Preschooler at work

Friendship bracelets made with pipecleaners and ponybeads have always been a favorite activity with my preschool age kids. My oldest daughter used to make matching ones for all her dolls and horses. Today was Charlotte's first time working on this project and she was content to practice putting on the beads and pulling them off but we did get one finished project.

Birthday Boy!

Charlotte's Bad Grade

Sam gets out the attribute blocks and calls for his sister, " Charlotte, it is time for Shape School . Please come to the table."

Charlotte says, " OK."

Sam pulls out a block and says, " Charlotte, say blue circle."

Charlotte says, " No."

Sam pulls out another block and says, " OK, Charlotte, then say yellow triangle."

Charlotte says, " No."

Sam sighs heavily, pulls out another block and say, " Can you say red rectangle?"

Charlotte giggles and says, "No." She leaves to play kitchen.

Sam gets a piece of paper and a pencil. He writes a giant F on it and gives it to Charlotte and says, " You get a F in Shape School for today."

A CM Reading program ?- Early planning

I'm at a real crossroads with reading instruction. I spent some time yesterday reviewing LLATL -blue which I intended to use and decided against it.....far too much busy work and the reading selection are less than stellar. 100 Ez lesson isn't a good fit for Sam and LLATL isn't a good fit for me and I absolutely refuse to purchase another reading/phonics program so I'm going to create my own with Charlotte Mason suggestions.

I found my old, ancient copy of A Home Start in Reading by Ruth Beechick ( which was my first homeschooling purchase back in 1994!) and highlighted everything that Sam knows and can blend with ease. This may have been the least useful thing I have done because nowhere in Charlotte's writing have I yet to find a specific list of phonics rules to teach.

I read through Home Education pgs. 199-222 highlighting as I read.

"Accustom him from the first to shut his eyes and spell the word he has made. This is important. Reading is not spelling, nor is it necessary to spell in order to read well; but the good speller is the child whose eye is quick enough to take in the letters which compose it, in the act of reading off a word, and this is a habit to be acquired from the first: accustom him to see the letters in the word, and he will do without effort." Home Education pg. 204

"The teacher must be content to proceed very slowly, securing the ground under her feet as she goes." pg. 205

"But here is another advantage of slow and steady progress––the saying of each word receives due attention, and the child is trained in the habit of careful enunciation. "pg. 208

I do not have a specific day-to-day plan but instead a day-to-day goal. I will train Sam to "see the word". I will proceed at Sam's pace. I will make sure he is trained in the habit of careful enunciation of the words in our reading lessons.

"Definitely, what is it we propose in teaching a child to read? (a) that he shall know at sight, say, some thousand words; (b) That he shall be able to build up new words with the elements of these. Let him learn ten new words a day, and in twenty weeks he will be to some extent able to read, without any question as to the number of letters in a word. For the second, and less important, part of our task, the child must know the sounds of the letters, and acquire power to throw given sounds into new combinations. "pg 216-217

It will take some time to adjust my thinking from phonics rules to Charlotte's rules. I will probably use my little phonics chart to see progress in our reading program for Sam. Perhaps this will not be a necessary step the second time around with our next reader.

I've chosen Treadwell's The Primer as our text. The first selection is "The Little Red Hen" which will give us 30 words.... some of which Sam already knows by sight or has built with our letter cards. I will continue to use the letter cards that I have laminated from LLATL-blue and use index cards to make our word cards.

I will try to keep each day fresh and different. We will build our words with letter cards, build new words( sound, pound, etc) , make new sentences leaving blanks for words we don't know ( to pique interest per CM),recreate the actual text with our word cards, etc. As I reread CM's writing and the PR articles I will surely come up with new ideas and refine the ones I already have.

I welcome any comment or suggestion as I begin this new direction in our reading program!

Outdoor Hour Challenge #15

We were traveling the Friday that we would have normally done the Outdoor Hour Challenge #15. Nature study helps the miles go by! We id'd our trees that we saw on the way.....Loblolly pines and Southern Magnolia were the ones we saw the most frequently. We counted Egrets that we saw under the Basin Bridge portion of 1-10....37. We realized that yellow Daylillies are a favorite at roadside parks because they were at every single one that we stopped at from Texas to Florida.

