Kindergarten!

We officially started Kindergarten on Monday! :)

This month we are learning about the life cycle of a chick growing in her egg. We are on Day 4 of that, and it's very exciting for Bug every day to open the next egg and see what is happening in there. We also look online to read about what is happening on the microscopic level. A visit to the ostrich ranch (couldn't find a local farm with chickens that we could visit, so this will have to suffice!) is planned in a couple of weeks as well.

We started Hooked on Phonics, Kindergarten Level I, and last night Bug read her first book!! What a great program, and it makes me all verklempt to see her reading whole sentences on her own. We all enjoy it, even the Monkey. When we are doing the DVD portion of the lesson, she rolls over and just stares at the TV. Maybe she will be reading by the time she's 2. :)

We are also looking at our state and learning about neat things going on throughout. I think we will plan some visits to some state attractions this month.

Here is a picture of Bug working on her puzzle, with the workbox set up in the background. The puzzle was the last thing we did, so the bins have all been put into the big basket for the day. The way it works -- Bug takes her number from her strip (we are just doing 6 boxes, so she has 1-6) and velcroes it to the number of the bin she is going to do first. She takes out the "work" in the bin and does it, and then tosses everything into the basket.

.

The Monkey likes to roll around on the ground and scoot (she has chosen to do a two-armed, one-leg body pull instead of crawling) to various toys and just hang out while we do school. Her favorite thing is to scoot over to the workbox shelves and pull it around on the tile, making a delightful noise. :) Here she is sitting at the little table with us:

I hope everyone had a fabulous New Year!! My new year's resolution is to update this blog more! I want to look back at the end of this school year and get a real picture of how everything went.

Hubby and I did a mid-year check-in with each other and we both agree that homeschooling has been wonderful. Bug is thriving - she isn't socially awkward or emotionally stunted. She makes friends easily and is quite the social butterfly. She soaks up new information so quickly, and has such a thirst for knowledge. She has been changing a lot over the past month - she now seems like a 5 year old. We still have 5 months to go until she truly is 5, but I can suddenly see this shift in her appearance and her behavior. She seems more and more grown-up every day.

And for me - I feel like I have gotten a handle on things more and have more realistic expectations for how my days will go. I have created a binder with pages for each section of the day, with an outline of how things should go ideally - a morning rhythm, afternoon, and evening. It helps me keep perspective. I also have dropped the mentality of "We will do homeschool when I get this house clean/work done/yada yada yada". Life is always going to be messy and in the way, so this week I have been focusing on doing homeschool during our "homeschool time" (as dictated by the aforementioned binder :) ), doing my work-work during work-work time, and housework during housework time, etc. AND RELAXING during relaxing time. :) That is one of the important components!!! It's very hard to sit and put my feet up while the house is still cluttered. But I'm getting there. I never thought that would be something I strive for, but there you have it.

I feel on top of things this week and like I have a healthy balance. I need to remember that feeling and bottle it up!! That's why this blog helps. I can look back and see what I was thinking/feeling that put me in that space at the time.

One last thing I have started doing - writing down what we do each day. This is partly for my husband so he can see what we are doing, but mainly so I can keep a record and on the days I feel like I didn't get anything done, I can see that I did. Even if it felt chaotic and cluttered and frenzied, I can see that we spent some quality time together. I'm just writing down the "school" stuff we do, including any park or dance/gymnastics time - that counts as PE right? :) Here is a picture of our week so far:

The binder says it's time for a walk, so a-walking we must go! :) Happy Thursday.

Snowmen!! (on paper at least)

We finished up the Pre-K Handwriting Without Tears letters today. They were all capital letters, and Bug has really done a great job mastering all of them. We had 5 letters left, and she just plowed through them this morning, along with a couple supplemental pages to reinforce each one. Now we just have to finish working on writing #6-10 and we will be officially finished with the Pre-K HWOT book, and ready for K!

We also did a thematic unit today, which is always nice. I like having a package deal sometimes, where there are several activities within one theme. This one was FREE, which made it even nicer. :)

The theme was "Brr it's cold!". Even though it's not cold here (mid-70s), we like to do activities with snow and snowmen. :)

This unit had shapes and numbers:



Beginning word sounds:



And patterns:



Very fun. And easy on me! :)

As I mentioned in my last post, this past month has been rough. Trying to find our groove with this whole homeschooling thing has been harder than I would have thought. My home office has been re-organized to better suit how I use it nowadays. I've basically done an overhaul of the way I used to be set up, based on what I learned during the first two months of homeschooling. My approach now vs. my approach on 9/13 when we first started is a complete 180.

