dead. I ended up going to bed at 8:30 Wednesday night, and I felt human once again on Thursday. Then David had to go to bed at 8:30 on Thursday night. He seems to be over the worst of it (he had a fever for a couple nights and a horrendously runny nose). So, hopefully next week we will be back on track.

I have been reading the Charlotte Mason series in Modern English and while I don't think I'm likely to go full boar Charlotte Mason, there are some things that I would really like to incorporate into our homeschool. I want to have a more rich literature environment. To that end, I made a goal for us to read 100 books this term. Seeing as we are one week into the term and only have five books read (remember how this week kicked my trash?), this might have been a bit ambitious. Heck, the kids and I have been puttering our way through Inkheart for over a year now. David reads to the kids every night (unless it's a late movie night) from novels, so they are a bit slower pace than required for our book list. And I read various poems and stories from compilation books and the like, but those won't count as full books for this chart. So you can see that it is going to be a bit of a stretch. Oh well. And we already lost the chart and I'm printing a new one. ::sigh:: Such is life.

I am trying to prep the "spare room" for David's sisters to move in at the end of the month. Which has not been easy, since it was my craft/sewing room, plus it's where we keep Sprout's diapers and clothes. I'm not sure where his stuff will go. My stuff has been moved down to the office or will go out to the garage, which means some garage stuff needs to make it's way back to the shed. I'm also trying to purge stuff, which is a painful and slow process for me. I'm getting better...

Oh, one other thing that was crazy this week: some homeschooling mom friends and I decided to do a Preschool Activities in a Bag swap, and even though we met the end of November and divvied it all out, I was working on things up through the very last day. But I did finish them. I'm actually quite excited for the activities, as I think they will be fun for Spud, even though he is kind of advanced as far as "preschool" goes. I think he'll like the hands-on stuff, though he doesn't need the letters/numbers so much.

Oh yeah, I started teaching Spud (and Noodle since she likes to join in) a Skip Counting by 2s song to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat. You go up to 30. This blog has song suggestions for different skip-counting songs.

Noodle finished Math U See Alpha at the end of Term C, and the rest of our Beta materials came this week, so we will be delving into that next week. She told me that since math is her least favorite, she'd rather do it last. Then she thought about it and said she'd rather have it first so it would be done with for the day. Smart girl. In order to promote doodle-free and dallying-free work, we have started playing a quick game (Racko, Blink, Guess Who?, UNO, Mastermind, etc) if she finished her math assignments in a set time. Anything she doesn't finish, she will need to do later in the day as "homework". After sitting down and thinking about just how much time I thought we should be spending in the different subjects each day, I decided it was silly that it seemed to take us so long to get through things. I know there are interruptions (especially with Sprout), but I wanted to get things a bit more streamlined. I timed a lot of our subjects this week, so I have a better idea of how long things take. I'd like to be finished with the main stuff by lunch, and only have Science or History to do after lunch, and maybe her piano practice.

Well, this is a long and rambling post. But maybe it makes up for my absence the last, oh, forever. I don't think I blogged a single update during term C.

One more thing I want to do once the weather turns nice: I think I'd like to have a weekly day "in nature", and I think I want to spend it up the canyon. We have some great parks. The kids can take their scooters (our bikes won't fit in our widdle car) and we can go on the trail and have a picnic...I think it would be a lot of fun. I tell myself it is too far and gas costs too much, but I think it would be <25 miles round trip (and quite a bit less, depending on which park we choose), and even at $3/gallon, that only would work out to be about $3 an outing, since our car gets about 30-33 mpg. So, totally worth it! And cheaper than most other things we could do!