Where o Where have we been?

Ahhh.......school. Time consuming, essays, papers, APA format....

No, I'm not talking about the children. In May 2011, I returned to school to advance my nursing degree. I am so very close to being done with this phase of my education. I will graduate December 2012, and I am ready for a break!

First the updates.....Next summer, Big Bro' is getting married! One of the first blogposts that I made was about his graduation. Now he is getting married. Miss my boy but love the man he has become!

Big Sis' has moved on to university. We only see her 1-2 days per week , and the kids miss her like crazy! Charlotte has always called her "H-mom" and honestly I didn't realize just how much she did around here. I now have to go grocery shopping with the younger kids in tow. It has taken some getting use too...

The younger kids and I have gotten in a nice routine with school.

Sam has finally made the jump to reading chapter books. Although he does not pick up a book to read on his own, he can and will read a chapter book. What a relief! He felt that he was "forgetting how to spell" with Spelling Power so we are back to using All About Spelling. He hit a wall with WWE and a change to IEW has been a much needed spark to get him to write. He can and does write short compositions! First Language Lesson continues to be a great resource for him. He continues to prefer systematic studies of language arts. He has really enjoyed using Teaching Textbooks and will usually do his math while I'm cooking lunch.

Charlotte has done well with All About Spelling and I have been using the tiles to do phonics lessons with her. I have also been using Phonics Pathways which she does not enjoy as much. She is slowly working her way with phonics instructions. Thankfully, not as slowly as Sam did. She has turned out to be a good little student. She can work through a MUS lesson almost entirely on her own once I have taught her a concept. I have added in FLL 1, WWE1 with her and she has done will with these lessons. She has also been able to sit in on some of Sam's lessons! During the past 3 months, I have been doing far less separate activities since she has been able to sit in on so much of Sam's history and science lessons. When she gets bored, I let her walk away and this has worked well. She is an excellent oral narrator!

One interesting note, we removed all food dyes from Charlotte's diet this past year. Last year, I had thought that we might need to work her up for ADD since she was having so much difficulty sitting still. I found a study online that stated that artificial food dyes could trigger ADD type symptoms in some people so we decided to eliminate and see what happened. The difference is remarkable! After she eats artificial food dyes, she states she feels "sparkly".

Since we have re-started working together, we have also re-started SOTW. Sam really, really likes this resource. He prefers doing a SOTW routine.  I follow a modified pattern as outlined in the WTM. Typically, we do....

Day 1. Read the chapter, narrate, do map/coloring page.
Day 2. Read related text (usborne), write list of facts ( modified outline), timeline, find on globe.
Day 3. Finish chapter, start a written narration.
Day 4. Finish chapter, Finish/rewrite narration.

The closer that I stay with this pattern the happier he is. Charlotte participates in all these activities except listing the facts and the written narrations. She enjoys helping him with the list of facts and ques him in the narrations.

Science has also become a routine. Sam enjoys using the Apologia texts. We follow the schedule in the notebooking journal and do this resource for 2 days per week. He is not writting the narrations but that is a goal for this year. Charlotte does not participate with science for the Apologia days. Apologia is over her head. The other two days of the week I follow a similar pattern using on of the Usborne science texts, library books, etc. that I own. I do not expect Sam to participate but he usually does. He really wants to get involved on the 2nd day when we do experiments.

Our literature readings are done at bedtime. Typically, Sam will read outloud for a bit then Mom or Dad will read a selection. We pick from this list when looking for something to read at bedtime. Of course, a little bit of twaddle makes it into the bedtime bookbasket....this week's fun favorite is a about a motocycle dude and a princess. Quite funny!

2.5 more months and I will be done with my BSN. Cannot wait to be more focused on homeschooling!

Year 5

Sam- age 10

Language Arts
First Language Lessons 4
IEW Fun and Fascinating
All About Spelling
Reading a variety of Chapter books.

Math
Teaching Textbooks 5

Foreign Language
 Latin for Children A




Charlotte- age 7

First Language Lessons 1
Writing With Ease 1
All About Spelling
Phonic Pathways

Math
Math-U-See Beta


Together

History
SOTW 1
D-Aulaire titles @ bedtime


Science
Apologia Astronomy
Burgess' Animal Tales
Christian Liberty Nature Reader Book 2

Literature
Readings to be determined by interest

Year 4 assessment

We made a lot of changes last year. I suffered a rather severe case of burnout and needed to make some changes. Sam discovered a few resources that appealed to him. I split the kids to better suit their individual needs.

All in all it was a good year. I will probably regret missing ECC with Sam as written although we did read some of the resources.

This next year, I want to simplify my planning. I will be entering graduate school and will need to keep my planning time for our homeschool to a minimum so that I can focus on my own studies. Right now, I am spending time each week.....

-on Donna Young to write out the next week's lesson plan
-Reviewing SOTW's activity guide to pull out resources and activities
-sorting through LLATL to gather supplies, books.
-etc.

I would like to eliminate the lesson planning, and the gathering of supplies.

