Adjust

I went to sew with friends on Saturday mornings and was rudely interrupted by a migraine. I had to leave early and go to bed for much of the rest of the day. The boys were able to help Brian outside all afternoon cleaning up one of the overgrown beds in the backyard. Ellie went happily back and forth, outside for a bit and inside with me. She would get very upset if she caught sight of the tractor outside through the window. Ellie seems to believe that the tractor is her personal carriage.

I made some adjustments for school this weekend and gave each of the boys a reading placement test. Ezra's reading is coming along nicely and he's a little bit ahead. Ender is doing great as well and reading a few grades ahead. I'm having a hard time deciding what to have him read- I want to have him read at the level he can read, but I don't want him to read topics that are too mature for him. I'm pulling back in a few other school areas and doing more in others. I always seem to come into the new school year with a little too much to do, see what the boys enjoy and then adjust, making sure we are still covering what needs to be covered.


We're definitely enjoying our reading list so far. I tried to include as much science as possible for Ender which has made him a lot more enthusiastic about getting started each morning. He knows that as soon as he finishes math and language arts in the morning it's on to snap circuits and reading about scientists and how machines work and projects... and for this kid who doesn't *love* school, it's exciting for me to see. Reading is now easy for him and that has made all the difference in the last few months. It makes all of schooling easier and he can really be self-led in his project work now that he can read and follow the directions himself.

Starting Our Garden Journals

This past weekend there was actual spring-like weather going on and we were able to get outside to check out the yard situation in depth. We planned the location for garden space, bought a few flower bulbs for one of the beds, and Ender started on a great plan for what needs pulled out. A few things were dead from the previous owners so that is first on the list to take care of in the next week or so as we prepare beds.

{Ezra's entry}

{Ender's entry}

One of the things I really want to be sure to do this first season with the new garden is to keep a journal of our work in the yard. I'm keeping the primary garden journal myself, which will be more list making and written journal entries than drawings. The boys are keeping smaller versions of my journal. Ezra's notebook will probably just be nature related drawings, but Ender is working to keep an accurate record of our time spent outside similar to my journal. We talked this weekend about making a point of noting the date and the weather, being sure to record what part of the garden we work in that day and what was done. He's still deciding how he'd like to organize his journal, but for now he's making a page each time we work outside.

We handed Ellie a pencil about a month ago and now she wants to draw all the time. In fact, she will most definitely squawk at you if she sees you with a pen or pencil and will not let it go until she has her own pencil. I read the book Young at Art when Ezra was a bitty baby and put a pencil in his hand right around a year old as well- that book has dramatically shaped the way art happens around here.


My garden journal is a bit less impressive- it consists so far of a list of items to plant, and a sketch of the layout. I'm excited to bring our plans into reality over the coming weeks.

Ender's book

I feel so silly now that I have spent so much time worrying in the past about Ender not writing. This year he writes so well and so much. I tried to listen to everyone telling me to not worry and to work really hard not to push him, so I didn't push. I tried to make writing all about special projects and fun activities aside from Handwriting Without Tears, which has been such a fabulous program for Ender and has made writing so approachable and easy for him.

Narration has been the other key component. For the last 1 1/2 years he has narrated about twice a week from whatever we were reading for school. We started with 1 paragraph at a time from the Christian Liberty Press Nature Reader for Kindergarten and by the end of the year he was narrating from the entire reading at his request.  I would have him read the material on the first day and we would talk about what he remembered. The next day I would read the material aloud to him and he would give a narration that I would type into a word document. I printed that out for him and he illustrated the narration.

And now we have little books everywhere.

Did I mention that this book is volume one? I've been told it may be quite a lengthy series.

And now I find signs like this and handmade calendars and little books and projects all written by him. I will be so sad when these little signs disappear from our house. It reminds me of all the sweet little signs in the Winnie-the-Pooh books, complete with tiny misspellings.

Knitting Along as a Family

Knitting along with Ginny...

Since finishing Ellie's Christmas cardigan it seems like a lot of my knitting time has been devoted to helping this little dude with his own knitting:

Knitting has long been on his list of skills to acquire, and we have indeed tried in the past two years to start truly knitting... it just didn't click and he lost interest quickly. Each time I'd tuck everything away until he'd say "maybe I can knit now..." and we would try again.


