Week 3 in Review

This was our first week of adding everything back into our schedule. Well, almost everything. Since it was a four-day week, we stayed with a normal weekday schedule instead of art and nature study on Friday. Plus, I forgot about typing and deliberately chose to skip piano most days. I had a mild cold all week. Not a big deal, but just enough for me to be off my A-game. I'm not really sure I have an A-game, but if I do, I certainly didn't show it this week. Tuesday afternoon, it was all I could do to keep from falling asleep while I read aloud to the kids. And Thursday night while preparing dinner I burned the bacon beyond recognition. Twice. And since this was our favorite expensive bacon from Whole Foods, that made our simple skillet meal more expensive than if we had gone out to eat.

Back to homeschooling. It was exhausting, but it was a good week. My biggest accomplishment was actually starting IEW's Ancient History Writing Lessons. IEW has intimidated me for so long, that it was a victory just getting the first lesson behind me. It's too early to tell how successful we'll be with it, but I could tell that the checklist system appeals to Ryne. I was, however, frustrated with our nifty portable walls. I bought two of the walls at our convention last year, but for some reason they are printed differently. So my teaching sounded something like this:

Me: Let's look at the list of -ly words on your folders.

[Look at Grace's folder] It's right here in the middle.

Ryne: I can't find it.

Me: In the middle, honey. Open the folder, and it's right in the middle.

[Ryne gets upset, so I look at his folder.] Hmm... okay, your -ly list is on the back. So you turn to the back, and Grace to the front.

[A few minutes later]

Me: Now let's look at the list of strong verbs. Where is it on Grace's folder? Okay, now Ryne's. Ryne, where IS your folder? Oh, forget it -- let's just look at the list in the book. What page was it on again? Is this the teacher book or the student book? Oh, look -- our 30 minutes for writing is up!

[Thinking to myself] I wish Starbucks would deliver to my house.

Here's a peek at our week:

GRACE
Grammar, spelling, phonics, math, math drill, map skills, oral reading, Sunday School lesson, Mind Benders, copywork, piano (1 day), swim (2 practices).
RYNE
Spelling, grammar, math, math drill, oral reading, outlining, Mind Benders, copywork, swim (2 practices).
TOGETHER
Memory: Bible Sound-Off; review old stuff
Latin: Latin for Children A -- finished Ch. 2, started Ch. 3
Science:
Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 -- started Lesson 1
Read-aloud: The Burgess Bird Book for Children (look at this great resource!)
Composer Study: Started Tchaikovsky
Geography: Lesson 1 from The Core - labeling the 5 great circles
Writing: IEW Ancient History -- finished lesson 1, started lesson 2
History/Bible:
Story of the World 1; Intro – How Do We Know What Happened?
Archaeologists Dig for Clues, Kate Duke

Veritas Press History & Bible Cards 1 - 7 (Creation - Tower of Babel)

For each card we read the accompanying selections from The Child's Story Bible (Vos) and Journey Through the Bible (Cook).

SOTW Ch. 2 – The Earliest People

Project : Make a Cave Painting

THOUGHTS
I spent hours planning out our history, and I'm so excited to have finally started! This will be our second time around with SOTW 1, but Ryne seems much more engaged now that he's older. Grace, who was usually napping when we did it four years ago, is enjoying it for the first time. The only thing I wished we had done different the first time would have been to incorporate more Bible history. So this year I added the Veritas Press history and Bible cards into our history studies. Each card gives various reading suggestions for further study, so I'm adding a couple of those too. If you're really interested in the nitty-gritty details, I've uploaded my plans here. I might have been too ambitious -- it will be tough to fit it all in one school year. But we've always been pretty heavy on history in this homeschool and this will take the place of any formal Bible curriculum. The first week went very well!
Happy Homeschooling!

Week 2 in Review

This week hardly merits a weekly review. We did less work than we did last week, since we didn't start a new composer study. But we still covered the basics, and I've been hard at work getting everything organized. You'll be happy to know that the floor is clear again. Well, there is still one pile of stuff in the corner that needs to be sorted and my desk needs some help, but I have until Tuesday to get it all done.
My big project right now is finishing setting up the filing cabinet. I got this idea from The Well Trained Mind forums, and it made such a difference in my preparedness last year. Some people use file boxes, but I already had a big filing cabinet in our room so I cleared out one of the drawers. I added 36 files, one for every week of our school year.

