Random goodness in the form of playdough

Just because they are SOOO cute! Ariel let me put her hair in pigtails!


As you can see, Ariel is thrilled with playdough!!!


Rachael kneading the dough to make it more playdoughy. It's pretty sticky until they knead it a bit. It's also pretty hot.


This is Trevor building a chain of dominoes. We just got the dominoes recently and they have been endlessly amusing for all the kids. We play the game TONS, but Trevor quickly realized you could stack them like he is in the video and knock them down. Much to his dismay, we don't have enough to build long elaborate designs to knock over. I think I need to get more dominoes! I lost my voice last week and it was still all hoarse. I was also a bit grumpy because I kept having to start the video again because Trevor shows off for the camera. He just won't act NORMAL! He will build so nicely and carry on a meaningful conversation until I start filming then he gets all silly. So you'll hear me whisper "Act normal!". heh.

Other than that, we've been busy! More pictures will be up later. No more time now. But we went to the Natural history museum yesterday without Ray! I was proud that direction challenged me made it in on the Metro and everything. We met Ray afterwards to go to the Caps game, which was loads of fun, too. Trekking into DC will be something we definitely do more often.

Math, math, math

I have always been a bit mathphobic. I struggled to understand concepts in school and, even now, if someone says something that might even hint at being a word problem, I get all twitchy. I purchased k12's math program because it was all scripted, provided the math book, lessons online and all the manipulatives. But, wow. OK.. Trevor placed out of K-level math. But the grade one math moves so fast! And that crazy wording! In the last, oh, five or so lessons we have covered counting forwards and backwards on a number line, we have used counters to make groups of addition sentences from word problems, we have learned words like addend, sum, addition sentence, increasing by "x" number, vertical math sentences and horizontal math sentences. It's enough to make my head spin. Isn't this supposed to be elementary math adding single numbers?

Because of the curriculum's speed, Trevor wasn't getting it. He would get it enough to pass an assessment (and mainly because I provide help and discussion during assessments, else he would have a test at the end of every lesson), but the next day he couldn't remember what he had learned. I also was having issues with him understanding the key concept of the lesson- ie: seeing that if you add 1 to a number, the number jumps one up the number line like you're counting. So we would struggle through our math lessons, Trevor pouting and hating it, me feeling like an utter failure because I couldn't explain it, even with a script. Our lessons would take an hour- k12 assumes we will sit for an hour for every lesson (making my school day take 4 hours just in seat work!) but I generally spend much less time than that working. It's a big reason why I homeschool. So our hour of struggling over math would end with Trevor, head hanging, whole body drooping, slouching out of the room to sit by himself in the playroom, feeling like a failure. It was tough to watch and I spent much time hugging him and assuring him that he was fine, we just needed to find a better way to get it.

Today we started our "better way". One, I only spent roughly 15 minutes on math. Two, I made sure it was something he would succeed at so he wouldn't think math was really all that horrible. I found a site that would allow me to print my own math worksheets and printed him a sheet of vertical equations adding numbers less than 10 with numbers no more than 1. Then I drew him a number line from 0-10. We took one frog counter. I love counters and manipulatives, but I think he was being distracted by them while we worked problems. So we used one frog to make hopping up the number line easier. Then I talked about how the frog hopped ONE up the number line. I didn't talk about more than one, I didn't jump backwards on the line like the k12 lesson did. First we wrote our own addition sentences based on what number he put the frog on. I explained that when we jumped up the number line it was like say "plus". So when we moved one up the number line we were saying "plus one". So he understood that. After I was sure he could write his own equations, we did the quick and easy worksheet. He understands the concept of zero as not moving on the number line so he breezed through those.

Tomorrow we'll move on two jumping two places on the number line. I'll stop there until I'm sure he understands it. I'm also contemplating getting him a math computer game like Math Blasters or something to supplement. I have some math board games tagged on amazon, too. He's very analytical, so I know he could be much better at math than I am, but I need to give him that starting point so he gets it. Today was wonderful in that we ended our lesson on a positive note, with Trevor beaming and saying "That was EASY, mommy!"