It has been working well keeping the kids separate. This is allowing Charlotte a little more time to mature before adding her into the mix with Sam. Her -often funny comments- were distracting for Sam and would add a lot of time to our school day. Right now, I work with her on skill subjects during the day. We read through stories during the evening before bed. This way she can add all the comments she wants without adding to the length of the school day. This has worked out exceptionally well for her. Sam has the ability to "do schoolwork" and save the  "tangent" comments until later in the day. I find that I am much more willing to chit-chat about whatever connections that they are making with the material while cooking dinner or watching the kids outside then I am during the schooltime.

So what do we do for next year?

Somethings are keepers and somethings are not. Teaching Textbook is a keeper. Spelling Power is a keeper. Story of the World is a keeper.....if I don't have to do the planning. LLATL is not a keeper although the concept is good. I like a resource that I can do in 4 days without compromise.

Some other thoughts.....I enjoyed MFW 1 and Adv since the planning was done for me and it could be individualized through the use of the bookbasket. MFW 1 was a  really good year for Sam as a review of phonics and to provide a year for maturity. Hmmm.....I already have CtG and MFW 1 purchased from last years convention.

I spent sometime reviewing these resources. ILL is the recommended resource for English from MFW. PLL was not a good fit for Sam when he was younger. ILL looks similar to LLATL with the types of exercises but without a 5 day a week schedule. We could work through this in 2 years. CtG looks very interesting for Sam. I could always keep SOTW as a bookbasket reader for him to add to the program.  MFW 1 would be a nice review of phonics for Charlotte. I really enjoyed using it as a review during 2nd grade for Sam. Charlotte does not have Sam's speech issues so she would probably progress through the writing portions easier than he did. I had also started WS 3 with Sam last year but decided to wait a year to allow his ability to get words on paper to catch up with his thought processes. He has made great strides this year in writing ability. I can see English from the Roots Up really being something that Sam would enjoy.

I'm starting to ramble.

I also reviewed my thoughts when I first diagnosed myself with burnout. I thougtht that the problem was that I become a "check the box" homeschooler. Maybe that is true. However, I also stated that the resources that I was using prior to my funk was WORKING for the children. And they were working for the children. If I had just ignored my funk, and kept on working through the program as written, it would've worked for the children. However, I might have been more willing to quit and move onto something else. Something else like returning to work fulltime. It is the downside of working on graduate school and planning my career. So, I cannot say that I regret doing some other things for this past year.

This still leaves the question, "What do we do for this next year?"

Changes part 2.

So my son has expressed a desire to do his schoolwork without his sister's interference. He also expressed interest in Teaching Textbooks for math, LLATL for language arts and Spelling Power for spelling.

I mentioned all this to Big Daddy and he merely shrugs his shoulder's and says "switch him!"

So we did. I also split of the kids in content subjects. Sam gets to continue his Apologia Astronomy and Story of the World without his "talks-a-lot-about-random-stuff" sister's input. Charlotte gets to do a more age appropriate science and history that explores her interest in the subject.

My goal is to do this without consuming our day and still leaving me time to pursue my own educational goals. I have returned to school last summer and must be able to put in sometime working on my own school projects.

Sam is aware that he must be willing to work independently on some of his work so that this works out for us. However, separating the kids hasn't been as hard as I originally thought it would be.

Without Charlotte's input, working with Sam goes so much smoother. He is able to concentrate on his subjects and dig deep. I reviewed my language arts framework and realized that Sam is right on target for his age. He has a basic concept of the parts of speech and basic punctuation. He is able to narrate quite well and is able to get words on paper. He is working towards doing some simplified written narrations. Written narrations will be worked on with Apologia Astronomy's notebooks and with Story of the World's notebook. LLATL covers copywork, dictations and grammar review for his age. Dropping FLL and WWE actually frees us up to use his interest in astronomy and history to advance his writing ability. He has been far more enthusiastic about writing about topics that interest him then about a random book. WWE has served its purpose and now it is time to let it go. He actually still enjoys memorizing grammar definitions and lists so we can easily add this to LLATL. My only real complaint about LLATL is that it is scheduled for 5 days per week and we school for 4 days per week. So far we just do 1.5 days worth of work for 2 days of each week. I foresee that eventually he will need to do 1 day of LLATL on our off day of school. If I remember correctly, this is what my older kids did.

Teaching Textbooks has been a fun little addition. He is able to work through this almost completely independently.

Spelling Power has been interesting. He does not like mispelling words and gets upset. I keep explaining that I don't expect him to spell each and every word correct the first time. This resource is still questionable. If he continues to get upset with each mispelled word we will need to change back to All About Spelling.

All and all. He is quite happy with the changes we have made.

Charlotte has proven to be a little bit more of a challenge. She fell in LOVE with LLATL blue. UGH! All those pieces kinda drove me nuts with Sam, and now all those pieces are kinda driving me nuts with her. However, she does like it more than 100 easy lessons, and she is enjoying the projects. I have continued the self designed science that we were using before with her. I am currently reading Sarah Noble to her at bedtime until I decide on a plan for her for history. I need a booklist of stories that are well liked by sensitive young girls. I am considering starting WWE 1 with her to help her turn her rather verbose narrations into something concise and relevent.