It took a while to set up the files, but thankfully that was a one-time effort. The files can be reused year to year. The next thing is to fill the files. I made copies of all the handouts we'll need for history for the entire year and put them in the appropriate files. Basically, anything that I need to make a copy of for the year will go into the files. Some people go a little crazy with the system and take apart all their workbooks, filing those as those as well. I don't do that because I would never be able to predict what we'll be doing in math week to week. Here's what I do instead: Usually on Sunday night I pull out the file for that week. I fill out my planning page and then rip out the appropriate workbook pages for that week and place them in the file. Now I have everything in one place for the week.

You can see that there are also two folders in the file -- one for Ryne and one for Grace. This is where I put their finished work, except for history/geography which goes in a 3-ring binder. At the end of the week I move the file to the back of the drawer so that I always have the current week in the front. It makes a great visual for how much progress we've made as we move through the files!

At the end of the year I go through all the papers, deciding what to keep. Actually, I hope to do that monthly this year, since it ends up still being a pretty big job at the end of the year. That's why I still have a big pile in the corner of our room right now -- I haven't finished sorting last year's stuff. : )

All in all, I've been very happy with this system. It was such a relief to know that everything was ready to go and my weekly prep time was easier. It's worth making the effort at the beginning of the year. Ideally, I would have had this done BEFORE we started our school year, but that unplanned Texas trip came right when I would have been doing my planning.

So that's what I'll be doing with my holiday weekend -- how about you?

Happy Homeschooling!

Back to School!

As I said before, ready or not, it was time to start school this week. And let me tell you, I was NOT ready. Not one little bit. So we just did the basics this week -- the stuff that didn't require any advance preparation. You've probably seen many pictures around the blogoshpere of pristine school rooms, ready to inspire a new year of learning. Uh, not here.

Lovely, eh?

Don't worry, I'm working on it. Sometimes it just has to get more chaotic before it gets organized, and this is the more chaotic stage. These pictures are actually the sign of great progress. ; )
So here's the run-down of our week:
Anna started away-school on Monday (8th grade!), and Ryne and Grace started our new homeschool year. I took the kids to IHOP for a welcome-back-to-school dinner Monday night (Marc was out of town).
GRACE
Grammar, spelling, phonics, math, math drill, map skills, oral reading, Sunday School lesson, ballet (1 night), swim (2 nights).
RYNE
Spelling, grammar, math, math drill, oral reading, swim (2 nights).
TOGETHER
Daily reading from The Child's Story Bible (Vos), Latin, reviewed geography vocabulary from last year, and finished the Brahms composer study from last spring.
THOUGHTS
I'm embarrassed to say we didn't do ANY school work over the summer. So I was worried how much they would retain after a long break. Thankfully, I saw very little regression! In fact, math went quite smoothly. It is becoming clear that Ryne is starting to struggle with grammar though. We'll keep plugging away for now, but it's looking more like we will have to change programs. He did so well with First Language Lessons, and they are adding the first book in the middle school series this January, so we'll see.
For those of you who have started the school year -- Happy Homeschooling! If you're still squeezing out the last drops of summer - Enjoy! And for those of you on the east coast -- I'm praying for you!

Month in Review: September

The weekly report thing didn't work out very well the last couple of years. I'm a pretty inconsistent blogger as it is, and I really don't want to spend what little blogging time I have on just weekly reports. So while I'm admitting defeat, I'm moving to Plan B -- monthly reports. I'm linking this post up with The Well Trained Mind Weekly Report, so welcome to any fellow WTMers!

Blue House Academy got off to a great start! I spent a lot of time in August and September preparing for the new school year and it has made life so much easier. I can find things in my school room closet, my bookshelves are all categorized, all the handouts for the entire year have been copied and filed in 36 weekly hanging files, and supply lists for each week have been made. I've also come up with a pretty good routine for my weekly prep -- school, that is. My next goal is to get the rest of my life this organized! I'm definitely a work in progress.