For anyone out there reading this who is considering homeschooling, my biggest advice would be to go easy on yourself at the beginning. Dive in wholeheartedly, definitely, but also know that things will not go the way you expect. I started out trying to re-create a preschool classroom in our home. That does not work for us. I thought it would all be neat and tidy and there would be "regular" time and "school" time. That is not the way our days go.

Every moment throughout the day can be "school". We have been homeschooling since the day Bug was born. Sometimes deliberately, through activities found online or through learning toys. But usually? Just through the way we talk to her and the places we go. When this clicked for me, that continuing into pre-K and Kindergarten was just an extension of what we were doing before, and not some brand new beast that I had to conquer, I felt that "click" of understanding. An "a-ha" moment, if you will.

My Type A self is learning how to approach all of this in a new way that keeps the chaos at bay, but also allows me to be less than perfect. And this isn't just with regards to homeschooling. Adjusting to two kids has been challenging. At the end of the day, the dishes aren't always going to be done and my house isn't always going to be put back together. Even just typing that sentence is hard for me, but my expectations have shifted, and by aiming for a little less than perfection (ha), I find I am happier. This translates into homeschooling, too. I don't have a checklist of what items Bug has to learn each week. I know where she is in relation to the standards for Pre-K, K, and 1st grade. I know how she likes to learn, what types of activities work best for her. I focus on those things, and use activities within the range of where she's at, and we have fun with it. With increasing frequency, there are moments when I see her grasp a concept, or when certain activities suddenly become too easy for her. Those moments are my "checklist".

This got long and rambly, but as an extrovert, it helps to get that all out there. And at the end of this "trial year", I can look back and see where I was at this point in time.

Thanks for reading! :)

Still here!!

Holy moly have I been overwhelmed!! The holidays started, the Monkey has become more mobile and doesn't like to take naps, Bug isn't napping at ALL anymore, I have been working a LOT, and I'm tired. :) But -- I am still here and we are still homeschooling. I just have not updated the blog in over a month. I have been struggling to stay on top of everything and get us into a rhythm. I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, so I hope to have time to update the blog sometime this week.

We will be starting "Kindergarten" in January, after the holidays. Bug has mastered all the Pre-K level Standards so we are moving on up. We are working on addition, and I'm going to expand our horizons in the Science area. (Bought some AWESOME math & science stuff at Lakeshore Learning last weekend. *LOVE* that store. Even got an ant farm... eek... leaving set-up of that one up to the hubby.) We also will be working more on reading. Not forcing that one too much (this is one of the areas that I'm a fan of letting it come naturally when the child is ready), but we have been working with sight word flashcards, and Bug seems to have fun with that. When I read to her, she loves to scan the page for words she knows and then pointing to them excitedly and yelling them out. So we are getting there! :)

I'll be back soon... :) Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season.

New (to me!) Stuff

Thanks to my mother-in-law, who retired from the school district this spring, I am now the proud owner of my very own laminator!!! SO exciting. :) Isn't it glorious?? I am a laminating fool this weekend. I think I have a new addiction.

And our other new item is a globe I picked up at a yard sale yesterday for $8. (I love bargains!) I realized on Columbus Day that we really, really need a globe. I printed out a map for that holiday and showed Bug where Columbus sailed... but a globe would have been way cooler. This one is from a retired teacher who had a welder friend that put this together for her. Of course, I did forget to check one tiny thing... if the globe was current. My husband (ever the down-to-earth one to balance out my rose-colored glasses approach to life :) ) asked me when I got home if it had the USSR on it... and um. Yes. Yes it does. So I figure we can use this one to show what the world USED to be like. Right? :) Hey at least it will give Bug an idea of where we are in comparison to other countries. As soon as I put it down, she promptly pointed out where Texas is. Gotta love our Melissa & Doug USA floor puzzle!

I also picked up Monopoly Jr., a bag of science-y items like magnifiers and such, and a cardboard train-making kit. The lady was wonderful - she also threw in a bag of miscellaneous worksheets and bulletin board display materials for free. Retired teacher yard sales are the BEST.

Happy Halloween!

Month #1

Wow that month flew by! :)

The "workbox" method is really working for us. I am going to continue doing it in our modified way for now, and at some point get a more official set up going on. This past week was fantastic -- when we were home and were ready to do some school, we perused the box for the day and picked out something to do. We actually finished up everything on Thursday, though, because the Bug really wanted to spend ALL afternoon doing school. So I found some other things to do Friday.

