Learning In Progress, March 2012

We are slowing down for the year and only have about 2 scheduled weeks of school in April. We've worked hard to get our hours in early this year so we could afford to truly take time off for baby. When we finish up our hours in the next few days we will continue with math, daily reading and faith even though we are technically "out of school" for the year and I'm sure the boys will continue making projects as usual!

Ender is 6 years old, in first grade.

Ezra is 4 years old and having a very relaxed K4 year because of his desire to be included in our school time. Very little is required of him on a daily basis, but he often chooses to read along with us or work on various projects of his choosing.



Faith:
** Reading Ender's weekly assignment from church every week.
** Started working on the extra verses flipbook for Awana Wingrunner
** 30 minute Bible Study with Brian each week, Genesis 5.
** Ezra- memorizing his weekly verse for Awana Cubbies.

Math:
** Ender completed Lesson 36-47 in Saxon Math 1A
** Continuing calendar skills with learning to write dates.
** Worked with the hundreds board and was able to complete the whole board without the guide AND with all the numbers mixed together in a pile- he was quite proud of this accomplishment since it took 45 minutes and he completed it without a break.
** Ezra worked with the spindle box and also began to work with the hundreds board in groups of ten. We also talked about counting by tens.

Language Arts:
** Copywork and narrations based on our history, science and literature readings
** HWT (yellow)- p. 60-75
** Ezra: Moveable Alphabet practice with CVC words, working with short vowels. We used words he knows to write silly sentences with the MA.

Science:
** Watched Animal Atlas on Netflix
** Narrating from Christian Liberty Nature Reader K, letters K, L and M
** Read independently from Christian Liberty Nature Reader 1
** Worked on his own project: Making an "Animal Encyclopedia" from his own animal drawings and some animal coloring pages and arranging them by biome.
**  Spent time outside talking about the future planting plans and helping make some yard decisions.

Geography:
** Scrambled States of America game
** Maps, Charts and Graphs A-  p. 14-25
** Memory work- the names of the continents and oceans, the countries in North America


History:
** Amanda Bennett Unit Study- American Government, week 1


History/Science/Literature: (These are read together unless marked IR)
Let's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans
American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne
Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
The Big Brag by Dr. Seuss
America: A Patriotic Primer by Lynne Chenney

Memory Work
no other memory work this month aside from geography and verses.


P.E.:
Working on baseball skills with daddy.


Fine Arts:
Ender: daily violin practice
Lots of free art time.

Ender's Free Reading:
Magic Treehouse: Revolutionary War on Wednesday
Magic Treehouse: Twister on Tuesday (started)
several picture books.

A Little Geography

We read Maps and Globes by Jack Knowlton last week and it started a little bit of a map craze around here.

I hadn't intended to start map work until next fall, but that's the great thing about homeschooling- sometimes the opportunity presents itself and it would be crazy not to take advantage.

I've always loved the geography program presented in The Core by Leigh Bortins, so I showed the boys the 5 circles and where they were on the world map and how they could use those to place their continents. I demonstrated continent "blobs" to them and they were not impressed- Ender and Ezra love to draw (and recently to copy directly from book illustrations) so the fact that the "blobs" weren't the real shapes of the continents just didn't fly. They insisted on going at it getting as close to the real continent shapes as they could.


Ezra thought the latitude and longitude lines were really cool, so all of his continents have grids.

And what would a map be without color?

Ender memorized the continents and oceans and their locations last year during Kindergarten, so his first continent drawing was a little more accurate than Ezra's.

He did decide that he should add countries (and even made a passing comment about how drawing maps would be a great way to learn the names of all the countries, haha!) and I think he at least drew in boundaries for some of the larger countries.

I told Ender we'd practice drawing all of the continents for a little while until they got to be about the right size (as compared to the atlas we're using) and then he could pick just one continent to draw for awhile. And he announced that he has a lot of thinking to do so he can pick "just the right one". I'm curious to see what that will be!