Memory Period & Habit Training

geography flashcards for memory period

We reviewed phone numbers, our address, planets, continents and oceans. We learned the books of the Old Testament, our geography vocabulary, two Bible verses for MFW, Sunday School verses, and half of Heidelberg Q&A 1. Over the summer I attended a wonderful Charlotte Mason seminar by Sonya Shafer and decided that we would add habit training to our homeschooling. So we started with the habit of attention and will focus on it for another two weeks.

This has been a good visual reminder for all of us!

We are definitely more aware of when we aren't practicing the habit of attention, but we all still have quite a bit of progress to make. : )

Geography

I think he's actually working on his composer study, but the map in the background made me think of geography.

We love, love, love MFW Exploring Countries and Cultures so far! The first week the kids filled out their passport applications and learned that it usually takes a few weeks or more for them to arrive. So we spent the month doing introductory geography activities and touring the United States, which was mostly review from last year when we did Adventures. We "leave" for Mexico on Monday, so I have a feeling those passports will arrive soon. :)
Here are our favorite geography read-alouds for the month:


Bible
We're starting up our study of Matthew with ECC. We read about Dwight Moody and Harriet Tubman in Hero Tales. I like how ECC incorporates praying for missionaries and peoples around the world, using Window on the World. Not part of our ECC studies, we going through our church's Jr. Catechism course. It's normally done at the church, but my kids were the only students this year, so we're doing it at home. It's normally for 4th graders, but I thought maybe Grace could handle it. I was wrong. It's a little too difficult, so I'm really having to adapt it for her. Both kids needed more than one week for the memory work (and my kids are great at memorizing). So I'm going to give it another couple of weeks and then decide if we should continue.
Science
We spent the month finishing up our Exploring Creation with Astronomy from last year, or at least we tried. There are still a few more activities I'd like to do, so we'll spend one more week on it and then move on with Zoology I - Flying Creatures. I can't believe I have no science pictures to share!
Art & Music
We learned about lines, primary colors and secondary colors. Coincidentally, when we went out to eat Friday night, Grace pointed out that her crayon packet had the three primary colors and Ryne's had the three secondary colors! Our main art activities for the week, however, are on Fridays, which I will tell about in a minute. The instruments we studied were the clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, and trumpet. Our composer for the month was Franz Schubert, which I wrote more about here.
Read Aloud
Following the ECC schedule, we are working on Cameron Townsend. I love it, but I'm having to stop and explain things quite a bit. The kids do seem to be mostly enjoying it though.
Latin
We spent the month finishing Song School Latin and going through Latin Words Sticker Book. I'm so sad to be done with SSL. We dragged it out as long as possible, because it was so much fun. For those of you who've been around a while, remember this?

Math
Last year math went so amazingly great for Ryne. That is until he hit Lesson 24 in Math U See Gamma: Multiplication with Regrouping. We've been on this lesson since spring. And at this rate we might still be working on it next spring. I'm at a loss. Ryne knows how to do the steps -- he can explain it to me. If we work a problem out together he gets it right every time. He knows all his facts, so that's not the problem. He just can't focus long enough to do more than a problem or two correctly. And, yes, I'm keeping the lessons short. I'm going to be reading Knowing & Teaching Elementary Mathematics in hope of finding some inspiration in getting over this hurdle.
Grace too is in a holding pattern. She has not completely mastered her addition and subtraction facts, so we're holding off on Beta will a little bit. In the meantime, while we work on her facts, she's been completing some worksheets from some math workbook that's been sitting on my shelf for years. It has lots of supplementary-type lessons that were not covered in Alpha (ex. - symmetry, simple fractions, graphs, etc.). She also spends a few minutes each day doing different activities for telling time. Our favorite has been this chart that I picked up in the dollar section of Target.

Yes, I did eventually realize she spelled eleven wrong, and we're working on those f's.

It had a title like "Schedule for the Day" or something, but I cut that part off. What I like about it is that I can mix and match so many clock skills. On one line I will draw the hands of the clock and have her fill in the time. Other lines she will fill in the clock hands or even write out the time.

Spelling

We do almost all our spelling at the white board.

