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?