EXP1850 Week 3

Okay, so this was a crazy week in school. Dance classes started. Rabbit is taking 2 classes, and the boys 1. Rabbit is taking Ballet II and Worship Dance II at Dance Scene Studios. The boys are taking a boys Hip Hop class. It is a Christian dance studio. At least all the classes are in the evening. I think this gives us a little more flexibility in our scheduling. P.E. Class doesn't start until the beginning of September.

History focused on King James and Jamestown, and some of the exploration for the Northwest Passage. There was one activity, making a wigwam, that we saved until our light and independent Friday (which currently falls on Thursday). We're almost done with it - we just need to cut out a hole in the top and on the side. (I'll post a picture or two when we finish.)

In Science right now we're focusing on Mammals. It is fun to learn about the different sizes and shapes and abilities.

We actually managed to at least read the Art lessons this week. We hardly ever have time to focus on that. And we squeezed music in on the way to piano lessons (can you say car-schooling?).

We started the read-aloud this week. Personally I'm enjoying it. I think Rabbit is too, as the story is told more from the point of view of a girl just a little older than she is.

The hardest part is getting the 2nd and 3rd grade supplement into place. I changed the routine, doing Bible, Spelling, English (or Writing), Reading and Math first. That leaves History and Science for after lunch. I think this has been working much better for us.

EXP1850 Week 2

Whew. We went camping before starting this week on a Thursday. I had nothing prepared like I like to. That made it a little bit hectic.

This week started the memorization of James. Right now we're doing Plan A. That could change as AWANA starts up in September, but right now, we're going for Plan A. It has been challenging, but well worth the effort, so far. I've needed some reminder of those first 4 verses.

I found a History Scribe pack over at CurrClick (for $5) that had lots of topics we'll be covering this year and next (Egypt to the Present). It also included pages on the Indian tribes we'll cover, too. So I bought that to use for some of our History Notebook Pages. Using the "blank" pages from that and good old Photoshop, I made some pages for the kids to fill in for their "summary pages" this week. We did make the Shortbread as described in the T.M. We used fresh-milled whole wheat flour and honey to make it "healthier." My husband said it reminded him of pie crust. He said, "Leave to the Americans to add apples and call it pie." Here's a picture:

In Science, we started looking at the Classification System and Vertebrates. The kids liked the activities. I made a Vertebrates page in Microsoft Word for the kids to show them the fun we can have with our science pages. The boys have been working out of the Complete Book of Animals some, too. We made the model backbone as described in the text.

Math is going fine. Rabbit takes a little bit longer on those Review pages in the Singapore Textbook. It took us 3 days to complete one. We're working on Order of Operations. I let Rabbit use the calculator a little bit, or it would have taken us hours and hours to do those problems. (I only let her use it if a step was NOT a common math fact.) The boys seem to be doing okay with math, though Pooh Bear often needs two or three explanations before it sinks in. He's really having trouble with his math facts, so I get out beans for him to use to do subtraction. Tigger loves Quarter Mile Math, and it really seems to be helping him.

Tigger continues to plow on in Reading and Spelling. He's over halfway through the Abeka 1st grade readers, and he's only got two more steps to finish in All About Spelling Level 1. Pooh Bear continues the slow and steady pace. He can read, but it is a lot more work for him. Spelling goes even slower. But, I've found if I let him do it on a whiteboard, so his letters don't have to be on lines, he does better. Rabbit is reading fine these days. We've been in All About Spelling Level 5 for a while. She is really struggling with some of the concepts at this level.

We've missed quite a few God and the History of Art pages. If I have to let something go, I feel like letting Art go is the easiest thing, because it's not always my interest. But, two of the three kids like drawing. If our days weren't so long, I'd probably do more.

Pooh struggles with Rosetta Stone, but part of that is he doesn't always speak clearly. I've also read that dyslexics have a hard time learning a Foreign Language. Rabbit seems to be mostly liking it - except when she has a hard time pronouncing things. Tigger enjoys it and isn't taking it too seriously. They are all doing Spanish.