Other than that, our day was very good, very busy. Trevor continued on his reading and, of his own accord, read me his entire level 3 phonics reader. Which was awesome! We've slowed phonics down a little, too, because we caught up with his curve. We still don't have to do the whole lesson, but he needs time to absorb the sight words before we can take assessments but he is picking up sight words very quickly. Today we did the lesson on the United States for history and tomorrow we will cover some of the native people. Then next week we'll explore this site and look at the first Thanksgiving before celebrating it ourselves!

Tired and busy!

We did phonics and math today. Trevor is really struggling with math but continuing well with phonics. He read his third reader today and was really proud of himself! We also had homeschool group and that was fun, as usual. I didn't see Trevor until it was time to leave but Rachael and Ariel hung pretty close to me. Anyway, here's a random picture and another attempt to put video on the site:


Ariel playing on starfall.com. She LOVES starfall, and she can use the mouse and everything.




Ariel and Rachael doing forward rolls without hands. Ariel started the trend and does them all day long. "Clap, mommy!" She exclaims whenever she is done. heh.

Making a leaf book

Today we decided to learn about autumn leaves. All the leaves here are turning colours and we've noticed lots of gorgeous reds and yellows, along with many acorns and squirrels. Nothing thrills Rachael as much as seeing squirrels along the back fence. She will be sitting at the table, eating lunch and we'll all be chatting when Rachael will suddenly whisper "SHHHHH!!! See that squirrel on the fence? He's SOO cute!"


Rachael eating onion grass we found on the trail. Tasty! heh.


These are all our leaves laid out on the table.


This is the beginning of his leaf book. I just cut regular white paper in half and took a few sheets and stapled them at the fold to make the book. Trevor spelled his title phonetically. The leaf pictured is a "Holly Leaf" (Hole lef)


Rachael showing off her book. She pretty much coloured leaf drawings she did in any pretty colour she had. One leaf she coloured blue. heehee.


I drew the leaf, Trevor coloured it exactly as he saw it- green veins with orangey-red leaf.


While they coloured I looked up WHY leaves are so pretty in the fall. We learned they are always that colour, but the Chloryfyll (hm, I am misspelling that, I know) covers up the autumn colors. Trevor was amazed to know the plant makes glucose for food (he knows glucose is sugar). We found out that the reason for the red in maple leaves is excess glucose the tree doesn't need. This glucose turns red, while other maple leaves are yellow because they don't have this build up of glucose. Quite interesting, really. We discovered oak leaves are brown from excess waste in the leaves (we equated it to waste that leaves our bodies. So brown oak leaf has waste like we have poop. Don't know if it is the same, but it amused us!).

So, all in all, an interesting day!

Oh, and just because she is cute, Ariel doing her "handwriting" while the kids were doing it this morning.

New Haircut and Rachael dancing

A Pterasaur Trevor made from blocks. The part with the teeny toy on it is the head. He said the back part is a tail, but from what we learned watching the Nat'l Geographic show about them, they didn't have tails, which made the way the flew different and hard to replicate. But Trevor wanted his pterasaur to have a tail. :)



Trevor finally has a haircut! Doesn't he look cute!



Rachael dancing to Juno Reactor. Yes, it's sideways, sorry. She looked cute, though I don't know why part of her dancing involves wonking herself in the head! lol.

Busy days!

It is cool and crisp outside, perfect weather.

Today we didn't get up until 8am. 8am! That's really late for us. The kids are usually up at 7 (Ray and I drag ourselves out of bed around 7:30). So we got a late start and were consequently late for Rachael's gymnastics. She loves gymnastics and it's cute to watch her! This isn't a *real* expensive class. This is just through the parks n rec center. It's taught by the daughter of dance class teacher who Rachael had for dance last session. Right now Rachael is walking backwards and forwards on the balance beam, doing forward rolls, backwards rolls (aparently there is a proper way to do them and the teacher helps with form), they jump on the trampoline, and do some sort of little mini type vault over a low soft mat. When they are done their round of gymnastics moves, they hold their little arms up like "tah-dah!" It's way cute.