Resources:

Maps and Globes

As The Crow Flies

The Seven Continents

Rand McNally World Atlas

DK First Atlas

Learning In Progress, February 2012

This was a really odd month for school. February can be a difficult time for homeschoolers at the best of times, but with our move and pregnancy-related issues for me it was the perfect time for a break.

We took a full two weeks off amidst all the craziness which means we did just a little bit of "regular school" and tried to read and have free art time each day. Because I was in bed for some of this time my record keeping was a little spotty.


Ender is 6 years old, in first grade.

Ezra is 4 years old and having a very relaxed K4 year because of his desire to be included in our school time. Very little is required of him on a daily basis, but he often chooses to read along with us or work on various projects of his choosing.

Faith:
Reading Ender's weekly assignment from church every week.
Finished the review verses for the Wingrunner book for Awana
30 minute Bible Study with Brian each week, Genesis 3 & 4.
Ezra- memorizing his weekly verse for Awana Cubbies.

Math:
Ender completed Lesson 25-35 in Saxon Math 1A
Continuing calendar skills with learning to write dates.
Ezra working with dominoes and dice to match numbers.
Both- playing Too Many Monkeys and Monopoly Junior.

Language Arts:
Copywork and narrations based on our history, science and literature readings
HWT (yellow)- p. 49-59
Ezra: Moveable Alphabet practice with CVC words, working with short vowels.

Science:
Both: Still learning to use our new microscope.
Watched Animal Atlas on Netflix
Narrating from Christian Liberty Nature Reader K, letter J
Read independently from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader

Geography:
Scrambled States of America game
Memory work- the names of the continents and oceans

History/Science/Literature: (These are read together unless marked IR)
Fables by Lobel
If You Lived in Colonial Times by Ann McGovern
President George Washington by David Adler
(Many picture books, probably around 20-25 that I didn't keep track of)

Memory Work
The Caterpillar by Christina Rosetti

P.E.:
Ender: PeeWee Basketball 1x per week
Ezra: Indoor soccer 1x per week

Fine Arts:
Ender: daily violin practice
Lots of free art time.

Ender's Free Reading:
Finished Magic Treehouse: Dark Day in the Deep Sea
Magic Treehouse: Polar Bears Past Bedtime
And several picture books read to his brother while I rested.

Learning In Progress, January 2012

I thought I'd start sharing a record of our work each month, partly for me to keep track, and partly because I love reading about other folks' plans.


Ender is 6 years old and in first grade. We do math, handwriting, faith and violin daily, and spread the other subjects out throughout the week.

Ezra is 4 years old and having a K4 year. I only require that he listen while we read something during the day, but because he loves to write and draw he also chooses to work out of a workbook of his choice or to draw or do projects with us.

Faith:
Reading Ender's weekly assignment from church every week.
Memorizing through the Wingrunner book for Awana, pages 80-end, then working through the review verses.
30 minute Bible Study with Brian each week, Genesis 1 & 2.
Ezra- memorizing his weekly verse for Awana Cubbies.

Math:
Ender- trying his first timed subtraction sheets this month and increasing his speed a little at a time.
Completed Singapore 1.
Completed Lesson 1-24 in Saxon Math 1
Learning to write dates.
Ezra working with dominoes and dice to match numbers.
Both- playing Too Many Monkeys and Monopoly Junior.

Language Arts:
First Language Lessons (FLL) lessons 1-13
Copywork and narrations based on our history, science and literature readings
HWT (yellow)- p. 20-48
Ezra: Moveable Alphabet practice with CVC words, working with short vowels.