Last year we switched to All About Spelling and I had a hard time getting the hang of it. It felt like a lot of work, and from what I've read on TWTM forums that's a common initial reaction. But I gave it a second chance this year, and it's going wonderfully. Ryne will finish up Level 1 next week and Grace is probably a couple of weeks behind him. They both already know how to spell 99.9% of the words, but I do like how they are really learning the rules behind the spelling. I know I've learned a few things already!
Grammar, Reading & Writing
Ryne's transition from First Language Lessons to Rod and Staff is going great, thanks to some advance planning. Grace continues with FLL and Adventures in Phonics. She is also reading through Paths to Adventure. And now I get to admit my biggest failure for the month. I had planned to watch the IEW DVDs this summer, but didn't. And I didn't get it done in September either. So other than some copywork and journaling for astronomy, there has been very little formal writing for Ryne. I'm pretty sure he's okay with that too. : )
Friday School
This year we are excited to add a mini co-op with a family from our church. We meet at the Blue House where my friend Casey leads art and I lead math games and nature study. You can follow our nature study adventures here. Casey has been coming up with some great activities for art. Two weeks ago the kids put together some modern style self portraits (pictures coming soon) and this last week they made cute paper owls and decorated owl cupcakes while listening to White Owl, Barn Owl.

Friday School is the highlight of our week. The kids are getting along great, and Casey and I are able to sneak in a bit of socializing too. : )

Whew! What a month! Next time I will work on taking more pictures and writing less for our monthly review.
Happy Homeschooling!

Week 5 in Review

I am experiencing technical difficulties with a new photo card, so I can't post my photos yet. Too bad, because it was kind of a big week and definitely photo-worthy. Hopefully, I can get it all figured out and update later.

It was a productive week of catching up on work not completed the previous week (yet still completing most of what we had scheduled for this week). Things went somewhat smoother with Anna's workload from the classical school she attends, so maybe we're starting to figure things out. Someone asked in the comments section of my last weekly review if all this work Anna has been doing is meaningful, and the answer is yes, I think so. Individually, almost everything she has been assigned has been a worthwhile activity. In my opinion, only a couple of the assignments would be considered just plain busy-work, and the teacher apologized for one of those assignments. Anna is getting a great education at this school. It has just been the volume of work that has been difficult. Most importantly though, she loves the school, her teacher, and her new friends. She is doing very well and has not complained nearly as much as I have about the workload. Plus, I really am seeing the benefit of being able to focus more on Ryne and Grace and better tailor our curriculum to their abilities.

Ryne: All his individual subjects went well. I finally got all our spelling materials set up and read the teacher manual, so we added All About Spelling 1 this week. As I set up his card file, I realized he knows how to spell most of the words in Level 1, so I think he will move through it quickly. The reason I started him at Level 1 is because I know he has some gaps in phonics, but since I wasn't really part of his learning to read, it's hard for me to know what he missed or didn't retain. He learned to read through a combination of the online Headsprout reading program and whatever he used in the first year-and-a-half at a Christian school. So this week we just worked on the basic phonograms, and it was clear he did need to review a few of them. He enjoyed listening to the sounds on the CD-ROM. One of the biggest problems we had with the lesson though is that he still cannot pronounce his th sounds correctly. I'm not sure what to do about this.

Grace: Drum roll, please... Gracie finished The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading!!!! It took her about two years to finish the 231-lesson book, so we made a big deal about her completing it. Thursday night I took her out to celebrate. So until I get the photo card thing figured out, here is where you have to imagine a picture of her sitting on the bed with a big grin on her face, holding that big book in triumph. Now that we've been through the whole book, what do I think of it? I give it a thumbs up! While it can drag on at times, it is very thorough and made teaching this all-important skill pretty manageable.

Science: We also said good-bye to Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space this week, having completed our weather unit. We made a tornado in a plastic pop bottle and charted all the 2009 hurricanes. We have really enjoyed CKE Earth and Space, and will definitely consider the series again in the future. But I have a boy who says he's an alien from Saturn who really needs to spend more than four lessons on the space part, so we will now be switching to Exploring Creation with Astronomy. We also completed another Outdoor Hour Challenge, but I will wait to post about that until I get the picture thing worked out.

History: This is the only subject we didn't get completely caught up on, but we did finish a couple of great read-alouds.

Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla

The Boy Who Lived With the Bears by Joseph Bruchae

Happy Homeschooling!

Week 4 in Review

Have you ever read this book?

