A typical day outside...

The best thing about homeschooling is our ability to spend more time doing other things besides sitting at the kitchen table. Trevor's lessons take roughly 1.5 hours to complete, never more than that and sometimes less. Rachael spends about 10-15 minutes tops doing anything seated.

The rest of their time is spent either doing extra curricular activities like playgroup, gymnastics, etc. They also spend lots of time either galloping around the house, building blanket tents, playing with toys or games, reading books or being read to. They spend some time tidying their toys, putting their clothes away or doing other basic chores (or whining about doing the chores).

With the nicer weather we have been spending more time outside, which is wonderful! It lends to the house staying neater, and nothing wears out kids like fresh air. Today I grabbed the camera and took some pictures. For those who don't know, we live in a townhome with a small backyard and a big common area with woods and grass out back. We have trails leading all over the area and a small totlot in the woods. The kids like the totlot, but they REALLY like the huge sticks in the woods.


The kids' idea of a squirrel feeder. I don't know what the logs are at the one end. The box is from the new screen door Ray installed. They colored it with crayons and put oats on the far end of the box.


Trevor putting out a pile of various nuts and things I gave him for the squirrels. He has dried figs, raw almonds, peanuts and rolled oats.


Ariel with neighs, sticks and snot. Ariel has been sick with a runny nose and a brief but high fever. So excuse the runny nose. She has sticks for the squirrel feeder. Sticks have also made bridges, survivorman shelters and various pretend fires.


The girls hiding out under what I think is a holly bush.


Practicing up for next winter's sledding. I think I have the only kids who sled in the off season. Yes. They sled down the hill in the dirt. It works, too. Won't work for me, but they seem to go pretty decently.


WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!

We are done K phonics!

And Rachael read her first phonics reader!!! I changed the layout of the blog. I'm not sure I like it. If it's hideous, let me know and I will change it again. I only have a couple minutes here and there during the day to get online so I end up spending that time doing things other than look for new premade blog layouts. heh.

ANYWAY....

Today we officially finished K12's K level phonics curriculum!!!! The last unit we essentially skipped because it reviewed things he already knew relatively well. We instead focused on a few other things, like his handwriting. Trevor has neat handwriting, however; he tends to use both capitals and lowercase in his words and they are all the same size. For ease of puncuation and sentence structure we've been working on proper handwriting. He's doing well. So today we worked a bit on handwriting and spelling and then he took his final assessment. He passed with flying colours (his only mistake was spelling "catch" as "katch") and so we now will take a break from K12 until I can get his Grade one unit ordered. We'll work on spelling, sight words and reading. He is reading really well and currently reads most level 2 phonics readers with some help. He has the Danny and the Dinosaur books and reads them with almost no help. We've been checking out readers from the library- classics like Syd Hoffman book and PD Eastman and, of course, some Dr Suess as well as others like Batman and Spiderman readers, which Trevor loves but are always more difficult.

In math he's moved onto word problems (that he can read!!) that have multiple steps- so someone might start with 5 dollars, mom gives them two dollars and they have 3 dollars left. Then the problem asks how much they had and how much they spent. He's catching on and we'll be finished the math book in about a month. I think. After that I will order him Level 4 in Developmental Math and we'll also start practicing tell time on an analogue clock and the calendar.

In history we learned about Hammurabi and his code of laws. We're still mummifying our chicken, it's on its final week. I changed the salt yesterday and he is very, um, not juicy. He doesn't smell and he's become inflexible. In chemistry we're going to do our experiment mixing acids and bases together after they have reacted to the cabbage juice indicator. I bought what I hope is mineral water this time.

On a Rachael note--- Rachael has been just dying to read. She tries to guess what Trevor is reading in his phonics readers. She asks me everyday if she can read a reader. She is too young for the k12 phonics (meaning, she lacks the attention span to do a full lesson) and she wants to learn soooooo bad that she lacks the patience to learn to read a 1/2 lesson at a time. So the past week we have been working on writing letters and the sounds they make. Everyday after her lesson Rachael would ask 'Can we get out the phonics readers now?" Today I said "Sure. We cantry, but you might need more practice." What d'ya know! She happily proved me wrong! She read the first story in Trevor's phonics reader which has one sight word "is" and only short "a" sound. It was called Sam and Pam and it's a basic story about them "at bat". She read the whole thing!!!!!!!! I was soo proud and amazed!!! I am probably going to give another curriculum a try because she wants to learn soooo badly and I want her to get the basics down. I like phonics and I know some kids can learn through a whole language approach, but I think having a good foundation in phonics rules is important to reading.

So sorry no pictures! But that's our big week in nutshell. :)

Trevor is growing up.

It all started this morning. I mean, we had spent half the morning together already and he had not mentioned anything. I was looking up directions for playgroup, Trevor was playing on Webkinz, when he says suddenly "mommy, my tooth is wiggly. My bottom tooth is really really wiggly."