Friday's are always busy mornings because after Rachael's gymnastics comes a quick stop at home for lunch and then we rush out to Trevor's old school for his speech therapy. Normally the girls and I take a walk for the half hour Trevor is in speech, but everyone has colds right now so we opted to stay inside and work in little Target workbooks. Since it's lunch time at the school while we're there, we saw Trevor's old K teacher who got all excited to see Trevor and gave him a hug, then we saw his old K classmates filing by for lunch (they all waved at me), then saw his old friend from K who he still plays with sometimes, then his neighbourhood friend. We saw lots of kids we knew in our 30 minutes there!

Sometimes I skip school on Fridays just because everyone is tired by the afternoon. But I felt like we missed a lot this week, or I'm a little stressed or something. So we "did school" this afternoon. Learned about Ireland today in our quick tour of Europe. So far he's learned about Spain, England, France and Ireland. It's all been very brief so I don't know how well he will retain this knowledge. At least he knows Europe is full of countries and, with some clues and help, he can point to the countries we have done on the map. In math he is learning addition facts. I KNOW he knows these, but he wasn't keen on math today and so struggled to write the addition sentences down. Basically he had, for instance, 3 frog counters (Thanks MOM!!!) and he groups them into various groups and writes the addition sentence based on the groups- like 1+2=3. I think he mainly struggles with it because he has so few counters to begin with and it would be easier if he had larger groups to work with. Trevor tends to THINK about his problem too much and reads way too much into the answer. He ends up making it harder than it is. We did phonics and he continued reading in phonics and is making good progress there. He read me his phonics reader again today and then yesterday read me a little of "Hop on Pop".

Once we finish Europe in history, I am going to skip to America (rather than head through just about every other continent listed in the lessons between Europe and North America) so we can do a unit on Native Americans, Thanksgiving, etc. K12 does not have seasonal aspects to its curriculum, so I'll be supplementing this month so we can learn about Thanksgiving.

And that's about it from us for this week! Next week everyone should hopefully be over their colds so we can quit feeling so run down!

Promised pictures.

I promised my mom pictures of our homeschooling days. Now let's see if I can figure out how to post them.



Here's Trevor working on reading some sentences for phonics this morning. We work at the kitchen table.



What he's reading!!! He reads them pretty well, too. He gets all excited over it.



The girls play games, etc while I work with Trevor. Rachael joins us for Handwriting, though. Here they are playing Hi Ho Cherrio, the world's most tedious game.



While I set up math, they played a few games of Concentration.



All dressed up to go to homeschool group Halloween Party!!!!



Ariel piping frosting onto the pumpkin cake. There's a picture of Rachael, too, but it has other people in it.



The finished cake. They had tons of fun at the party. We ate cake, played "ghost, ghost, skeleton" and generally hung out and chatted. The girls hung close to me but Trevor ran off to play with the other kids and I barely saw him until it was time to leave!

Since we do mostly seat work for "official homeschooling" I don't have much to post right now. Hopefully we'll get around to history tomorrow. I just didn't get a chance today, I was too busy studying my own history for a test I took tonight! Glad that's over with!

Reading and spanish cooking!

I will put pictures here, I promise!

We're doing blocks of work now. I hated the k12 language arts so I skip it now. We supplement by doing what we have always done- read a ton. We recently finished James and the Giant Peach. We also listened to Talking to Dragons and are currently listening to the next in the series of which the name escapes me.