Having the kids completely separate hasn't proved to be as difficult as I originally thought.

Changes......

I spent some time rearranging our book closet. Our book closet is really the size of a small room and holds 18 years of books and curriculum. As I was sorting and moving supplies around, Sam joined me. He had an agenda.

Sam, "Do I have to do school with Charlotte?"

This took me a bit by surprised. I have been working towards having the kids work separately during skill subjects then working together during contenct subject. Honestly, I thought it was going quite well. Sam did not. His main complaint seemed to be related to the fact that Charlotte talks too much. I have to admit that she does talk a lot. Actually, she talks non-stop and usually on a tangent of the related subject.

So, I'm still cleaning and sorting. Sam is still talking about all the reason why he should be able to do history/science/art/etc. completely separate from his sister when something catches his attention. He opens up a crate full of math texts and sees CDROMS.

Sam, "You can do math on the computer? Why hasn't anyone ever told me about this??"

The product he found was Big Sis' and Big Bro's Teaching Textbooks Algebra program. He goes on to explain that Math U see is just a little too " little kid" for his tastes and that he really doesn't like the blocks.

Hmmmm. MUS has been working quite well, and I am not especially interested in changing a program that is working. However, one thing that I learned with my older son is that young men do better when they have some ownership with their schoolwork. So I got Sam on the Teaching Textbook website and let him take a look.

He liked what he saw and copied the placement test. He took the placement test and stated that he wants to do this! Hmmmm. Technically, I could just switch him over. We are almost completed with a level of MUS, and will be shortly making a math text order. I tell him that I will think about it.

I'm still cleaning and sorting. Sam is still talking about the really cool math on the computer and doing school without his sister's help. He sees something called Spelling Power. He pulls it out and takes a look. I'm not exactly sure what he sees since Spelling Power is this monstrosity of a book but he starts asking questions.

Sam, "Was this Big sis' and Big Bro's spelling book? Why didn't you do the tiles with them?"

This catches my interest. Sam has recently completed level 3 of AAS. I am a little leary of doing 2 levels of AAS with 2 different kids. I was toiling with the idea of switching Sam to Spelling Power. I tell him we can do a placement text next school day and try it for a while if he wants. He likes the idea of doing "big kid" spelling and not "little kid" spelling that requires using tiles.

I'm still cleaning and sorting. Sam is still talking about growing up and doing big kid school and not little kids school when he finds the Learning Language Arts through Literature stuff. He pulls out the Blue level and shares it with Charlotte. He shows her how to build words and read the early readers. I'm pondering how he even remembers using this. There they are playing with letter cards and reading when the next question is asked.

Sam, "I always liked this. Why can't I use this instead of the other stuff?"

This prompts me to ask, "What do you like about our school?"

He likes Apologia Astronomy and Story of the World. Charlotte pipes in and states that she does NOT like Story of the World and wants to hear more stories about girls. She claims SOTW world is just too "icky and about boys starting wars."

After a good laugh, I give up finishing cleaning the closet. I have a lot to think about. I was always able to combine my older kids in subject but they were only 15 months difference in age. Sam is an older nine and is transitioning to a logic stage of thinking. Charlotte is a younger six and is still very much a little girl.

So the question becomes would it be tragic to separate the kids in all subjects?

Year 4.5

We made some drastic changes since September both to our content and to our schedule. We are actually spending more time with schoolwork but enjoying our day much more. Sometime in the afternoon, it stops being schoolwork, and it becomes fun stuff that we do as a family.

We do our skill subjects separately and in the morning. This allows me the time to work with each child individually without feeling rushed. We have plenty of time for discussions, and I am able to add in a little extra to their day without overwhelming us.

Sam-age 9
All About Spelling 3
First Language Lessons3
Writing with Ease 3
Math-U-See Delta
Pathway Readers 3

Sam has expressed an interest in astronomy , so we are also doing Apologia Astronomy during this time.

Charlotte-age 6
100 EZ lessons for reading
Math-u-See Alpha
Handwriting without Tears

I also read a separate read aloud with her during this time to practice narrations.

After lunch we work on content subjects.

Story of the World book 1
Self designed science study
Art
Spanish
IEW Poetry Memorization
Literature
Hero Tales
Every Day with God
PE with Family Fitness

I have found that I am spending far more time reading aloud to the kids with this schedule. We now have time to read and discuss subjects at length. We can follow our own interest in subjects. I developed an open ended schedule so that we spend time on each subject but aren't limited on the topics or resource.

History with SOTW. We spend a week on each chapter, and we spend 2 days a week on history. The first day we read the chapter, narrate, work on the map and pictures. The second day we read another book or two on the subject, narrate and do a project. Super easy.

Science. I collected all our science books in one place, and we spend 2 days a week on science. The first day I read 2-4 pages of the book of the week/term, they narrate and list several facts that we learned. We follow up with another book on the topic or do an internet search. The second day we will read another 2-4 pages or another book on the topic. Narrate and list several facts. Do project or experiment. Since making this change, we have spent about several weeks on the human body and have started studying space exploration/astronomy.