I actually do not care for the book too much, but I have to admit that Tuesday, the first day of our homeschool week, ended with me thinking much like Alexander:

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Oh sure, it could have been worse, and I felt foolish for being so grouchy about it, but it was not the start to our week that I was anticipating. The problem was that even though Anna had spent several hours on Saturday and Monday (Labor Day holiday) working on homework, she still had a mountain of work to do on Tuesday. I realized she was going to need much more of my attention than I could give while still homeschooling Ryne and Grace, so I had to send them off to play while I worked with Anna. And then Anna and I ended up working almost non-stop until 10:00 p.m. I was fuming at the amount of work she had been assigned and that some of the instructions were not very clear. One of the main reasons we enrolled Anna in this school was so that I would be able to more effectively homeschool Ryne and Grace. And they were down in the basement fighting over who-knows-what (which added to my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day). We knew when we enrolled Anna that at this school 6th grade is a challenging year and that she would have to work hard, but this seemed excessive.

Turns out I was not the only parent who felt this way, so the teacher apologized and adjusted the workload. Wednesday went well, but then on Thursday we had trouble again. The morning was taken up with kid's dentist appointments, and even though they all worked on school stuff in the waiting room, Anna needed enough help in the afternoon that I had to put Grace and Ryne on hold again. And it wasn't just them, but the laundry and the dishes as well. So this morning I woke up to a disastrous house (and we have company coming this weekend) and the realization that there was no way we were getting all the schooling done this week. We didn't even get to our Outdoor Hour Challenge today.

Oh, and did I mention that the dog burst an artery in her ear and had to have emergency surgery last night? Don't worry, she's okay now!

No, we're not super-homeschoolers, but we probably don't deserve that title on our best weeks, LOL! If I base our success as homeschoolers on how much we get done in a week, then I've really missed the point of homeschooling.

Instead, I got over my pity party, and rejoiced in the little successes of our week. This afternoon in the car, a student at the local university crossed the street in front of us, carrying on her back a large instrument in its case. Both Ryne and Grace immediately yelled out, "It's a cello!" I was pleased, not only because our five minute "instrument of the week" lesson had helped them recognize it was a cello she was lugging around, but that they were excited about what they learned and wanted to share it with me. I love my job!

Happy Homeschooling!

Week 3 in Review

Better late than never, right? I've been enjoying my Labor Day weekend a little too much to get my weekly report done, but I do want to try to keep up with my reports this year. Overall, it was another good week, although looking over my planning page I noticed we did miss a few things -- some purposely, a couple I just plain forgot. That's what happens when you don't look at the planner as often as you should! And I've also figured out why it is so important to get your planning done before the start of the school year. I decided at the last minute to switch spelling programs, and now I can't seem to find enough time to figure out how to use it! I thought for sure with a 3-day weekend I could get it done, but instead I got other projects done, like bathing the dogs, painting a kitchen stool, and finally returning a pair of jeans I bought for Ryne last December! I'm almost beginning to wonder if perhaps I am subconsciously avoiding spelling, LOL!

Ryne: He continues to do well with math, having completed the lesson on finding area of a rectangle or square. He enjoyed working on memorizing his first poem for the year. I don't personally select the poems he memorizes, since poetry is included in First Language Lessons, but I have been very happy with all the poems in each FLL book. This week he started "Afternoon on a Hill" by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Another highlight of the week for Ryne was having his first Cub Scout den meeting for the year.

Grace: So far, so good with subtraction! She reviewed 3 lessons this week that she completed late last spring. But the next lesson (subtracting 9's) is where she really struggled, forcing us to take a break. I have a few ideas on how to help her through this lesson, so we'll see if she's ready for it yet.

Anna: The adjustment to away-school gets better each week. She loves her school and is working hard. They are reading Tom Sawyer right now, but are forbidden to read ahead and it is killing her!

Bible: Having completed the introductory chapters in Discovering Jesus in Exodus, we were reacquainted ourselves with the pattern of the main text we were introduced to in the DJiGenesis last year. Each four chapter section has a "glory story" that illustrates the memory verse and the covenantal theme, as well as a fictional story line designed to encourage personal application of the truths. This week our glory story was about baby Moses, the covenantal theme was "trust," and the verse was 20:7, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." In addition to DJiE, we continued our daily Bible stories, and began working on memorizing the first five books of the Bible.