I come up with a way to create a flexible schedule. I am using a pocket chart and some wipe-off word strips. Basically it is just to give us the order of the day. If multiple things are listed, the left column is for Rabbit, the middle for Pooh Bear, and the right for Tigger. So, if I'm working with Rabbit on English, the other two have independent stuff to do. Here's what it looks like:

It makes it pretty easy to change the order of the day if I know we have an appointment or something. We turn the cards over as we work through each section. I am thinking about moving Math and Reading before lunch, and History and Science afterwards. I really feel that sometimes the 3 R's get neglected if they're not done right after Bible. But, that is a lot of writing right in a row for the little guys, so I don't know.

Our curriculum break is over!

What have I learned this week... Well, with Math, it is good to have Tigger and Pooh doing Math Drill and Rosetta Stone while Rabbit does Math with me. That gives them more time on those. They probably only take 15 minutes each when it comes to Math time, so that shortens the time on Rosetta Stone and Math Drill for Rabbit. Still not sure that's the best way to do things. The TM implies that you're doing math with all your kids at the same time, going from one to the other, but with my two dyslexic kids, that doesn't work well. I need to watch them do their math and make sure they write their numbers correctly. Hmmm. Not 100% sure there what I should really do.

Rabbit really enjoyed Dance Camp this week. (I'll have to post some videos later of the dances they learned.) We got to go today and see what they learned. It is funny to watch her facial expressions while she is dancing.

Tigger is really reading well. He enjoys doing the pages from The Complete Book of Animals, and will even fill in some of the blanks himself. I think Pooh likes them too, because they are fact based and not "stories" like is reader is. Pooh is slowly but surely making progress. I can't wait to add spelling back in for him.

I think having a little more laid back week was good before we dive into week 2 and start memorizing the Book of James. Now, to prep for next week.

I also learned I need to buckle down on getting school started and getting it done. One thing that will be different, since Rabbit has decided to take dance classes at Dance Scene Studios this fall, I won't have to have our light days be Wednesday. Her classes are all in the evening hours, so that doesn't interrupt our "school" time. I think that will make the year feel very different than previous years. We'll still have P.E. class for the boys (unless they both decide to do Hip Hop at the dance studio) on Wednesday, but that's not quite as big a deal as having P.E. and dance on the same day.

Working around dance camp, day two

Okay, so today we got Math and Reading done before taking Rabbit off to dance camp class. Whew.

[Side note: While there, I talked to the owner of Dance Scene Studios to find out how their regular ballet and worship dance classes worked. So, now we have to make a decision. Do we do Celebration Ministry of Arts or Dance Scene Studios? Dance Scene Studios would be a full year, August through May, of traditional ballet with a recital at the end of the year. Then Rabbit could be on the Worship Dance team, and they go and visit hospitals and nursing homes monthly and put on a performance. Celebration Ministry of Arts would be 3 months of Worship Dance and Ballet in the Fall and Spring each. She would have two Worship Dance recitals, but no recital for the Ballet class.]

Then, while Rabbit was at dance camp, the boys did a Science page each from the Complete Book of Animals, notes drill, a math football game, and a little bit of Scrabble (that's spelling, right?) before we had to go pick Rabbit back up. Then, after lunch, we listened the music lesson we missed from last week and did piano lessons. To wrap up, we went to the Smokey Hill Library and picked up their prizes for completing the Arapahoe Library District's summer reading program.

Overall, not a bad 4 hours.

When God has other plans...

Well, Rabbit had dance camp this morning, and the dog (perhaps we'll call her Piglet - she's about as timid, but can be "brave" as she deems necessary, but she's not pudgy) had a vet appointment for a recurring ear-infection. So, the boys and I only got Math and Reading in before we needed to pick up Rabbit. Then, the teacher said only 2 of the 4 girls who signed up showed up. This evening we got a call and they're offering a 1.5 hour class for the rest of the week, and they'll only charge us half the original cost. I'm good with that, but it means I need to come up with other work for Rabbit for the remainder of the week.

So, she can do Math Drill, Rosetta Stone, Reading, Book Basket, Piano, Math, and maybe some Spelling if I can figure out how to work it all out.