Science: (this month was science light while we focused on history)
Both: learning to use our new microscope, looking at many *many* blades of dead grass.
Narrating from Christian Liberty Nature Reader K, letters F-I
Read independently from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader 1, p. 6-10


Geography:
Scrambled States of America game
Memory work- the names of the continents and oceans

History/Science/Literature: (These are read together unless marked IR)
Fables by Lobel
If You Lived in Colonial Times by Ann McGovern
Benjamin Franklin by D'Aulaire
K is for Keystone by Kristen Kane
P is for Peach by Carol Crane
And Then What Happened Paul Revere? by Jean Fritz
G is for Garden State by Eileen Cameron
Betsy Ross and the Silver Thimble by Stephanie Greene  (IR)
Everybody Needs A Rock by Byrd Baylor
N is for Nutmeg by Elissa Grodin
Listened to Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis


Memory Work
The Caterpillar by Christina Rosetti

P.E.:
Ender: PeeWee Basketball 1x per week
Ezra: Indoor soccer 1x per week

Fine Arts:
Ender: daily violin practice
Draw Write Now 1: Girl, Boy
Lots of free art time.

Ender's Free Reading:
Magic Treehouse: Dark Day in the Deep Sea: first 7 chapters
Frog and Toad Are Friends
Big Blue Book of Beginning Readers by P.D. Eastman

The REAL Reason to Read

Ezra decided suddenly that he's ready to start blending and has been really loving the moveable alphabet lately. He's been having a "reading lesson" with me in the morning and practicing again at night with Brian. At first I thought his sudden interest was because he's the only one in the family that doesn't read now, or that all the literature exposure was really soaking in...


But no. It turns out that the only reason he wants to learn to read is because "Ender gets to stay up for 20 minutes with his light on because he is reading."


So the real reason to learn to read is to stay up late.


Just so you know.

Curriculum Fair and Organizing Our Year

Simple Homeschool has spent the last few weeks in an online curriculum fair sharing plans for a variety of grades. This week they've invited us to share our plans for next year. Make sure to add your plans to the curriculum fair!


I was asked how we're staying organized this year and I wanted to share the little form I made.

Our schedule is divided into daily work and subject work.

Daily work includes:

:: Either First Language Lessons or Victory Drill Book (FLL Monday/Wednesday/Friday and VDB on Tuesday/Thursday)

:: Math

:: Handwriting Without Tears

:: Bible

:: Violin practice

:: Our current read aloud (Stuart Little on these pages)


The second column on the daily spaces is for Ezra in case there is something certain I'd like to designate to each day. Most likely though I'll just be setting things up for him Montessori style each week and letting him get to work as he sees fit.



Subject Work includes three days worth of work in three areas: History, Science and Fine Arts. These are choices Ender can make throughout the week and as long as all the work is complete he can choose them in any order. So he can choose to do all three days worth of a subject in one day, one day of each subject, or any other combination he'd like.


In the picture I shared above it shows nothing for Science or Fine Arts, which isn't accurate- I'm just still designating science plans to the correct weeks and the same for our art projects. I know the overall scope of the plans but I'm still breaking them into weekly chunks.


I also made a checklist for Ender to keep inside his notebook so that he can check off each day's work as he works through it. He really does well with a checklist like this because he can't stand to leave something unchecked even if it's for a good reason.

How are you staying organized for next year?

A Less Giant Curriculum Post

I wrote earlier this week about our first grade plans, but I have another little guy included in our homeschool so today is his post.


Ezra turns four this summer and desperately wants to be in kindergarten. I think I told him "Three-year-olds have the important job to play a lot" about 50 gazillion times last year. We've always supplied art materials and had a few little workbook type things on hand for when he wanted to have something to do at the table with us, but mostly he worked with our Montessori materials or played while Ender and I worked with math manipulatives or on phonics.


Ender's K4 year was full of Montessori materials and projects inspired by random reads we picked up at the library. There was very little "worksheet" type work involved, but that's one of the things Ezra has asked for- "a writing book for me!" he says. So, after a loooooooot of talk with my husband we've decided to have a few K4 workbook type materials available for him but not required of him. Ezra really likes to write and draw so a workbook or two for him may be something he really enjoys. I wonder too if it makes a difference that he is a second child and sees his older brother working in a book for some of his schooling.

