Sam the Recruiter

Every once in a while you get a glance of the person that your child is becoming. I got such a glance last week during a Cub Scout Rally. I really didn't have a clue what I signed us up for but we headed to the school. Sam was the only Scout that showed up to help recruit 30 boys and entertain their siblings. He was amazing. Sam is strong in interpersonal skills there is little doubt about that- he can make a friend in any setting with ease. I just didn't realize how intuitive he was to other's needs. He automatically changed his emphasis on scouting to meet the desires of the different age and abilities of the boys that he spoke with. While talking to older boys he spoke of camping during the winter, shooting off rockets, and bb guns. When talking with the younger boys he emphasized the family aspect of scouting and how much fun it was do things with your dad. There were several special needs boys and he intuitively knew that they wanted to know that they were going to get to participate just like everybody else. Is is going to be such a joy to watch this young person grow to a man!

Summer 2009

Wow! Where has the summer gone?

Big Sis graduated and starts college .....gulp.....tomorrow. Big Brother has moved out and is ready to join the Navy. We painted and re-arranged rooms so the Big Sis has her own study/sitting room adjacent to her bedroom. This means that we once again have a dedicated schoolroom/playroom. Since we didn't have enough going on this summer we also decided to rip up the old floor and lay down the new. I guess it is not a surprise that we only got about 6 weeks of school done this season!.

Our basic schedule hasn't changed much. Charlotte went through a phrase this summer where she did not want to participate in the morning activities so instead we did lots of informal activities throughout the day.

Starting around 9am with Sam we did MFW 1 , MUS, IEW Poetry, Nature Reader, Speech work, Song School Latin and our alternated readings

M- Geography ( Seabird)
T- History(D'Auliare Selection)
Th- Burgess( Birds)

Sam is reading his Bible reader. He has a selection of books that he can read all by himself and he spends about 30min each day reading all by himself. I have been so impressed with MFW 1 reading instructions. It is everything that I have been trying to put together on my own with our CM reading instructions. It is so awesome to just open the book and have the lesson planned out for us.....not too long....not too short...not too many manipulative......just perfect.

Sam has memorized 4 poems from IEW Poetry. The poems are interesting enough that he is motivated to learn them. He enjoys impressing friends and family with his poems and it is also good speech practice.

We've been doing SSL just for fun. If I find a Song School Spanish or its equivalent we are going to try it. We would have more use for Spanish but it never made it into our schedule this past year.

It's been an interesting summer but we are looking for a cooler, less hectic Autumn!

Our 2009 Graduate

Spring Quarter Update 2009

My feeble attempt of a weekly report failed after week 1!

We made quite a few changes this quarter. In March I evaluated our resources and thought I made a decision to stick with them but a month later I made a complete switch-a-roo!

Sam-

Reading/Language Arts- still coming along nicely. We are working with MFW 1 for phonics drill. I like that his writing is directly related to his reading and it is great reinforcement. We have dropped FLL/WWE. He is getting enough writing with MFW 1. MFW 1 is a resource that I wished I had found last year! Currently on day 23 with MFW 1.

Math- completed MUS alpha!

History- We are still reading SOTW 1. Currently on Chapter 22.

Geography- We started Seabird. We look up unfamiliar terms in Geography A-Z.

Science/Natural History-We continue a weekly nature study but I still haven't restarted the nature study blog. We are using MFW 1s science book/experiments with extra books from the library. Did I mention that MFW 1 is a great resource?? Love, love, love the science book list! We started CLNR book 2 this quarter and I really like the list of questions after each section.

Poetry- Random House Book of Poetry for Children is a huge hit around here. We read a couple a day and discuss which is our favorite and why. I finally purchased IEW's poetry book and will use it for an ongoing poetry memorization. We will start this in the summer quarter.

Literature/American History- Leif Erickson was a big hit! We read parts of Lang's Blue Fairy book. Sam says, "Fairy tales are lame- I prefer stories about real people!"

Art- Co-op fell apart and I've been trying to use MFW 1 suggestion of Drawing with Children with little success. I will restart Artistic Pursuits in the summer quarter.

Speech Therapy- Done? We will see our Speech Therapist in 3 months to see if he is doing well enough on his own or would benefit from a bit more intervention.