Ahh vacation! We spent the week at "The Beach House" on Amelia Island. This is the second time we have stayed at this particular house and I suspect we will head back sometime in the future because we have not explored every nook and cranny of the island. Fabulous place to visit for nature lovers. We of course spent alot of time at the beach. Charlotte's favorite activity was playing in the tide pools. Sam loved it all.....riding wave, flying kits, building sand castles, crawling aroung the sand like a crab from Burgess' Seashore book that we have been reading.

We also spent alot of time exploring Fort Clinch State Park. Florida has the BEST state parks and we usually spend quite a bit of time in them every time we visit. Fort Clinch has a fort that Sam loved, a beach area, a river area, a play ground and hiking trails with real Florida alligators. Yes we did see one but didn't stay to take a picture!



What are these kids looking at?


Red Ear Sliders. We were warned that the was an aligator that has been spotted in this water so we stayed high up on the bridge on today's visit.

Once back home we went to our butterfly garden in hopes to draw some flowers. Sam was absolutely not interested in drawing flowers. I will use the resources that Barb-Harmony Art Mom suggested in Outdoor Hour Challenge #15 to continue drawing in my journal and perhaps Sam will join me.

The butterfly garden is in full-bloom. The flowers are taller than Charlotte. You can barely see Sam in this picture but he is there standing tall trying to see me over the blooms.

Quarter Update-Spring 2008

Reading-worked out way to lesson 35 with 100 EZ lessons before switching gears. We are back to using LLATL blue doing 4 lessons per week just finished Part 2 lesson 6. All the little pieces that drive me nuts fulfill something in Sam so we will continue using this.

MUS- currently on lesson 27. Will finish Primer then start Alpha this summer. MUS is a winner all the way around.

Handwriting-Finished HWT Kindergarten.

Speech- Almost done! We are weaning off Speech Therapy and are currently only attending 1x per month. Speech Therapy is our blankie and we aren't quite ready to give it up. I need a few more months of security.

Sam has really been enjoying our new books especially Burgess' Seashore book. SOTW co-op has been a hit except when we meet at the park......he loses interest quickly when he sees his younger friends running around and playing!

Art with Big Sis' just didn't happen but we have an Art Class during the time our history co-op meets so my desire to add some art/drawing will be met with this activity.

During the summer quarter we will continue to transition to Year 1 but not extend the length of our school day. Our daily schedule will flip/flop and we'll start adding our Year 1 books to our reading rotation.

Mondays schedule - schoolwork in the mornings so we can attend our co-op in the afternoon.

T/TH Mornings will be pool time in the morning with schooltime in the afternoon.

Friday mornings we will do our nature study in the morning with schooltime in the afternoon.

Our Year 1 booklist

Daily we'll work on

-LA- LLATL blue lesson with a copywork selections chosen from HWT or LLATL

-MUS lesson

-Speech work/Memory work 1 poem this quarter

-Daily reading with narrations

-review Spanish

-listen to composer during playtime

Weekly

Monday

-SOTW/ Art Co-op.

Tuesday

-Handicraft activity

Thursday

-Artist Study

-Introduce new Spanish phrase or words

Friday

-Nature study

I have made our summer schedule and for 9 weeks of school and I used only 2 sheets of paper. I have one page that includes all of our daily activities to check off using Donna Youngs Quarter Planner. The second sheet I created with AO Year 1 reading schedule that I tweaked to allow for our substitutions and to make sure we have only 1 reading selection per day. I kept our daily activities separate so I could re-copy that sheet for each quarter if we don't have any major changes during the year.

Time for a few weeks break-Should start the summer schedule June 16.

Green Hour #14

Pressing Flowers- Green Hour #14

The flower of the week was our Hibiscus. We reviewed the anther and filiment and our new flower part is the stigma which is quite prominant on a Hibiscus. Our plant had flowers in all stages from buds to faded blooms. We also took a good look at our Huisache-Daisy and were able to see them in all stages as well.
Sam watched the video from Green Hour #14 , helped me gather supplies and gathered our Huisache-Daisy and Hibiscus. He was upset that there weren't more variety in our backyard! Charlotte brought us a few Dandelions to press as well. Sam is thinking about what to do with these flowers after they are pressed - his suggestions was to make bookmarks.....we'll see how they turn out.

This was the simplest flower press to make! He could do it all by himself!