I joined a local homeschool group through Yahoo a little while ago, and we finally went out for the weekly park day on Tuesday. (It's out of the triple digits now, so I'll venture outside. :) ) Everyone was SO nice and Bug had a great time. They have a weekly PE day that we will try out on Tuesday. It was a big relief to meet some of the moms in person and feel that "click" when you find people you get along with and with whom you feel comfortable. It's not a huge group, which is nice too.

At this point in our journey, I am feeling very excited about homeschooling. It's exhausting at times, but so rewarding and FUN!

A couple cool resources I learned about this week from other homeschooling mamas:

Destination Math - Bug has been zipping through the Units on this -- it's a great online teaching tool for math. This goes along with the Saxon curriculum. We don't use that, but the website works fine on its own. They offer a free one-month trial.

Critical Thinking Co. - SO COOL!!! I'm really excited about this one right now. I printed out a kazillion and two worksheets for this week. (Seriously, a LOT!!)

And I have to share my favorite resource. I first discovered The Mailbox at our local library last year. It had such neat ideas in it, and really got me thinking about what all we could do at home. We got the Preschool issues last year, and now we are at Kindergarten level. Online, I am able to access information for both Pre-K AND Kindergarten, though, which is really nice. Also, my mother-in-law was kind enough to buy us a subscription to the Mailbox Teacher's Helper, which is chock full of worksheets. I could probably plan an entire curriculum just around the Mailbox.

That's all for now. I have a 6 month old who is teething/growing, and is waking up several times a night. So I'm one sleepy mama. :)

Lessons for Week of 10/11

I actually got everything pulled together in a couple hours on Sunday. Hurrah!

Here is everything laid out for the week:



And a breakdown of what we are doing:

Crafts - Columbus Day activities, a book she'll put together called "All About Me", and a mobile that will show the life of a pumpkin from seed to fruit



Worksheets for each day (sure hope I have enough! This child is voracious with the worksheets!) - rhyming words, days of the week, reading readiness, counting, matching, "Listen and Do", etc.



Handwriting Without Tears - reviewing U, C, O, Q, and G with some corresponding activities; working on writing 1 and 2 (1 she has down pat, 2 could use some work - I haven't officially taught her how to write numbers yet)



Activities - rhyming, counting, classifying living/non-living things, science activity re: sun & earth rotation, and sight words activity:



Learning Games




And a couple books with corresponding activities



Should be fun!! We are off to do our Columbus Day lesson and activities now. :)

Workboxes

This is such an experiment!!! I am learning so much about both my daughter and myself through this experience.

As I mentioned before, we are now doing our own thing, and we are loving it. (Side note: Unfortunately, upon scanning the Calvert Pre-K materials, I don't see a ton of stuff that we can use. A lesson to all of you out there -- do not write on your curriculum or start cutting things out until you look through everything to make sure if you want it!!!) I am trying out the idea of workboxes. I like the flexibility and the way it can be tailored to each child. It can be set up in such a way that Bug could independently go over, select something, and do some work on her own. In an organized fashion! (Which you all know I *love*.) If you are interested, Google workboxes - you will get a ton of hits and lots of fun pictures to peruse. I love to see how everyone else organizes their home/learning area, so I could spend hours just looking at that stuff. :)

Instead of rushing out and buying shelves and boxes and setting it up (of course, that's what I'm *dying* to do!! an organizational project yaay!), I am trying it out for a couple weeks to see if it suits us. Here is what I have done so far - a box for each day with that day's activities inside:



As an example -- here is what I have inside Thursday's box:


Hopefully, this weekend I will get the entire week pulled together ahead of time, and I will post pictures and information about what I am planning for each day. The boxes for this week don't include everything I want to do each day. I need to add in Handwriting Without Tears and more activity sheets ahead of time. This week, I have been copying/printing the worksheets as we go.

~~~

Other than playing around with the structure, everything has been going very well. We are in week 4, and while it has been a little overwhelming to juggle everything at times (housework, my job, Children's ministries at church, and the schooling -- and oh yeah a baby!!), I still feel that this is worthwhile and rewarding. I sat down and went through everything, to see where I could create more hours in the day, and we have decided to have a cleaning lady come every other week.

~~~

In the "researching schools" area: I have been looking into BASIS school -- it starts at 5th grade, it's a charter school (FREE!), and it's highly ranked by Newsweek in a national ranking of high schools. I called them this week to see how they feel about homeschooled kids, and they said they actually get a lot of kids who have been schooled at home. That was excellent news to me. We are also going to visit a charter Montessori school and a private Episcopal school (pricey!) sometime in the next month.

I want to see what else is out there, so we can make the most informed decision next spring when we sit down and discuss what we want to do for Kindergarten.