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?