Charlotte is loving HOD's Little Hands to Heaven program. We will continue doing this program with her this year. LHTH + AO year 1 read aloud + our ongoing painting/wedgits/pattern block time = Happy Charlotte. Everyone likes a Happy Charlotte!

I plan to start our Summer Quarter June 15. We will continue MFW 1 for reading/writing/science/Music appreciation/handicrafts, start MUS beta and our weekly reading list. I will continue using HOD'S LHTH program with AO reading and our usual projects with Charlotte.

We will start working through IEW's Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization with a goal of completing level 1 in the next year. This is the resource I want to help him continue with his speech development after ST is complete.

No major changes! I promise!

Weekly report- 1 or 31?

I've always prefered to do a quarter report because it give me a bigger picture but I'm going to try doing a weekly report for awhile for fun. I wasn't sure if I should call this post WR 1 since it is our first or WR 31 since it is the 31st week of our school year.

Charlotte-We did 4 days of Little Hands finishing with day 1 of week 2. Highlight of the week was doing A-A-Adam with Big Sis' joining in! Watching Charlotte and Big Sis' fly like an albatross and slither like an anaconda was hysterical. Charlotte really enjoyed making the A with cheerios and has been finding A's everywhere.

Sam- We finished Paddle-to-the-Sea last week. This week we read the first chapter of Seabird. He immediately found Greenland on the globe because it is where Leif the Lucky is growing up in our D'aulaire title that we are also reading! We started reading about Ancient Greek in SOTW and found an interesting picture of bull-jumping in our Usborne World History book. He really enjoys looking at Usborne's pictures and has spent part of every afternoon this week looking at these pictures. He has remembered far more that I expected with SOTW and was able to recognize the Hanging Garden of Babylon when he found that picture.

We did the first week of MFW 1. The phonics was review but working on the blending ladders was beneficial. I wish I had thought of doing that sooner. He would make a blend and try to think of as many words as possible that had that particular blend. It was such a confidence booster for him! We also worked on re-reading several of our 100 Easy lessons stories. Great week for reading skills.

This week in MFW 1 we also were doing science experiments with earthworms and ants. Unfortunately we killed off all the ant beds in the yard last weekend and not one ant decided to participate in our little experiment. We will retry that one in a few weeks. We had much more success with our earthworm experiment and they are participating as expected in their container! We will watch them over the weekend then let them work their magic in Sam's vegetable garden.

We attempted to make a clay pot with MFW 1 directions for salt dough but I must have added too much water because it would not hold a form. The kids did enjoy making handprints with it. Fortunately I did have some clay in a closet and we successfully made a clay pot. Sam had a lot of fun making his pot but thought that the clay pot craftmen of ancient times had a really hard job!

We have a collection of wildflowers growing in our backyard due to lack of fertilizer and mowing. We had wildflower scavenger hunts all week long. Charlotte thinks that the Fleabane Daisy is the most beautiful flower in the world and didn't want her older brother to mow the yard and destroy them! He kindly left her a section of the backyard so her flowers can continue to thrive. Her flower garden is finally starting to sprout so hopefully she will have lots of cut flowers this summer.

Spring Schedule

Our day has streamlined again!

Starting around 9am

Charlotte- We do the activities with Little Hands to Heaven, read a selection from AO Year 0 and start an activity.
M-Mighty Minds
T-Pattern Block
Th-Watercolors
F-Wedgits.

Sam joins us and participates with above activity as interested while we do

Poetry
Speechwork
Nature Science Reader
M-Geography , T- History , Th- Burgess , F-Fairy Tale

We do a quick tidy of our activity then:

MUS
MFW 1
reading
AAS
Read from our current Literature selection

Having their activities overlap a bit has helped our schoolday go faster and I have also noticed that Sam listens better when his hands are busy. By the time we finish all readings Charlotte is ready to play and Sam is excited that all he has left is math, writing and reading!

We listen to our composer while getting lunch ready.

After lunch we complete any projects/science experiments from MFW 1 then we head outside to play! I have been able to do a short focused nature study observation almost each afternoon. Weather permitting we go on a long hike at a local park at least weekly.