Oh? And it WAS! Really. REALLY wiggly. How come he didn't notice this before? So I got a little melancholy on him and wistfully told him how he was getting so big and those permanent teeth were just a sign he was growing up and wouldn't be my little teeny boy anymore. Trevor, who is ever practical, just shrugged his shoulders as he walked away and smiled. "mom, you always say how I'll always be your little boy, so I still will be your little boy." AW!

Fastforward to tonight. Trevor called me upstairs because his tooth was bothering him. He had been wiggling it and it had turned sideways at this weird angle. I turned it back and it came free!! Trevor was excited, Rachael was completely thrilled beyond all reason (she bounded around Trevor, demanding to hold the tooth). Here's pictures!!!


Trevor and Rachael showing off their gaps. heh


All three kids. Rachael was not really trying to choke her sister, though she may unconsciously have it out for her. heehee.

Spring Weather and Science Lessons.

What a week last week was! Ray was sick with some sort of bug. Wednesday he hit his head, Thursday he felt awful- fever, stiff neck. Basically, all the signs of meningitis. We had a quick jaunt to the hospital after doctor prescribed migraine medicine didn't work. We had to rule out bacterial meningitis. Thankfully, it was not bacterial or viral. They gave Ray some sort of anti anxiety medication that was supposed to double as a muscle relaxer for his raging headache and inability to move his neck. What the meds did, however, was turn Ray into a zombie who basically spent until Sunday morning sleeping. He quit taking them and ended up with chills and uncontrollable shivering like he was coming down off a drug. It was awful. Needless to say, no one got much school or work done those days he was sick. Trevor has been mildly sick, I think, as he's been more tired than usual and complaining about a mild earache. So I haven't been pushing him too hard. Today was our first day actually getting something besides one subject done a day. I'm not trying to set a killer pace. We'll homeschool year round and get this.. we only have 2 more units (that's about 2 weeks) left of his phonics program! Then he will officially be finished K12's K phonics program and will move onto Grade 1, where he will learn long vowels and other, phonics stuff. His K curriculum taught him all the letter sounds (we whipped through those knowns), blends like "th", "sh", "ck" etc. He's learned when to add "s" or 'es" onto the end of the word. he's learned -all and a few other two letters endings (-zz, -ss, etc). He's learned a billion sight words and just finished up the unit on compound words. For K, that's pretty intensive, and the main reason I started with K12 K level phonics even though he was in kindgergarten last year.

So that excites me the most! My little man has learned to read! It's very cool that he not only learned that; he learned it at home! We're about half way through his math book, that's a lot tougher. He struggles with math concepts.

We're still mummifying our chicken. He should have 1-2 more weeks of curing before he is done.

So today we did Chemistry. We haven't done chemistry in a couple weeks. Mainly because of the lack of red cabbage at the grocery store. It seemed it was always out when I needed it. Our latest experiment had us using red cabbage juice as an indicator to test for acids and bases. I finally found the red cabbage and made the indicator by boiling the shredded cabbage in distilled water for 15 minutes. The result was this dark purple liquid. So we started our experiment. I'll warn you, the kids are EXHAUSTED in the pictures. It was close to 70 today and so we spent a great deal of playgroup and this morning outside. We came home and the kids watched a Scholastic video from the library and then came up for science. Trevor hasn't been sleeping well. So everyone was a little subdued for the lesson.


Smiling for a photo before we start. I'm as beat as the kids, so sorry some pictures are not the best focus.


Tasting White Grape Juice. Trevor does not care for many juices except OJ. He found the grape juice sour. Rachael disagreed and found it sweet. I love how she's rubbing her chin like "hmmmm...."


In the first step of the experiment, Trevor hypothesized whether or not he thought each liquid would be sour or not sour. He had: white grape juice, grapefruit juice, lemon juice (not lemonade), mineral water, milk, tap water, alkaselzer water and baking soda water. After he guessed, he tasted and marked his results. We compared those results with his hypothesis.


Ack! That lemon juice is too sour! heehee. Trevor had to run and spit in the sink. He's melodramatic like that. heh.


Pouring the cabbage indicator into the liquids to see what will happen. Unfortunately, not all our results matched what we were supposed to get. Our mineral water did not change with the indicator, nor did the grape juice.


It looks like we're going to dye easter eggs, doesn't it? All our liquids after the indicator had been added.


Trevor's results. The white grape juice, the antacid and the mineral water were all supposed to change. The juice was supposed to turn pink, the mineral water was supposed to turn light purple and the antacid was supposed to change blue. Go figure. I have no idea why they didn't change, maybe we used a different brand or something. I used regular bottled water for mineral water and I think I used the wrong thing- the book said the mineral water would taste "bad but not sour". Aquafina has minerals added but I find it sweet. So I think mineral water is something different than bottled water with minerals added to enhance the taste. Hm. Something for some other science lesson.