But, whatever my plans were doesn't matter. I'm sure God has a better idea on how this week should go.

EXP1850 Week 1 in Review

Okay, we've started early. I can tell you what NOT to do. Don't decide to enter bread into the county fair the same day you're starting your school year. Though my bread did well (one 1st place and one 2nd place), it added way too much stress to the day. The day went well, but it was a very long day. I decided to try going in the order things are listed in the TM. I had activities for each of the kids for the times I needed to do one-on-one work (English and Spelling). Still hopping around and helping the kids a lot. Especially the little guys getting started on Rosetta Stone. Plus, the dog had an accident in the house. So, we had a bit of an interruption. It took 5.5 hours to do all our school. But, for the most part the kids enjoyed it.

For day two, we did school in the morning, so I decided to do the core subjects (Bible, History, and Science) first, and then get as much done beyond that as we could. The judging for the bread was at 1:00 and I wanted to take the kids to that (field trip!). We did the boats as described in the TM, and the kids loved that. Here's a picture of each of them behind their boats.

And here they are all floating. Since we have water restrictions here, I didn't put them in the tub, but the did each try to blow their boat across the sink. Rabbit's boat spun in circles. Pooh and Tigger's boats did go across the sink, but they were hard to control. We talked about how the boats could only run on wind power.

And we got Handwriting and English done before running off to the judging.

So, for day three, I decided to do the core first, again, and then Language Arts and Math. That seemed to just work better for us. I think doing all the together stuff first (except Art/Music and the Read Aloud) just makes things go smoother. We can get English and Handwriting done before lunch, and then that leaves Math, Reading, Music/Art, and Piano for after lunch. The day just seems to run smoother for us.

For day four we did core first and then language arts again. That worked much better. I am having trouble getting the 2nd/3rd Grade Supplemental science in from the Complete Book of Animals. Sometimes it actually seems like there is more work for the 2nd/3rd Grade Supplement than there is for the regular part. The boys really enjoy the science, so it's not that much of a big deal to do the World of Animals books.

Day five was lighter, but we tried to catch up on some things we missed earlier in the week. That was good. I still need to figure out work for the kids to do for Reading and Math times, but we're making progress.

Next week Rabbit has dance camp for 3 hours every morning. I'm going to count that as school time (Fine Arts, you know), and then do Math, Spelling and piano for an hour with her after lunch. For the boys we're going to work on Reading, Math, Science (pages that we didn't do last week), Rosetta Stone, Math Drill, Spelling, Piano, Handwriting, AWANA verses, etc. I should have a good 4 hours worth of stuff for them to do, too. This should give me a week to come up with better ways to run our regular curriculum days.

The other thing we are thinking about is dance. Celebration Ministry Arts is a great program. Rabbit loves it and the dancing is wonderful. But, it is pretty expensive. There is a new dance studio that has opened up near-by. It is less expensive and closer. But, I need to see what days Ballet classes will be to see if it will work for us or not.

Winnie the Pooh Movie

We took the kids to see the new Winnie the Pooh movie this afternoon. I give it 2 thumbs up. Pooh values his friends over his tummy. Tigger feels bad for Eeyore being left out, and in his Tigger-y way, tries to include him. Piglet has to be brave when he doesn't want to be. Owl and Rabbit are their usual selves, but there are even lessons to be learned from them. You'll laugh-out-loud at all the antics.

And the reason we went to the movie: we start school up tomorrow. Maybe I'll remember to post about our first day of school.

Starting Early This Year (Explorers to 1850)

I'm really thinking about starting our school week next Monday! That way, I would do a full week with all 3 kids and see how it goes. Then the next week, Rabbit has Ballet camp in the mornings. So that week I would probably do the 3 R's with the boys while she's at camp (maybe throw in Rosetta Stone, Spelling and anything else that doesn't matter on the grid), then do another hour of school with her in the afternoon and get one more hour for our 4 hours. That would give a week to think about and tweak things. Then start back up on a full Explorers to 1850.

I think I really want to see how things go before we add in Dance and P.E. class in the school year. It will help me feel more confident. They both start in September, so that would give me a full month to see ow it goes.