Sam's age 7 basic plan

Language Arts/Reading/Science/Bible/Art/Music appreciation/handwriting/handicrafts

My Father's World 1

Math-MUS Beta
Poetry/Memorization-IEW's Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization

Our planned reading each week:

History/Biography
D-Aulaire titles

Geography
Holling C. Holling- Seabird, Tree in a Trail
A-Z Geography

Natural History/Science
Burgess' Animal Tales
Christian Liberty Nature Reader Book 2

Literature
Readings to be determined by interest

Little Hands & My Father's World.

I've had a couple of exciting finds this month!

For Charlotte I made a purchase of Little Hands to Heaven. She LOVES it. Adorable! Super easy to use, non-time consuming and keeps her happy.We are still reading selections from the AO year 0 booklist and working each day with Mighty Minds, pattern blocks, painting and Wedgits.

For Sam....and eventually Charlotte....I made the discovery of My Father's World. I haven't tried to think too far ahead with a plan for these younger two but I really didn't expect to be able to combine them. Using MFW....I can. That's exciting. MFW uses many of the books I already own. That's exciting! MFW combines classical , Charlotte Mason in a unit study approach for the whole family AND has a schedule with 1 easy day each week which makes it workable with my work schedule. Yikes...I'm overcome with joy! I am practically giddy with excitement if this works out and I don't have to come up with elaborate plans each year trying to mesh two kids who are 3 years apart in age! I just hope it works out. We shall see.... one day at a time...

We still need to work on phonics with Sam so I got my hands on a copy of MFW 1. MFW 1 claims to cover all needed phonics to create an independant reader and does cover more than 100 Easy lessons. We are starting from the beginning and so far it's a hit with him. I am continuing our other reading instruction during this review stage of MFW 1. This week we made a clay jar, started working on a scroll, did experiments with earthworms and ants, and did lots of work with blending ladders for reading. We are continuing our readings in history, etc so we have a nice full day. It has been an interesting and varied week with lots of fun stuff scheduled in. I do work best with a schedule!

Years 1-4 Discussion & Discovery Studies plan

The terms Discussion (humanities) and Discovery (science & creative arts) studies are borrowed from Educating the Whole-hearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson.


World History
~ 1 chapter per week
Story of the World+ activity book
Library books on weekly topics

American History
~ 1 per quarter
d-Aulaire Titles- aproximately 1 per quarter
Benjamin Franklin
Pocahontas
Leif the Lucky
George Washington
Abraham Lincoln
Buffalo Bill
Columbus
The Star- Spangled Banner

Childhood of Famous American series as readers

Poetry
1 per day + 1-2 per quarter for memory work
A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Now We Are Six/When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne
Random House Book of Poetry for Children

Geography
1-2 Chapters per week
Holling C. Holling books
Paddle-to-the-Sea
Seabird
Minn of the Mississippi
Pagoo
Tree in the Trail
Geography from A to Z by Jack Knowlton
+ Map study with SOTW activity books.

Natural History/Science
1-2 Chapters per week
Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
James Herriot's Treasury for Children by James Herriot
The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess
The Burgess Seashore Book for Children By Thornton Burgess
Among the ….. People by Clara Dillingham
The Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornton Burgess
The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children by Jane Andrews
Parables from Nature by Margaret S. Gatty
Weekly Nature Study
Various books from Usborne/ DK
Various science kits

Literature
1-2 chapters per week
The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter
The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
d'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths
d'Aulaires Book of Norse Myths
Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemay Sutcliff
The Orhard Book of Roman Myths by Geraldine McCaughrean
In Search of the Homeland by Penelope Lively and Ian Andrew
Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

pacing and selection to be determined by child's interest
The Boxcar Children Gertrude Chandler Warner
Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
The Random House Book of Fairy Tales by Amy Ehrlich
The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjery Williams
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat
Paul Bunyan by Steven Kellogg
Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla
Story of Dr. Doolittle by Hugh Lofting
Stuart Little by E.B.
WhiteTrumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
King Arthur by Roger Lancelyn Green
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow by Allen French
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois
Redwall by Brian Jacques
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

What's working and what is not....