Art. I gathered all my different art books. One day a week we pick a book and spend 20 min or so doing a art lesson. Currently we are using Draw Write Now book 1. The second day of art we do a picture study lesson.

Spanish. We are using Flip Flop Spanish in a very low key way. We review the vocabulary and spend a few moments each day using our spanish words. I keep the vocabulary list on the fridge and Big Sis' reviews the words with the kids when she gets home from college each afternoon. We have picked up quite a bit of Spanish in this easy low key way!

IEW Poetry Memorization. We have memorized 6 poems!

Hero Tales/Everyday with God. We read and narrate a story from each resource each day.

Literature. We read aloud during lunch, during our morning AND afternoon schooltime, and before bed. Our current read alouds are Squanto, Charlotte's Web, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Lemonade Trick. Lots of variety!

We gotta do school today?

That whiny voice isn't the children. It is me. I'm burned out!

I took most of the summer off by default; so, that isn't the problem.

I went to my local homeschooling conference, and I got refreshed and excited about this year; so, that isn't the problem.

My curriculum choices are working well for my kids; so, that isn't the problem.

So what is the problem?

It has been a really, really long time since I been in this state of burn out. In fact it has been a decade (!) since I've experienced this level of burnout.

I thought that part of the problem might be the fact that I returned to school to advance my degree. However, I'm on a break from my classes for 2 weeks, and I still have absolutely no desire to do school with the kids.

I spent part of this week re-reading some of my favorite homeschooling books and listening to some of the lectures from the homeschooling conferences in the past. I re-read The Whole Hearted Child by the Clarksons, and I'm starting to get a clearer picture of what is the problem. I've re-read portions of Charlotte Mason's Original Series and it becomes even clearer. I've listened to talks by A. Pudewa and the Clarksons from THSC conference, and it is now crystal clear.

I've become a check-the-box homeschooler. I have strayed so far from my vision for my home and homeschool that homeschooling is drudgery for me. I have so many boxes to check that I cannot do or add or experience anything remotely individualized or unique with my children without overwhelming my day.

Changes that I've made in the past have been done to find a solution that works for my children. I now find myself in the situation in which I need to make some changes so it works for me.

Despite that it is working to separate the children, I need to find a way to combine them.

Despite the curriculum options are working for the children, I need to find a way to change them.

I reviewed my curriculum options and resources, and I've decided to make a few changes to the flow of our day. I will keep the kids separate while working on our content subjects. I will combine them on our discussion and discovery subjects. I will stop viewing this year as "Sam's only year to work through ECC" and instead view ECC as a resource to pull our discussion and discovery subjects. This might mean that we do not do everything that is scheduled in ECC. This might also mean that we do other activities that are not scheduled in ECC.


Our discussion and discovery subjects schedule is going to be:

Day 1.
1. Bible reading( pulled from ECC) - narrate and discuss
2. Geography/atlas readings (pulled from ECC)- narrate and discuss
3. Memorization- Memory verses (ECC) and Poetry( IEW's Linguistic Develpment through Poetry Memorization)
4. Art Activity ( from a variety of sources)
5. Music (ECC or composer study)

Day 2.
1.Bible- narrate and discuss
2. Science readings (ECC)- narrate and discuss
3. Memorization
4. Geography game(ECC)
5. Picture Study (resources from MFW1 or study artist of quarter)

Day 3.
1. Bible
2. A-Z Geography activity (ECC)
3. Memorization
4. Music
5. Nature Study

Day 4.
1.Bible
2. Spanish-New lesson (reviewed throughout week)
3. Memorization
4. Geography game or puzzle
5. Science reading/experiments (ECC or other sources).

I need to return to my CM style of homeschooling. I'm not sure if these changes will help me get out of my funk. I hope so. I will give it a go for a month.

The disappearing classroom....

This summer we relocated our classroom from an upstairs spare room back down to the dining room. For years and years, we had school in the dining room and I used to say that our home was decorated in "Early American Homeschool". We were used to the homeschool clutter......bookshelves with crates and papers, stacks of books on the dining room table, maps and posters on the wall.

No more! I really liked having my dining room look like a dining room, and I have no real desire to return to "Early American Homeschool" decorating style.

So what to do? School must be relocated because the "spare" room is becoming a boys bedroom. So I converted an adjacent coat closet into a school closet and created the disappearing classroom.

Here is how it works. I pull out the supplies for the day. I have an organizer for all our pencils, pens, crayons, scissors, etc. I have a magazine holder to keep paper sized posters handy and visible. I put all the supplies needed for the day in a crate so it is all readily accessible. I place our AAS spelling board on the side table. All in all, takes me less than a minute.

After we are done with school, I do a quick view of the next days schedule. I place all books needed for the next day into the crates. Then I place everything back into the closet.