I'm pretty well ready to start. I've copied James from Bible Gateway (an 1984 NIV version) to a Word document, increased the font for the boys, and then put it in those folders that have the 3 prongs. So we'll use that for our James study. I've got notebooks ready. I've got all my data entered in HST+, I think.

Really, the only things left are copying from George Washington's World and taking last year's work to FedEx Office and having it spiral bound for keepsakes.

Year 2010-2011 Finshed

Well, we finished a while ago, actually. I've not been very good about keeping up my blog this year. Too much going on. Let's see if I can give a good summary. (Perhaps later this summer I can go through and find some fun pictures to post.)

The boys finished MFW 1st grade. They are reading pretty well. Tigger has really taken off. He loves Calvin and Hobbes right now. Pooh is a little slower. We've found a couple of good motivators for him: a Lego comic story book (I found it at Sam's Club) and fortune cookies. He's actually starting to read signs on the road, too. We're still working through the Abeka 1st grader readers, and will continue to do so this summer and into next year. I basically just have them read 10 minutes a day to me. Tigger gets through 10-12 pages each time, but Pooh only gets through about 6 (he just reads a bit slower). So, Tigger is now a book-and-a-half ahead of Pooh.

We enjoyed doing the MFW 1st grade science. We just moved it all to our "light" day. The only thing I wish I had done for the science was go to Home Depot or Lowes and get some clear, flexible tubing to do some of the water experiments - there were several that needed it and we never did them. The boys also joined in on Exploring Creation through Astronomy that big sister was doing in RTR. We even made notebook pages. I did duty as scribe for them, but they drew and colored pictures.

The boys weren't always big on drawing pictures in their Bible notebooks. We always did double dictation for those, too, so as not to reinforce bad spelling. They really liked their Bible readers. One thing I started doing was going through the story before they read it and picking out any words they might have trouble with. I would write them on the whiteboard and we would work on sounding them out before reading them in the Bible reader.

At the end of the year, we already had our 172 days in but I still had 2 weeks of curriculum left in RTR. So, we condensed the History and Science portions and fit them into one week. So we dropped all other subjects and just finished those off. I don't think I required any notebook pages for History, but I think we did a couple of science things. The "Is Pluto a Planet" debate was hard for Rabbit. She really tried, but after she tried to convince herself that it is still a planet she was more convinced it wasn't!

NASA has lots of pages on the planets that went perfectly with studying Astronomy. And their Sun page is awesome! I still go and look at that about once a week. The spacecraft MESSENGER got to Mercury either just before or just after we studied Mercury, so that was a great coincidence (or Providence, as the case probably is). It seems like there were some interesting events on Saturn, too, when we studied Saturn. So, I highly recommend keeping up with NASA's site.

A couple of weeks later Rabbit finished Singapore 4B! Hooray, she is caught up and on track to finish 5A/5B by the end of next year. Perfect! We didn't quite finish Writing Strands 4. We only have to do half of 5 next year, so I think we'll just continue where we left off in 4. She did finish her Latin Roots and English for the year. She's about halfway through Level 5 of All About Spelling. There were lots of weeks where we only got in 3 days of spelling.

In the second half of the year we added Piano lessons. That added quite a bit of work to my day, as I need to at least sit with the boys as they do their lessons. I usually only need to sit with Rabbit once, but the boys need a lot more assistance. I really like our piano teacher. She really tries to tailor the lessons to their interests. For example, Pooh is pretty good at memorizing the lessons, so she has him memorize them and then has him add rhythm to it. For Tigger, he is really into contemporary Christian music, so she has him work a little in the book, but also lets him pick a song to work on chords. And Rabbit is just flying through the music books.

The year went amazingly well doing the two programs. I'm pleased with how it turned out. I need to be more disciplined on somethings (like staying off the computer (meaning the Internet) until we're done with our day), but I think we did well. We've had to work on attitudes some days.

We just recently added a dog to the family, so we'll see how that affects our school days next year.