Science: We completed a lesson on precipitation and made a rain gauge (we've collected a whopping one-eighth of an inch of rain so far!). We also completed Outdoor Hour Challenge #3, which you can read about here. We were honored to have one of the photos I took of the kids on our second challenge chosen as The Handbook of Nature Study's photo of the week. As of tonight, you can still see us about half-way down the side bar.

History: Our focus this week was Jamestown and the Powhatan Indians (think Pocahontas). There were too many good books to choose from this week, so sadly I had to return a few to the library that looked like they could have been good. Below are the favorites of what we did read.

Three Ships Come Sailing, Gilchrist Waring

The Lord is My Shepherd, Ill. Tasha Tudor

The Jamestown Colony, Brendan January

Powhatan Indians, Suzanne Morgan Williams

Fine Arts: We started learning about the viola, and reviewed the same hymn and patriotic song from previous weeks. We almost completed unit 3 of Artistic Pursuits, except that the project called for water color crayons again, which I did not buy until Saturday, so the project had to wait. Another component of our fine arts schedule is piano lessons, and from listening to the kids practice you would think it is Christmas time already! They have all started learning their pieces for our church Christmas program. The instructor wanted the kids to really challenge themselves, so it will be fun to see how they progress over the next few months.

Other: Friday afternoon we had a play date with some friends from church who also homeschool. They have a boy and girl both close in age to Ryne and Grace, so hopefully we can do this often. I think we moms need it almost more than the kids!

With three weeks completed, we've had a nice transition as we move into high-gear with extracurricular activities. Swimming, Cub Scouts, and my ladies Bible study started last week, Sunday School started yesterday, Catechism starts Wednesday, and ballet resumes next week. And somewhere in the middle of it all, I am going to learn how to use our spelling program!

Happy Homeschooling!

Week 2 in Review

I thought about participating in the blog hop again this week, but the the topic is "A Day in the Life" and I'm still trying to figure out what that looks like for us! We continue to adjust to Anna's new away-school schedule, but each day is getting better and better. Hopefully in the next week or so we will settle into a nice routine.

Ryne: Last week I wrote about our struggle with a narration assessment to figure out where to start him in Writing With Ease. I got an email from Peace Hill Press, saying that Susan Wise Bauer agreed with my idea to split him into two different levels. So he will start with Level 1 for narration and Level 2 for copywork and dictation. This means that I will have to just use the manual as my guide and find my own literature selections, but I was leaning toward doing this anyway. It's more work on my part, but I've already been doing it in previous years for copywork -- plus I don't have to spend the extra money on workbooks.

All of Ryne's other individual subjects went well. He did miss one question on his math test (his first missed question on a test in six lessons of Gamma), but as soon as I pointed it out he caught the mistake. Oh, how I love that math is going so smoothly for him right now.

Grace: It was smooth sailing for Grace as well. We finished up our review of addition facts, so we'll start on subtraction next week. Since she did so well with Ryne's reading book last week, I've made it a joint reading time, letting her and Ryne take turns. Now I'm wondering what to do with all the 1st and 2nd grade reading books she was supposed to read. Maybe they will become night-time reading material.

Bible: We finished part 1 of Discovering Jesus in Exodus. The Scripture text was Ephesians 1:3-7. Both Ryne and Grace are able to answer these questions:

• When did God choose us to belong to Him?
• Why did God choose us to belong to Him?
• What do we have through the blood of Jesus?
• What does redeem mean?

Science: We read about clouds and made weather in a jar.

waiting for precipitation

We also completed Outdoor Hour Challenge 2, and you can read about that in the previous post.

History: We read about Columbus and made simple models of the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Just like last week, this is review since we covered Columbus in SOTW 2 last year, and therefore didn't read as much this week as we could have. We did read a short chapter book, Pedro's Journal, but it was just okay. What we did enjoy, however, was American Pioneers and Patriots, which will be one of our spines as we go through Adventures in MFW.

The kids enjoyed making the ships and were able to tell me all about what happened to each ship, based on what we read this week.

Fine Arts: I love that Adventures introduces the kids to many great patriotic hymns and songs. I had planned on doing that before we chose Adventures, but now it's already planned out for me! This week we started "God Bless America."