I still have our workboxes but I am using them differently. Each drawer has all the books for a specific subject on our MFW grid. There is a drawer for all the books used in the Bible grid, another for all the geography books, and another for each and every section. This makes it easy for me to get each specific book for each subject.

Here is our disappearing classroom....

Bummer Summer

We were off to such a great start! Big Bro' came in for a visit the first two weeks of May then the bummer summer started.

The rest of May and June were dominated by illness and family visits. Urgent care visits, weeks laying around on the couch with sick kids. It's all a blur. We had company the few weeks that everyone was feeling well. Very little school happened in May or June.

July started well and then I got sick. My second ER visit of the summer resulted in a 4 day hospital stay, a surgery, and a couple of follow up procedures. Bummer Summer!

We usually get quite a bit of school done and spend several days at the beach each week. This summer we watched way too much tv and got out of the habit of doing school.We only did 5 weeks of school since my last post.....actually 4 1/2 weeks since April 27 but who's counting.

During this little bummer summer season of our lives I made a few decisions and discoveries.

1. Charlotte really loves 100 Easy lessons. I had taught my older children to read with this resource but found that it interfered too much with Sam's Speech Therapy. Charlotte doesn't have any speech issues and 100 EZ lessons is a perfect little fit while she matures before using MFW 1st.

2. We are doing the parts of MFW K that we skipped this past year when Charlotte was tagging along with Adventures. This is providing us with enough activities to keep us going until April.

2. Sam's reading level advance 2 grade levels! I spent this past year slowing down reading intruction and much of what I wrote about was in regards to Sam's reading. I now have proof that it worked! We will continue our reading plan.

3. Sam has improved from struggling to write "He was a tall man." to doing all of his writing in school. This is so awesome. So we will continue our writing plan.

4. Sam enjoyed using Writing Strands but we will put this resource on the shelf for a year. I want him to be able to use WS independantly and he is almost ....but not quite ....there.

We have started the process of getting back into the habit of school. The bummer summer is behind us, and we are looking foward to cooler weather and a healthier family!

ECC-Week 3

This week we did our trial of separating the kids. Charlotte did K and then Sam did ECC. The plan was to start 30 minutes earlier which did not happen. I still want to get done by lunchtime but I had a hard time with breaking my usual morning routine.

Guess what happened? I still finished up about the same time! I can't really explain it. I guess I was really just spending that same amount of time trying to negotiate the needs of two kids who are completely different levels. It is the strangest thing. I'm still amazed!

So what did we do this week.....

Charlotte worked through her activities without distractions. When her brother is not in the room, she can be quite the little scholar! She read "The Sled" and "Sam's Pet" from MFW K. We enjoyed "The Story about Ping" and activities from FIAR. Good K week!

Sam is really taking off with ECC. One of the activities for this week was to review the 50 states. We did this by putting together this GeoPuzzle. It was easy to see the improvement over the week as we got faster as finding each individual state puzzle piece!



We went ahead and started FLL 3 instead of trying to finish up FLL 2. We did the first 3 lessons and Sam seems to enjoy having the lessons in a workbook format.

We did another 2 lessons in Writing Strands. His sentence was " The clown sees nine-year-old Lola flying a yellow kite on a beautiful spring day." Oh....happy mama! He has come a long way in the last 6 months. I am so glad that we stepped back and focused on copywork this past year.

We completed lesson 24 of AAS book 2. He was a little annoyed that there wasn't a hard and fast rule about using au or aw in the middle of the word. We will be reviewing this concept.

The only real glitch that came up this week was Global Art. The activity that I picked to do this week was Sand Drawing. I gathered our supplies and explained the activity. I really thought I chose an activity that was "boy-friendly".

Sam " You. want. me. to. craft?" ( Imagine him asking in a real, slow and quiet voice).

Me-"No, not really crafting....it's just an activity that corresponds to the area that we are studying. It'll be fun!"

Sam-" I'm a boy and I don't craft. Well, I only craft with scouts and it's real boy stuff and I have to do it to get the badge." (imagine a higher pitch voice and really,really fast)

Me- " Well let's just give this a go and see how it is. There are some really cool stuff in this book." ---by this time Charlotte is full fledge into the project. Sand is flying everywhere.

Sam thumbs through Global Art. " Looks like a craft book. A girl craft book. I don't like crafting."

At this point I have 2 options. Force the kid to do the craft which totally defeats the purpose of the project or find another art alternative. So we left Charlotte to her crafting and went to look at our art options.

He chose Artistic Pursuits. We used this resource years ago before we started MFW and I do remember him liking it. I have the book and supplies so we will try it and see how it works out. Sam has already done this particular book but we will work through it again before investing in another in the series.

So far we are 0-3 for Art and MFW. Drawing with Children was a bust but in all fairness it was a bust with the older kids too. I Can do All Things was a bust with ADV. Last year, we really just kind of skipped doing art lessons. Global Art appears to be a bust for it's intended purpose. Looking ahead at " God and the History of Art" and I suspect this will be a bust as well for Sam. Big Sis' used this resource as a teen! Big Sis' used about every art resource available because she is naturally artistic. Sam is not. If Artistic Pursuits is the resource he enjoys using then we will probably stick with Artistic Pursuits throughout the rest of his art career.