Trevor started reading yesterday! Phonics has been focusing on letter sounds. He knows letter sounds and what letters make what sounds so we pretty much breezed through that part of the curriculum. Yesterday we made it to the section that puts letter sounds to actual letters and sounded out simple words. He sounded out "The cat is at the mat". Then he looked at me and exclaimed "I understood it, mommy!" I was so proud! So was he! A very exciting moment. So this morning he sounded out more words. Maybe he will be reading books soon? We have phonics readers, I wonder when we get to drag those out.

We're doing blocks right now, so I am focusing on K12's history for a few weeks. Then we'll switch with K12 science for a few weeks. It doesn't mean we never do science. I don't think that would be possible, given Trevor's interest in space. Or answering Rachael's question "Why do the leaves change color?" So we do science on the fly right now.

History for k12 is really more like geography. We did a brief lesson on Australia, but I didn't like how little detail was provided. So I ended up Tivo'ing a travel show about Australia, and we looked at websites about Aborgines, and the diggerido and listened to autralian music. Then we went back to the curriculum and started on Spain. The curriculum only spent one day one Spain! I'm really unhappy that we just gloss over things. I suppose it goes into more depth later. However, nothing says I can't stop and look more in depth now, does it? So after our day, I set the TIVO to record a couple things about Spain. Then I looked up some recipes. Tonight we made this and it was quite tasty. We used only chicken and I had to use boxed yellow rice since our grocery didn't seem to have saffron or smoked paprika. Trevor cut the veggies, grated the tomato, peeled garlic. He LOVED the result. He ate three helpings. While it was cooking we looked up why so many spanish recipes have rice (because it grows in the region was as far as we got) and why chickpeas are CALLED chickpeas.

So we're having lots of fun. I tried to take pictures of us cooking but, alas, my camera battery was dead. Ah well.

What we have acheived

Eventually I hope to find a writing style for this blog, put pics on it, etc etc. Eventually I hope to provide the link for family so they can keep up on our homeschooling journey. But for now this is just me and the kids, finding our way.

After trying a few days to be eclectic and allow Trevor to have a say when we have lessons, I gave up. Trevor put off his lessons until the very end of the day, when he was exhausted. There he'd be at the table, rubbing his eyes, squirming and grumpy. There would be much shoulder shrugging and mumblings of "I dunno" in response to questions I knew he knew the answer to.

So now our rule is, we sit down in the morning and do as much as we can and then we're done for the day. I have a need to finish phonics everyday. And we're breezing through it, two lessons a day taking about 30 minutes, because this is familiar territory. He's learning letter sounds, which he knows. So the main part of the lesson is seperating them out of words and it's good practice for enunciation. He'll be starting speech therapy again in October, so this will help him, I am sure of it.

So we finished phonics, handwriting and history this morning. This afternoon he'll do math with Fibinaci Bear (I know I misspelled that). Still working on that whole math curriculum thing. Planning on buying cuisenaire rods. Soon.

A word on the handwriting. Yes. He knows how to make all his letters. But he learned some awful bad habits in school, including making his letters from the bottom to the top. His handwriting his messy. We use the K12 variation of Handwriting without Tears and it has improved his handwriting with every letter he has practiced. His writing immediately became more legible.

History is really geography right now. I don't know why they call it history. He's learning the continents, which he supposedly learned last year, but he doesn't remember. So we did them again today, with his little continent song and ended up having a long sponaneous discussion about which continent is where at lunch. Spontenaiety is the goal of homeschooling, learning happens all the time not just during "lesson time".

To meet my need in keeping track of what he is learning (I would be a horrible relaxed unschooler, but probably a great eclectic schooler), I changed my teacher planner I have. Instead of putting what we "need" to accomplish on a specific day, I put what we HAVE accomplished. It allows us to move ahead in areas, skip days for things, etc etc. It also helps me see that, when he played the JumpStart explorers game, he was learning history and geography.

So we're finding our way. :)

Why Trevor likes homeschooling.

In his words: "Mommy, I like homeschooling because I can drink all the water I want!"