Every try yielded the same result until this time, when everything worked just right on the first try and the little phrase he uses to remember the order of motions required for each little stitch came easily from his mouth. A row here and a row there, and a few stitches while we read together all adds up to something that actually has some mass and a definite shape. And this time he keeps coming back for a little more.

And because Ezra can't let anyone upstage him he asked to learn to crochet. I showed him how to make a chain and he quickly brushed me off to do it all on his own. This one rarely wants help and his chain showed it. But Ez is always quick to smile and take pride in his ability to work on his own, no matter the actual results.

Not sure what exactly was going on with the yarn here, but I'm sure sticking your tongue out helps a lot!

We are reading together each night through some of our older classic picture books that we haven't seen since they were packed about a year ago. It's lovely to go again through beautiful books like The Story of Ping (my favorite as a child) and The Little House. On my own I'm reading The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan and Gods of Night (requested reading by my husband- he's desperate for someone to read this particular Star Trek series so he can discuss with someone).

Learning All the Time

After getting a bit of a head start on our school year by starting during the hot days of July we've been able to take some time off from the more structured bits of learning. While I think we all enjoy the routine of our typical school mornings (or else we wouldn't school this way!) it is nice to have the option to call a week "off" and pursue life and projects around us.

In the last week we: 

 

Had three soccer practices

 

Had two soccer games

 

Took a trip to the ballpark for September baseball

 

Spent an afternoon at the local art museum to learn about portraits, self-portraits, still life, and landscapes

 

Made a math facts lapbook (Well, Ender did. I mostly just printed it out for him and offered advice when asked.)

 

Picked hundreds of pears (to can later in the week)

 

Went rollerskating

 

Watched Daddy complete his first 10K

And I started back to work last week, hence the "off" week. 

 

 

 

Today we are continuing our spontaneous learning by:

Making bookmarks (now that we have TWO little readers, we needed several more!)

 

Reading together- this is one part of our "regular" school day that isn't often skipped, even on our "off" days.

 

Quizzing math facts with the aid of that new lapbook

 

Prepping for some family art time this evening when I'm finished teaching in the studio.

Watching this video:

 

 

Loving this Monday morning!

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 Day With Dinosaurs

The boys have been interested in dinosaurs for a long time, so when a "Jurrasic Park" type display came to an area near us we took advantage of the opportunity to see them in person.

I don't think the boys have gone more than an hour without mentioning the trip a single day this week.

And as always the visit refreshed their interest and our weekly library trip was spent hunting dinosaur books and spending the week reading even more. It was difficult to not repeat dinosaur books we've checked out before on the topic since we've read so many, but we did pull a few old favorites along with "new to us" books.

Our dinosaur reads this week:

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.

Born to Play

Another violinist in the family...

He has asked to play the violin for so long "just like Mama", and a few weeks ago we tried it out...

Turns out, he's a natural. I really should have listened to him when he first started saying that he wanted to play the violin instead of piano. After just a few weeks he's positioning and playing like this instrument is his long-lost love.

Geek

Geek is an oft used word at our house, always in a positive way. We are geeks about Joss Whedon and would attend Comicon every year if we could. We are both movie geeks (though Brian's geekdom goes back way farther than mine), I'm a knitting geek, he's a baseball geek, I'm a music geek, he's a serious scifi geek.


For us being a geek involves being deeply involved long-term with a topic and constantly learning and exploring more about it. We know that people don't get it or they only get part of it (some people understand the knitting but not the comicon geekdom but some people *really* don't get knitting or baseball...)


Ender is really heavily into dinosaurs right now and is becoming quite knowledgeable. After he explained the difference between a few dinosaurs to Brian over the weeekend Brian told Ender it looked like he was becoming a dinosaur geek.


Ender: What's a geek?


Brian: It's our tribe, son.


We seek to raise geeks- kids on the exciting journey to find their strengths and build expertise on topics they love. We don't really care what kind of geek the boys turn out to be as long as they find a subject that engages them. Maybe it will be dinosaurs long term for Ender, maybe not- but these smaller experiments with long term projects are preparing him for the day when he meets the topic that will engage his mind for years.

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

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!