All is not lost. Global Art will go into Charlotte's Arts and Crafting basket and it will give her lots of new ideas of activities to fill up the afternoon.

Charlotte's Kindergarten

We've made a change to the flow of Charlotte's Kindergarten Year. We started out the year having her tag-a-long with Adventure but now that Sam is doing ECC it is harder to combine the kids. So we will finish up the year with....

100 Easy Lessons

MFW K- doing all the parts we missed during Kindergarten part 1.

MUS Primer

Handwriting without Tears

We may well continue with this plan until next Winter. Charlotte has an August birthday but should have been born well past the cut off for K. She would not be starting K until this upcoming August if she was PS! I want to give her as much time as she needs to mature before tackling 1st grade.

Week 2- ECC

We are getting into a good rhythm with ECC. I have been able to do each week in 4 days without any difficulty. Sam in enjoying himself!

The only downside is that I'm not going to be able to include Charlotte as much as we were with Adventures. I think it is just going to be easier to plan on doing K with her and plan on doing ECC separately with Sam. *big sigh* She is a distraction and the material is just a little over her head. I can read and summarize everything to keep her engaged or I can teach to him and lose her. Since this is going to be his only time working through ECC I need to teach to him so he can get the full benefit.

So far the biggest hits for Charlotte have been music, art, science projects (not the readings) and Kingdom Tales. We will keep her involved with these.

If I continue to summarize the science reading during our time outdoors then I will not need to plan on doing a separate science with her. This is easier than it sounds! I keep a running list of topics that Sam and I have read with Properties of Ecosystems, then in the afternoon I try to point out examples. The key is to make it seem natural and not like a lesson. So far she has added the words habitat and niche into her vocabulary and I didn't have to try to get a 5 yo to sit through Properties of Ecosystems.

This next week, I am going to try to get Charlotte started a little earlier and do all of her K stuff. Perhaps Sam can do bookbasket, math drill and math during this time. I will send her on her way and work through the main parts of ECC with Sam. We will try this a few weeks and make adjustments if needed.

I decided to go ahead and start Writing Strands 3 with Sam instead of waiting. He has been enjoying that as well. Ok....maybe enjoying writing is a bit of stretch..... he has been doing WS3 without complaint and impressed with his outcome. Yesterday, he had to write 5 sentences adding information each time. To make this process a little less painful, I wrote alternating sentences so he only had to write 3 of the 5 sentences. Lesson learned---he could write an interesting, long sentence with lots of information and it didn't hurt....too much. No more "He was a tall man." sentences!

We forgot to do the Nature Walk exercise from week 1 last week. I sent Sam outdoors to mark off our 1 foot square so we could check our Backyard Habitat and he included his favorite climbing tree in his square. Most kids probably do this experiment and look down...dig around in the ground....check out the little bugs. Sam did this experiment and looked UP! He spent an hour up in the tree keeping track of all the birds.

Of course, no blog account of week 2 of ECC would be complete without a picture of the World Cake. Big Sis' helped Sam and Charlotte with the decorating of the cake. Big Sis' wanted to know why I didn't use MFW ECC when she was 8 and she has insisted on being included in any future cooking plans that are included with our lessons. College students like to eat!

Year 4

Sam's Year 4- age 9


MFW's Exploring Countries and Cultures.



All About Spelling-currently on Level 3


Math-U-See Delta


First Language Lessons 3


Writing With Ease 3


Pathway Readers

Adventures is done!

Sam is super proud of his American History notebook! Adventures is an awesome year and this year has been one of our best homeschooling years. I've been homeschooling since 1994 so that's saying something!

To celebrate what do we do? Start Exploring Countries and Cultures of course! Here he is filling out his passport application.

We are already looking at ways to include Charlotte in ECC. While we were doing ADV, we followed the grid and called her back into the room to participate in the state sheets/history reading and science projects. I think this might have set up some bad habits for her. I don't really want her to get in the habit of ....do a little school, play toys, do a little school, watch tv, etc. I want her to get in the habit that she does school then plays.

So I have a preliminary rough draft of how I'm going to break up the grid.

Charlotte -----------------------Sam

phonics -----------------------Complete book of Animals or bookbasket

---------------------------Bible------------------------------------------

----------------------Geography (easier selections)-----------------

---------------------Science ( easier sections)------------------------

Math/Handwriting ------------------------------Math

She is now done and he completes the rest of the grid including the more difficult portions of Geography and Science.

I am having him do Math drill while I make lunch . I also plan to do the read-aloud portion during lunch. I want to save the art projects and science projects for the afternoon so we can spend more time working on these without feeling rushed to get done before lunch.

We are only on day 2 of ECC so it is a little early to state how well my plan is working. We are currently spending about 1 hour working together in the morning with another 1.5 hours with Sam finishing up his work. So far we have spent 30minutes in the afternoon with projects.