Up to Week 23 in MFW 1st

Well, we're in the middle of Week 23 in MFW 1st (that's day 110). Tigger is doing really well with his reading and math. The math part surprised me, but he really seems to get the concepts. Pooh is a bit weaker in the reading (but does fine with the math, although he does it slowly). I have added All About Spelling for both of them, and it seems to be helping Pooh some, and he likes it, so I'm going to stick with it. But, if his dyslexia turns out to be more severe, I might have to turn to Barton's Reading.

What the boys enjoy most is science. They've been doing Astronomy in RTR with Rabbit. I've been using Jeannie Fulbright's free Astronomy notebook for the boys. They love drawing the pictures, and then they tell me a little narration and I write it on the pages for them.

We've been doing all the experiments we can from the 1st grade program too. Today's subject was "Making Water Work." The demonstration (or experiment) was to build a water wheel. One of the items called for was a styrofoam egg carton (or two). Well, we don't have any. I was trying to think of what to use, and then I remembered the left-over plastic Easter eggs from last year. So, we took the "larger" half of those eggs, and used a hot glue gun and glued them on like this:

Then I glued the other side on (again, with a hot glue gun). We didn't have any spools, but we do have lots of K'nex, so we used a K'nex rod and two wheels from that in place of the spool and pencil like this:

We taped the wheels to craft sticks rather than the rulers, and then rested the craft sticks on rulers so, it looked like this:

Then we tried it to see if it would really work, and it did! (Make sure you do this near a sink, as water does splash off the wheel.)

So, anyway, definitely try to be creative with building the models and doing the science experiments, even if your days end up long.

Up to Week 23 in RTR

Sigh. Five weeks since my last update. Let's see if I can get caught up.

In RTR, Rabbit and I have been cruising along just fine. We got up to about 1400 or so in Europe, and the curriculum backtracks a bit to cover the same time period in China, Japan and Australia (I think we hit Russia next week). It has been interesting to note how a feudal system developed in both China and Japan, without having any contact with the West.

One of our fun projects was to build the model of a medieval castle (it comes with the curriculum). It's a lot of work, and I did most of it, but once I got into a rhythm, it wasn't bad. I bought a 1/4 inch thick poster board and we built it on that. We tried some different craft glues and Elmer's. Different glues worked better in different situations. Rabbit did a presentation at our homeschool group on castles after we made it (she cut out and glued on all the figures):

In science we finished up the Human Body and began Astronomy 2 weeks ago. The last unit in the Human Body was the reproductive system. Don't miss The Wonderful Way Babies are Made. I didn't read it to my 6 year olds, but it was perfect for Rabbit. Now that we've switched to Astronomy, we had another great "line-up." We're studying Mercury this week, and Mercury is visible in the sky just after sunset, along with Jupiter. We hope to get out tonight to be able to see it. (This website has details.) I've been trying to do all the experiments and projects. It's tough, because our days go longer, but the kids really enjoy them. Here is our model of the solar system:

We used a bead for Mars because it was so small. We should have used a bead for Mercury too. But it looks great and the kids really got a feel for how things compared in size.

We finished up memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 and are now on to Philippians 2. These are great verses for a family to "rememberize" to remind us how to love and how to treat each other. In Luke we're up to Passion Week, which I think is perfect as we approach Easter.

We haven't been doing as many of the Art lessons from God and the History of Art these days, but we are reading the History. And, if there is a lesson that she finds interesting, we do that. We have been listening to the music and really enjoying Mozart. We recognize lots of the movements.

We are now in Singapore 4B in math. I really like the way they've been teaching fraction to decimal (and back) conversions, and wish I would have learned it that way when I was in school. I will say that the reviews, in both the workbook and textbook seem WAY longer than in 4A.

English and Writing Strands continue to step up, but Rabbit is usually up to the challenge. Our latest Writing Strands assignment was to write a description of our home. I don't think we did as great a job as he implied we should do in the lesson. But, we have a rather large house, and it would have taken us many more days to complete the lesson. I told Rabbit I'd like for us to try again with it this summer, now that we have more of a feel for the lesson.