The books we've selected include:


:: Handwriting Without Tears Pre-K. If we're going to learn to write he's going to learn to do it correctly. If he isn't interested we'll easily put it aside.


:: A few preschool workbooks that have pages including mazes, dot-to-dot, tracing, shapes, same and different, matching rhyming words, etc. I like School Zone and Kumon for this type of casual work because it's easy to stay away from the more formal workbooks for letters and numbers.



Otherwise, K4 looks like this:


:: Lots and lots of art supplies: Our favorite place to order from is Dick Blick. I put in a big order 2-3 times a year and stock us with crayons, paints, paper and a new thing or two each time to try.


:: Montessori work for math. He already uses several of these materials, but I'll keep him progressing forward through the 3-6 albums.

::Phonics. My goal by the end of the year is that he knows all of the basic letter sounds. If we go beyond that that will be fabulous, and if not he'll be perfectly ready to start kindergarten the next year. He knows many of the sounds already, but I want to be continue what he has already started to learn on his own. We play a lot of games, read a lot, and use some montessori work.


Everything else grows out of our everyday things- working on our garden, canning food, baking together, reading whatever library books catch our interests, painting, drawing and playing games... some of it will turn into a big project at Ezra's request and some will just be "the thing we did that day."

How does preschool look at your house?

Do you think it makes a difference if your preschooler is a second (or third, fourth, etc.) child?

A Little Artwork

Ezra is the resident artist of the drawing persuasion. He will turn 4 this summer and he spends about 90% of his time drawing. I'm pretty sure another 8% is spent cutting out some of his drawings, with the last 2% spent on snacking.

Ezra is also a ginormous Toy Story fan, and so he spends roughly half of his drawing time drawing toy story characters. He is an equal fan of the characters and spends time on all of them including the Little Green Men:

No character has too small of a part to be included in Ezra's artwork.

Most recently Jessie has been his fascination and he turned out this little drawing:

It's interesting to me how much Ezra has picked up from just listening in on the directed line drawings I've done with Ender this year. We haven't drawn anything amazing, but we have talked about drawing in pencil first, then going over that work with another medium like marker and then filling in with crayon or paint or something... and you can see all those steps. Ezra is included in those lessons as in "he's there" but he's not usually an active part of the lessons.

We just keep providing the paper and the markers, pencils, and crayons. There's no telling what he might make next.

Spring Birds, Part II

We tried a second version of the Spring Birds this week, this time with oil pastels and watercolors. Above is Ender's orange bird, and below is Ezra's red one:

Ender recently started to keep his colors a little bit more separate to avoid the "preschool brown" that happens when all your paints mix together.

Ezra? Not so much yet, but his most frequently chosen colors are red and black, just like he picked here.

Spring Birds

Ender has been fascinated with birds over the last few months, so when I saw this project on Deep Space Sparkle I knew it was perfect for us.

We're planning to try this project with various materials, so for our first version we used crayons and marker before cutting out our birds.

Then came the difficult decision of what kind of background to draw...

Ezra's bird

Ender's bird

Next up, trying the bird project with pastels and watercolors!

100

Ezra asked, "Am I big enough for the number board yet?"


Ender has been using the 100 board to review counting lately, and true to this frequent theme, Ezra insisted that he was ready to use it too. I was fairly certain that he would lose interest after placing a few tiles, but he kept at it through completion!

I started him out the same way I started Ender - with the tiles stacked in groups of tens (1-10, 11-20, etc.) with the numbers in order and a mat underneath that marks where each tile goes.


After he completes the board a few times I'll give him those same stacks of ten but with the numbers out of order, then progress to completing the board without the mat, and eventually with all the tiles mixed. Ender is using the work in that way right now (all 100 tiles mixed) as well as placing tiles counting by 2s,5s, and 10s. I still have a hard time thinking of Ezra as a 3-6 Montessorian- wasn't it just yesterday that he was so small?