I still haven't decided what I'm going to do for Charlotte once she turns 6. Her birthday is mid-August but she was premature and her due date was late September. So if she were attending public school she would be going into K this year so I'm not in a huge rush to get her going with 1st grade. Letting her mature a bit seems to be the trick. My goal is to be getting into the stride with 1st grade when she is about 6.5 years old which will be next Feb/March. I have a little bit of time to decide on resources and get her in a better habit for school.

I did find a neat resource to make ECC a little more friendly for the 5/6yo crowd. Timberdoodle is selling Geopuzzles and I plan on having each corresponding puzzle available as we study a particular region.

We are looking for to this journey!

Reading.....again.

We did a little experimenting this week. What a difference 6 months can make! Charlotte really enjoyed using the AAS board and tiles to do her phonics lessons. I had attempted to do this last fall but it was a bit messy.

I've also found out that I should be able to purchase just the MFW 1 phonics portion when I go to our homeschool convention this summer. So instead of a $50 purchase it is substantially less.

So maybe I will be able to use MFW 1 phonics after all. So for now, we will continue to plug along with MFW K.

Where we are now...

We are having a great year! Adventures has been a lot of fun. We are in a good rhythm with Sam. Charlotte is adding to the mix well.

One of my goals this year was to get the kids working together side by side during school. Obviously, we have been successful!

This last quarter I was still searching for an English program that works for Sam. We had tried PLL with limited success and some frustration. LLATL with limited success and some frustration.

After a little deliberating I decided to go back and retry FLL and guess what....success. He is a very happy camper using FLL. He has memorized list of helping verbs and can easily pick out the helping verbs in a sentence. I'm not entirely sold that this is a necessary skill for a 8yo but after dealing with the frustrations of other programs, I am completely happy that he is frustration free! So we will stick with FLL.

So---finally----after several years we have finally found curricula that seems to be doing the trick for Sam! Yeah for us!

For anyone out there that follows this blog the winners are:

Math U See

All About Spelling

First Language Lessons

Writing with Ease

My Father's World

Whew. I sure was stubborn about using some of these products. Ultimately, you use what works and get over yourself! The general gameplan now for Sam is to work through these individual product's sequence over the next few years.

So now what do we do? Well, we might start Latin next year so I get to do a little research about Latin curriculum. It's exciting that there is more out there than Latina Christina.

I also have this 5yo girl who is coming up in the school ranks and we get to do the whole process over again. buwahahhaha! Actually, no we aren't. I'll just stick with the MUS/AAS/WWE/FLL/MFW line up with her since I already own the products and just start folding her into the rhythm of our day.

Currently for Charlotte her day goes something like this....

---- work through the phonics portion of MFW K.

---- do a calendar activity and a MUS page.

---- do a page in Handwriting without Tears.

----hang out in the school room and participate as able with Sam's studies.

This has worked pretty well. She typically does the Bible portion, state study or history reading, science and listens to the read aloud of Adventures. When Sam is working on LA or Math she works at the little table doing crafts or painting. Sometimes she gets bored or makes too much noise and I send her into another room to have a tea party with her stuff animals. As the year has progressed, she has gradually spent more time participating and less time in the other room with her toys. Her Kindegarten year is a little different than Sam's even though we still do many of the same types of activities. We still go outdoors, do nature study and have a lot of free time for imaginative play. All in all, it has been a good year for her.

She doesn't have Sam's speech motor problem so we don't have that particular issue to work around. She is ACTIVE. I have put the big exercise ball to use with her when she is especially active. This usually gets us a few more minutes of attention and quiet if she is bouncing or rolling around on the ball.

She enjoys the phonics portion of MFW K. There is a lot of cutting and glueing which seems to be her specialty. We did have to slow down the phonics for her because she was getting frustrated when the lessons started getting longer. She is just now 5 1/2 years old so this isn't a great concern. Day 4 seemed to be especially long and we had to break that day's lesson into 2 days. So, here we are with a 5 1/2 year old on lesson 15 of MFW K and wondering where do we want to be when she is 6.

I already know that I plan on using the AAS/FLL/WWE combo that works well for Sam. It seems logical to just start her out with these products this next year. So I only need a phonics program.

Do I spend the $50 on MFW 1 student pages when I only need a phonics program? hmmmm.

So I break out MFW 1 and take a good look at it. I didn't teach Sam to read with MFW 1, we used it to re-inforce phonics. MFW 1 worked great for this purpose. So I took a good hard look at it, thinking about Charlotte. I came to the conclusion that there was no possible way I could make this work for her next year. That's probably too harsh....I could make it work if I was willing to spend a great deal of time tweaking and adjusting it. Do I really want to spend $50 knowing I'm going to really have to tweak it significantly and omit large portions of it?

Bottom line, I don't feel confident that I can teach my active child to read with the phonics of MFW 1. I do think that I can use it to re-inforce phonics but not as a stand alone program.

So the question becomes....what do I use? and do I go ahead and make the switch now?

Update on everything else....

I have already updated Sam's reading and writing progress for this quarter.