His peeve last year, that he complained about on more than one occassion, was the fact he would be thirsty after recess and only be able to drink for five seconds out of the water fountain. Today, we played soccer outside and he was hot and sweaty and he plopped down on the bench next to me and exclaimed his relief at drinking however many glasses of water he wants. I also pointed out that we were free to kick the soccer ball around as long as we want and could eat lunch whenever we wanted. Yes, freedom is nice!

Not only did we play soccer, but we played a rousing one hour game of hide and go seek this evening after dinner. Seeing as how he was way too exhausted last year to actually play too much after dinner, it was really nice to celebrate the first day of school by not being completely beat. Between Tae Bo this morning, soccer before lunch and running all over the neighbourhood for hide and seek after dinner, I also got a decent workout in!

Access to K12!!!

I officially have access to K12. I just got my email telling me I could log in to the online system! Woohoo! The kids are gone this week, which will give me plenty of time to browse things and kind of set up a plan of action.

Yay! New things starting soon!

Extracurricular activities!

I need to get some photos, etc, up here. I suppose I will refine this blog more as I use it more.

So Trevor is home now and we are deschooling a bit. He's not used to being "home" since our weekends are usually pretty full and Ray is here. So now that he is alone with me and the girls again, he must relearn how to get along with us. He's been a bit of a challenge these couple days, mainly because we are not structured and he's getting bored with being at home. I am letting him chill and be bored for a week to help him become inspired to find things to do. Next week I will add a little structure so our routine will be a little more predictable. We'll find our way.

We've also picked up some extracurricular activities. I have never really done more than informal free playgroups (never joined a pay mom's group), I've never put my kids in art classes, music classes, etc. It just seemed like a waste of money when they were so young. But now I see more of a benefit. Trevor is also old enough for cub scouts now! So Trevor is in cub scouts and LOVING it. Ray takes him every Thursday. It's not a homeschooling specific pack, but there are kids he knows from his year at school there and he plays with them and has a lot of fun.

Then I was looking through the Parks and Rec classes and found a drama class for 6-9 year olds open! Now, Trevor can be way dramatic and is constantly acting out things. He runs around pretending to be a villian and a hero and has he runs around, having this battle with himself, he is singing his action packed theme music *and* narrating what he is doing as he does it. It's hilarious to watch him play sometimes. So he is very excited to be in a drama class. It starts next week. Then Rachael, she wanted gymnastics, but they were all full. So I signed her up for this dance class that's more freestyle type movement than learning formal ballet and tap. It looked like a fun class that would get her moving, so she is looking forward to that as well.

I can't wait to find our groove! :)

Curriculum

So I haven't posted here in a while so I guess I should! After much searching, I think I decided on a curriculm for Trevor. I am going to skip one for Rachael this year simply because the school I chose is kind of pricey and I don't want to pay twice for something that may not work.

We are going to give Clonlara school a try I am almost positive. It has a nice kind of eclectic/unschooling friendly approach which will allow for the flexibility I want to have. But it also sets up a curriculum for me so I won't have to struggle with finding things for Trevor to do in my first year. Clonlara is a private, accredited school so they will keep records. grade work, etc for me and I *think* they deal with the state, too (I need to double check that). Now, I don't know that we will use them permanently as I get more comfortable in what I am doing. Or maybe we will love them and I will use them every year. It's pricey, but cheaper than private school. It's going to probably end up costing around 1K for the year for Trevor. Which is a decent deal to me.

For Rachael I am just going to use Starfall.com and work with her on the same things Trevor is working on, only to a more elementary degree. She recognizes her letters and can give me what a word starts with. She just lacks the hand control to make the letters on paper, though that is getting better as she LOVES making letters when she colours on blank paper. Ariel I might do something formal with, as well. Well, not FORMAL education, but I will probably give her the tools to learn things. She knows more than I think and alwats surprises me. She astounded me by singing her ABC's about a month ago. Just out of the blue she sang them! I also think she can count to ten, though she hasn't for me yet, she will count sequencial numbers just not all the way to ten. She does them in chunks here and there (7,8,9! 1, 2, 3!). She knows colours, too, unless I ask her directly then she won't answer me. heh. She's absorbing everything her older siblings say and do.