It's a rainy Friday with nothing to do so it seems like a good time to plan for next year. Wait a minute....I don't do long range planning. I've already have a science list and a CM LA framework. So why aren't I sticking to it? Probably because I decided to make a Year 1 booklist and tie it all nice and neat into a Yearly Plan. The problem with a Yearly Plan is that you feel that you need to complete everything in the plan .....and nothing more and nothing less .....in a year. Blogging today about our Winter Quarter and I realized that we were reading the "wrong" D-Aulaire title. Lief the Lucky wasn't on the list....Yikes. I guess I should have consulted the list before I pulled it off the shelf to read it. It made me remember why I had such a hard time with programs like Sonlight....I couldn't seem to make myself follow the daily plan in the TM! Today read pages 6-18 in this book......well what if you wanted to read a little more or a little less......I made such a mess of those TM for the weeks ( never a full year! Ha!) that I tried to follow them. My self-made TM are much easier to use.....and much less messy!

Back to planning....or not planning as the case may be.

First Q. What is working really well this year?

Math- Math-U-See
Spelling- All About Spelling
History- Story of the World
Science- Nature Reader, science experiments, Nature study
Reading- 100 EZ lessons with a few adjustments
Geography- Paddle with A-Z Geography.
Poetry/Art
HWT

Second Q. Can I meet these goals with the above resources if I continue using the above for the next few years?

MUS- Yes
AAS/100 EZ lessons-Yes
SOTW-Yes
Science-Yes. Books from my science list + weekly science experiments+ Nature Study
Geography-Yes. Holling C. Holling titles + a general Geography resource each year
Poetry/art-yes.
HWT-yes.

That was easy enough. The above resources will be continued until complete or they are not longer useful to us.

That leaves Language Arts. FLL and WWE are working for us at the moment. They are easy to use and not time consuming. Yet..... yet.... UGH! I've been staring at that yet for awhile now and I can't put my finger on what my issue is with FLL other than I'm totally ambivalent to teaching grammar to a 6 yo. I will continue using this resource this next quarter but I am unsure if I will finish the series. WWE does fit nicely into my CM LA framework-copywork, narration, & dictation- so perhaps the answer is to drop FLL until age 8-10 or so.

Wow that's an Eureka moment......I need to quit thinking of FLL and WWE as a whole.

Back to Q 1 & 2. What is working well and can I meet goals with those resource?

Writing- WWE - yes & yes. We will continue this through the series.

So the only LA component not specifically addressed is grammar which I don't feel is necessarily at this age. I will continue FLL because it really isn't a burden but I will drop it when it becomes one.

Literature/American History- I feel that I limited ourselves by making a yearly list. I will not do this in the future. I will make a list of titles by ages ....like my science reading list.... and we will read through those one at a time as we see fit.

Winter Quarter Update 2009

We are a few weeks late completing the Winter Quarter since we were sidetracked with illness.
Sam


Reading- We are making excellent progress with reading! I suspect it has more to do with his age ( 6 1/2 ) then any adjustments that I have made with our approach. We are working through 100 EZ lessons at a pace of 2 lessons per week. I have been writing out the stories and a separate piece of paper and he reads them throughout the day. This has helped his speed and accuracy. He has started enjoying reading! Cheers!


Spelling- AAS is back! He loves using this resource. It isn't a big surprised since he has always liked using letter tiles and manipulating words in such a manner. I have been enjoying using this resource as well. It is well laid out and the pieces are conveniently keep in place with magnets. We just completed Step 10.


Language Arts- We have completed FLL lesson 58 and WWE week 14. He has memorized 2 more poems. FLL introduced pronouns prior to verbs which I found odd. The concept of pronouns has proven elusive to Sam. I think that my ambilivance to teaching grammar to a 6 yo is clouding my judgement with this resource because I grow weary of using it. We will keep plugging ahead with this resource for the next quarter.


Math- currently starting lesson 25 of MUS Alpha.


History- SOTW 1 is going well. We have just finished Chapter 13 and are working through a chapter per week.


Geography- We are almost compete with Paddle to the Sea. We will miss him! This next quarter we will spend some time with Geography A-Z before moving on to a new Holling C. Holling title.


Natural History/Science- Going well. We are almost done with CLNR book 1. Sam loves his science experiments! We do one weekly using our science kit. Our homeschool group might be starting a weekly nature study that we will definitely try out. I want to start blogging about our nature study again.