We're still in Level 5 in All About Spelling. I'm not sure if she is going to finish it this year. More of the tricky words ("If the sound is /long-e/ then it's i before e except after c") are in this level, and they are giving her trouble. She is recognizing more and more when she misspells, but still can't always figure out the correct spelling.

School has been going pretty well. We added in piano last week, so that is also adding to our days. Rabbit has taken right to it, and practiced every day.

RTR Week 17 - Lefse

Well, we tried making "Lefse" today, since we were studying the Vikings. We followed the recipe in the TM, except we only had 6 potatoes to use. This still made 10 "Lefse." I'm not sure I made them thick enough, but if I made them any thinner, they would stick to the counter, even after flouring the counter and my rolling pin.

We topped ours with cinnamon, sugar, and honey. Warning: they are VERY filling. These would be better for breakfast or lunch, not for desert!

School has been going well. Rabbit doesn't like the stuff about wars, so she had a really hard time with drawing the Bayeux Tapestry this week. (Follow that link, and you can see the whole tapestry with a description. Someone posted it on the MFW boards.)

Rabbit is about to finish Singapore 4A. These Review pages are taking a long time. We spent an hour on the first review, and still didn't finish.

Tigger and Pooh are progressing through 1st. I was really proud of Pooh this last week. He had dictated me a summary, I wrote it and he said, "I can copy it by myself, Mom." So I let him, and he did a pretty good job! He did misspell 3 words even though he was copying. But, he remember to put a space between each word and worked very hard at writing neatly for him. And, when we went to the grocery store he actually read "Jet-Puffed" off the marshmallow bag by himself.

Tigger plows along. We got fortune cookies from the grocery store, and he even tries to read his fortune to himself.

They LOVE exploration day and insist I start with the science reading and do the experiments. We're on the water book, and those are fun experiments. If you can, make sure you go to the hardware store and get some clear, flexible rubber tubing for some of the water experiments. We haven't been able to do a couple of experiments because we haven't any.

Back to School

Well, it has obviously been too long since I updated my blog. We started week 15 today (so I'm going to skip filling in the weeks we've done since my last posting).

I think it was fortuitous (or perhaps Providence) that there was a recent discussion on the MFW message boards about Story of the World and how it introduced Islam. Thanks to that discussion, I was able to preface that reading with, "Now, this is what Muslims believe happened, and what they pass down to their children." The kids totally got it and compared some of what we believe as Christians as compared to the little bit discussed in the passage we read today. The Muslim Fact Cards were also helpful. Be sure to read the verses that compare Muslim beliefs to Christianity.

The rest of the day went quite well. Since we had done the lung experiment last year, we didn't repeat it today. But, I did read through the description again. Everything else went smoothly, even math (fractions!). Again, Providence played out in English. A few weeks ago in Writing Strands we had worked on point of view - telling a story from 1st person and then retelling the story in 3rd person. Today's English assignment from Intermediate Language Lessons was similar - write a story in 3rd person, and then rewrite it in "autobiographical" form, meaning 1st person. Since we had done the Writing Strands lesson before, it was pretty straight forward. We outlined what we were suppose to talk about, and did most of the assignment orally. Rabbit even asked if, "Later, can I rewrite the story differently."

The boys surprised me in that they didn't forget much over our long (for us) Christmas break. I didn't do MFW 1st today, but instead did All About Spelling, had them read to me, and had them do worksheets with math fact problems. Tigger even did a couple of math pages from a Lightning McQueen math workbook I picked up sometime in the past. I told the boys if they could read the last story in the second 1st grade reader from Abeka, we could go onto the third book. They both did well, so I'm going to go on to the third book in the series. They sat in on the Bible, History and Science of RTR, so I figured that it was good.

I love it when we have a good day of school, and God's hand showed up in the details with the discussion on the MFW message board and the fact that we had already done a similar lesson in Writing Strands before coming to it in English.

Winter 2010 Worship Dance Recital

Rabbit's Winter 2010 Worship Dance Performance: An Audience of One

Rabbit's Winter 2010 Worship Dance Recital

Danced to "An Audience of One."

Hope this blesses your day.