Now You're a Boy

We took a "listen and look" walk yesterday. It was windy, but sunny and quite silly to see the world in a state of half-winter.

There were many shouts of "iceberg ahead!" as we ran into big mounds of snow left from the blizzard about two weeks ago.

Ezra insists on having a hood on outside at all times now. Maybe after being bundled up in the bitter cold for a few months he finally got used to having something on his head?

I asked Ender what we should look for to know if it was spring yet and after he answered he asked Ezra for an idea of what to look for. Ender soon realized that Ezra didn't know- it was all new and exciting information for him! Ender quickly took over, telling Ezra about buds, when the flowers would show up, warmer weather, rain, planting . . . And when Ezra said he was sad because he didn't know all those things, Ender put his arm around him and said,

"That's okay. You were just little last year- but now you're a boy and you can do the same stuff as me."

It's true- last year Ezra was two, hitching a ride with Ender and I as we went outside to explore, but this year he is three and he wants to see and find and know for himself.


I'm so excited to be able to add this little boy to our outside adventuring!

Have you been out adventuring yet this week? Take a trip out, even if it's snowy and cold, to find out what is going on out there!

Bringing Winter In

We've been working our way through the winter craft list. My boys are kings of scissors and glue during this season! Basically I printed a bunch of things for them and they have free time in the morning to make whatever project they'd like. Ezra cuts very well for his age so he's able to do most of these projects on his own, but some 3 and 4 year olds would not quite be ready for this with their own skills, but you could still cut for them!

Here are some of the crafts currently on the school table in some state of progress:


Snowman Dress-Up

Make a Penguin

City at Night

Snowman Card

Handprint Wreath


And of course there is the entire winter section at The Crafty Crow that I haven't yet dived into...



We also have a few more wintery foods in the works this week:

Peppermint Cocoa

Snow ice cream

Pioneer Woman's Mac and Cheese

Popcorn + Marshmallows =

YUM!

Okay, so maybe melting marshmallows and butter to make sticky popcorn isn't the healthiest thing to eat, but it seemed to be the perfect way to pass the time on a{nother} very cold snow day.

We received another 12+ inches of snow on Tuesday and spent much of yesteray huddled together watching movies and reading books in between the handful of students that were brave enough to venture out for lessons. The popcorn and mug after mug of hot chocolate certainly helped our moods!

Saturday = Art Day

Saturdays are the only day of the week where the adults don't work and the whole day is truly our own.

I usually spend Saturday mornings catching up on housework while Brian and the boys run errands, but in the afternoons we have fallen into a routine of making art of all kinds.

The boys were gifted some paint by number boards and Ender spent a long time hunting numbers down.

We also experimented with mixing yellow, blue and red tempras to give us secondary colors for finger painting. Ezra had never done that lesson with us, and it was fun to watch Ender get so excited to share his experience with Ezra. Ezra guessed that all the mixes would result in more red since red is his favorite color. Ender would put his hands on hips, shake his head and say, "you can't get red from that!" in his fake exasperated voice.

We also experimented with painting with cotton balls. Ezra figured out that you can rub the paint on like a paint brush and even mix colors on the page instead of in the tray...

And Ender was quick to use the cotton balls to make dots on the page as well as toothpicks for lines and "coloring", which he decided didn't work very well.

What have you been making lately?

Celebrate Winter: Marshmallow Men

Part of celebrating winter here means pulling out a few special activities that we only do a few times a year. One of our favorite activities to pull out every few months is building with marshmallows and toothpicks!

It is interesting to see how much the boys' building skills have grown after a few months away from this particular activity.

This is an easier activity if you use stale marshmallows- you can get them to stand up very easily, and build pretty tall structures, but when I asked the boys, Ender said he didn't want to do it that way- he wanted to eat them when he was done, of course!

Snow men laying on their beds....

Um, Ezra eating the snowman's head...

Take a picture of my snowman before I eat it!