Poetry- We completed A Child's Garden of Verses but did not start Now we are Six by A.A. Milne. Instead we are reading The Random House Book of Poetry for Children which should keep us busy for years.


Literature/American History- We have read through Just so Stories, Lang's Blue Fairy book, Among the Meadow People, and Aesop. We are currently using our Literature reading time to read through our American History selections. D-Aulaire's Leif the Lucky didn't make my list for this year but that is the book that we are currently reading. Our other American History selections will be added to next years booklist.


Art- We started attending a Art Class with our local homeschool group and it has been a big hit!

Extras- Sam earned his Tiger! He is playing T-ball in a homeschool baseball league which he thinks is AWESOME! Charlotte

She is still enjoying the AO year 0 selections but is starting to insist on doing her "schoolwork." I have been able to keep her satisfied with Mighty Minds, Wedgits, Pattern Blocks and painting but I need to have something tangible ready for her by her 4th birthday.

Plans for the Spring Quarter-

--Get consistent with Nature Study. I think blogging about it really helps me to stay focused on this. I don't even know where my Handbook of Nature Study is at the moment!

-- Get a plan for Charlotte. I prefer to not start any type of "formal" schoolwork until age 5 but she is not going to tolerate much more of this informal learning.

Reading......again.

Here I go blogging about Sam and reading.....again. Honestly, you would never know that I've already had one child who was a "late" reader. A late reader who just aced her college entrance exams thank you very much.

I did have another eureka moment when talking about Sam and grade level placement. If I had sent Sam to PS I would have held him back a year and he would only be in Kindergarten this year. Looking at all the variables......summer birthday....prematurity......speech motor issues.....male......holding him back a year would've been the only alternative. When compared to K'rs his reading is awesome. So I really need to just relax a bit and keep plugging along.

I had seriously thought about trying yet another reading program. Instead we have spent the last few months focusing on speed and fluency using the resources that we owned. His speed and fluency have improved! We just recently picked back up with 100 EZ lessons with much success. I am not going to add back in ETC online because I think that is where he was picking up his "cheats". I am also going to restart using AAS. AAS plans on adding corresponding readers so AAS will be our ongoing reading/spelling program. Sam has missed doing AAS in the past few months. Missed doing spelling???? I know it sounds like an oddity but it is the truth.

Our ongoing reading program will be composed of 100 EZ lessons( to get to independent reading), All About Spelling (to learn all the phonograms) and Pathway readers for a controlled vocabulary reader until he gets to reading chapter books independently.

I will forget about grade levels. I will forget about grade levels. I will focus on mastery. I will focus on mastery. That will by my mantra! Thinking of this year as Sam's Grade 1 has been a mistake. If I did not start thinking in terms of grade level, I think that I would have been more content to let him learn to read at his own pace instead of comparing him to some hypothetical first grader who is an advanced reader! Actually I think that is the best assessment of Sam's reading ability. He's doing fine when allowed to learn to read at his own pace....I'm the one with the problem. My problem is that I'm trying to have him compete with some hypothetical advance reader and I'm pushing him too much.

Ahhhh....glad I figured that out!

Homeschooler's dog

Ranger's version of waiting for the school bus.

Winter Schedule

We no longer need to take a break mid morning! I have streamlined our day and Sam is able to stay on task better now that he has matured a bit.


~8:45am
Charlotte- Read AO year 0 selection, work on topic of the week, start activity
M-Playdough
T- Pattern Blocks
Th-Watercolors
F-Wedgits

While she continues on her own , I start working with Sam.

Reading-includes spelling
Math
Poetry ( Garden of Verses -1 poem per day)
Speech Therapy work
First Language Lessons
Writing With Ease
HWT on narrations days with WWE
Nature Science Reader
M- Geography, T&TH Story of the World, F- Fairy Tales
Review


Rest of morning with indoor freeplay while listening to composer of the quarter.

After lunch

~15 min with longer Literature selection (any other book on our list that is not scheduled in the morning)

M- Artistic Pursuits
T- Nature Study
Th- Handicrafts
F- Park day or science experiments depending on weather/expected turnout at park

Rest of afternoon spent outdoors playing.