We also are thinking of joining this website called brainpop (I think! It's bookmarked upstairs where Rachael is playing Starfall). It has flash videos and lessons, etc for kids Trevor's age. We signed up for a trial and he LOVED it.

On another note, we went to the bookstore yesterday to look for a book on space since Trevor is fascinated by it right now. We found a DK book linked to google. So we not only got to look through the book, we got to find the website on google and look up more information. It was pretty cool. We can't check out encyclopedia type books from our library so I hope to build up a good collection of books to refer to.

OK. That's it from this end, MIL is coming in today and I need to tear Rachael away from the computer and get a few minutes outside before we have to go pick her up! I promise to start updating this more, especially when Trevor gets out of school- June 18th.

First post

I don't homeschool yet. Trevor is currently in kindergarten at a local public school. Rachael goes to preschool 3 days a week and Ariel stays at home with me full time. We had a rough first half of the year with Trevor. He didn't want to go to school, he cried every morning. It was pretty much torture for all of us so at one point we offered him the option of homeschooling next year but we would have to finish out his first year of school and make an attempt to make it work.

So, even though he is OK with going to school, he has still reminded me that he would like to homeschool next year. Since I had been planning on homeschooling before I decided to give public school and try, I figure I can take advantage of the fact he wants to stay home! Rachael, while she likes preschool, has also said she would like to be home next year. I think she is saying this largely because her brother is but, since preschool isn't mandatory, we'll give it a try.

I know we will definitely follow a curriculum but I have not decided on which yet. I looked into full on packages that were complete but there was always something about one part or another I disliked. So I am still on the lookout. I probably will use free resources for Rachael, since she is so young. I love the Waldorf approach to learning, but I am quickly finding that Trevor is ahead in some areas because waldorf follows a delayed approach to learning and with Trevor's one year in K, he has surpassed most waldorf grade 1 LA curriculums and even grade 2. I will probably pull nature oriented lessons from waldorf, math from saxon (which always seems to have good marks) and I haven't decided on language arts yet though I have found one book I would like to use but it would only be a part of the big picture. I haven't decided how to approach history.. if I should start with our local virginia history, US history or start with actual history of civilization (which I am leaning towards), etc. I think music will be satisfied through basic kindermusic type classes or a waldorf music type method. I haveb't researched it enough yet.

Right now I am really in the researching stage. I know homeschooling will allow me some extra time with my children (Trevor especially since I feel I hardly ever see him now) and some control over what he is learning. It also gives us more time for other activities. Right now Trevor spends all day in K, so I hesitate to fill his full time schedule of school with anything else (we leave for school at 8:40am and he gets home most days at 4pm). He needs time to be a kid, you know. But I hope with homeschooling we can sign him up for some interesting activities. The biggest advantage to me right now will be the extra time outside and following a family rhythm. The big thing school has taken away is the simple fact of family. Trevor spends so much time with other people besides us and is usually tired and GRUMPY when he gets home. He grumps and argues with his sisters, doesn't want to go outside and I really miss the way he was able to relate and play with his siblings and talk to me. His imagination seems to be stuck in a rut because it doesn't get the workout it used to get. I miss that he doesn't see the way a household runs, he doesn't see the laundry going into his drawer or being washed, he doesn't see baking happen or bread being made. History, science, math, etc are extremely important. But so is life, being outside and practical matters. So is the ability to be self directed. He spends much of his day being directed into actities and stimulated by other people that he hardly knows what to do when someone isn't giving him an activity or telling him what to do. He misses alot of this by spending an ENTIRE day on learning.

We'll see! I will use this journal more when Trevor and Rachael are both actually homeschooling. I might post from time to time here if I order something, or set up a part of the house for schooling. It's all a grand adventure!