MFW Adventures is a wonderful resource and it has been so refreshing to not have to do all the lesson planning!

File folders and workboxes have made our day flow so smoothly and I will continue to use these organizational tools.

Math-U-See continues to work well.

All About Spelling continues to work well.

We have organization, reading, writing, math , spelling, and our content studies under control and moving forward. The only aspect of our plan for Sam that is missing is grammar.

We tried MFW's recommendation of PLL (which would have worked great for the older kids) but Sam found it cumbersome and confusing. This quarter we have tried LLATL ( which worked great for the older kids) and although it was a better resource for Sam than PLL it really hasn't been great. He completed the exercises but there was not enough review and practice for him to feel competent with a skill. He would actually say something along the lines , " I thought I was working on x so why are we doing y today."

This comment forced me to look at the resources that work well for him. MUS is mastery based, WWE is predictable, AAS has lots of review, our workbox system keeps everything organized.

Mastery based, predictable, organized with review until he feels competent.

Sam's criteria for a resource is that it is organized, predictable and there is enough review that he actually learns the material presented.

For skill subjects, Sam does not seem to need or want a lot of variety. He wants the facts and an opportunity to master the facts. I need to work with this.


No wonder Sam found PLL cumbersome and confusing. PLL is a wonderful open ended resource with a lot of variety with a goal of exposure to proper English. Great resource but doesn't meet Sam's criteria. LLATL is a wonderful resource for studying aspects of English in context of a snippet of literature. It is more of a spiral approach to English, has a lot of variety with little review. LLATL doesn't really meet Sam's criteria either.

So the question is......what elementary grammar program does?

I have used First Language Lessons with Sam when he was 6. We dropped it when we found MFW 1st. Honestly I found it a bit dry and boring so I was really just looking for a reason to drop it! However, if it meets Sam's criteria for a skill subject resource I need to get over my prejudice.

This quarter, we will use FLL2 since it is a resource that I already own. Sometime during this quarter, I will go to the local homeschool store and take a good long hard look at FLL 3 and FLL 4 to see if it will meet Sam's criteria.

Update on writing.

In July, we went back to the basics of copywork, dictation and oral narrations. My son had completed a written summary of George Washington that consisted of only 5 words.

After 9 weeks of using WWE 2 as the backbone of our writing program, he has gone from tears and frustration to get the sentence " He was a tall man." on paper to...

-doing several sentences from dictation from AAS daily.
-copywork . This is a typical example....."I shall give you half an hour to be up, dressed, washed, teeth cleaned, pajamas folded, windows opened, and beds turned back."
-No tears and frustration! His comment today was "Writing isn't so bad after all."

Progress is being made!

Plans for this next quarter is to introduce the dictations exercises from WWE.

A day of reading..

Our revamped reading program is working great!

We do some choral reading with our bible study. He is reading with much more confidence during this time.

We spend a few minutes with a reading drill with Phonics Pathway. These drills are helping him to get out of the habit of guessing the words.

We spend time every afternoon re-reading a book that he has already read. He is getting in the habit of reading a favorite story just for fun. I do not make him sound out any words during this time. If he needs help I just tell him the word and move on. I want this to be a low-stress, fun reading opportunity.

We are taking our time working through AAS. This allows all the rules to really cement in his brain and they are helping him to tackle new words.

I am reading high interest read alouds to him throughout the day. If he loses interest in a story we drop it. I want him to get excited about all the great books out there.

We have slowed down the reading of Pathway Readers. We spend 2 days per story. The first day we take the new words and study them. We mark up each new word....
-circle all consonant and vowel teams
-divide into syllables
-determine if the vowels are long or short
-and finally, read each word.

We alternate paragraphs while reading. He reads one and I read the next. After we read the story we do the "after the story" exercise in the corresponding Pathway Reader workbook.

The second day, we do the "before the story" exercise in the book. This is usually some sort of word study exercise. We re-read our words that we marked up the day before and review as needed. We re-read the entire story but this time I start first.

This is the result of this plan....





...a boy picking up a book during his free time.

Charlotte and Reading.

So I've been experimenting with Charlotte and reading.

First choice was using All About Spelling and adapting it to use a reading program. The first problem.....adapting....I don't like doing it. The second problem....busy fingers + little tiles that I would like to keep in order for Sam's spelling lesson.....who needs that drama on a daily basis? We will re-introduce AAS when we are ready for a spelling program.

Second choice was Phonics Pathways. PP is working GREAT for Sam for a quick phonics drill/review. It is crazy boring for an active kid who is learning to read. I want to help her develop good habits for school not have a daily battle. PP was going to be a battle.....sit still....look here.....

I still had MFW K. I had looked at it and decided against using it because I really just need a phonics program. So I took the phonics worksheets, placed them in our file folders and tried it for a couple of weeks. Good fit! The lessons are short, varied and multisensory. It is a little "crafty" with lots of cut and paste which just happen to be a specialty of Charlotte....she LOVES crafty. She gets to touch, cut, paste, and learn a little about letters.

It keeps her interest and she is developing good habits for school. What more could a mama want?