We also started our instrument-of-the-week studies, starting with the violin. We will be following the order in Story of the Orchestra. We also started our first of four composer studies, reading part of Joseph Haydn: The Merry Little Peasant. I'm kicking myself because somehow I didn't get the companion CD added to my Rainbow order. We also continued learning the hymn "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty."

We finished another Artistic Pursuits chapter, the theme being imagination. Our project didn't go quite as well as I hoped because I (the daughter of an art teacher) forgot that watercolor pencils are not the same as watercolor crayons. The kids were a little disappointed in the results, because the pencils did not blend very well.

Latin: Since I couldn't find our Song School Latin CD, we just reviewed the songs we learned last year, without music. Must find that CD...

Other: Last week I forgot to tell about our first Family Math activity. It was so much fun that we decided to do it again this week. The activity involved assigning each letter of the alphabet a dollar amount (a = $1, z = $26) and then determining whose name was worth the most money. This was the perfect activity for Ryne and Grace. While Grace has not learned column addition, she was still able to help out with the basic facts she knows. Last week I wrote the problems on the white board, and we all helped to add up the value of each name.

This week they wrote the problems on the white board, which turned out to be a great lesson in place value for Grace. Instead of using our first names again, we chose five of the Dutch last names from our church directory (ours included) and calculated which last name was worth the most. Dutch names have a lot of v's, w's, and s's and other "valuable" consonants, so the kids just loved this variation.

So that's our week! We still need to add in spelling. I bought Level 1 of All About Spelling and I need to take some time this weekend to figure out how it works.

Happy Homeschooling!

Week 1 in Review

Quick! What is 11 - 10? No, we didn't cover 11 weeks worth of school in our first week. I just do not have Photoshop on my new computer yet, and since I didn't start my weekly reviews until week 11 last year I don't have a cute little image for the first 10 weeks. Hopefully that will be resolved by next week!

Now that I have thoroughly confused you, let me get on with the review of our first week of school for the 2009-2010 school year. For those of you who are new to my weekly reviews, I start with some highlights for each student's individual subjects and then cover the group subjects.

Grace: She feels like such a big girl now that she gets to do First Language Lessons! She loved memorizing The Caterpillar. She also started Writing with Ease 1 and continues to work on Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and her Christian Liberty phonics workbook. One big surprise occurred actually when I was working on reading with Ryne. He is reading Secrets in the Maple Tree (Abeka), which is written at a 3.5 grade level. Grace kept getting distracted from her phonics because she wanted to hear the story, so I invited her to come listen. Then Ryne needed a break, but Grace wanted to know what happened next, so I let her try reading a page. She did great! It confirmed that she is just naturally picking up reading now, and that OPG is just solidifying what her brain has already started to figure out on its own. I have read of similar experiences with other children using OPG, so I think that speaks for what a great program it is.

I'm having her review her addition facts and then we will give subtraction another go (it was too hard to introduce over the summer because we didn't have the consistency we do in the regular school year).

Ryne: He was shocked to see how thick the FLL 4 book is, but he was still eager to get started. Since he's done so wonderful with the FLL series, I decided to try out WWE. He spent the week doing the Year 1 end-of-the-year evaluation as a placement guide. The first and third days were copywork exercises and the second and fourth days were narration exercises. He rocked on the copywork and failed miserably with the narration. I expected him to do poorly with narration, but not this poorly. This is one of the key areas where autism effects his learning, which is exactly why we need to focus on narration. So now I'm not sure how to proceed -- split the levels (not even sure if that is possible), just work on narration in Level 1, or what? The copywork in Level 1 is way too easy for him. So I sent an email to Peace Hill Press and they are forwarding it to Susan Wise Bauer, the author. I'll keep you posted...

One subject he did do really well in, however, was math. He started MUS Gamma this summer and is loving it. This week he finished Lessons 4 and 5. So far he has not missed a single question on any of his tests!

Anna: I won't always include Anna in the weekly reviews, since she is going to away-school, but because she is home two days a weeks she is still very much a part of our homeschool week. She loves her new school and her teacher is incredible, but we're all going through an adjustment period. It is a lot of work, and it is just going to take time to get acquainted with the way things work there. I learned the hard way that I need to be more available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We were still finishing up homework at 9 o'clock both nights.

Bible: The kids were excited to start Discovering Jesus in Exodus. They had no idea there was a sequel to the Genesis book.

Science: We're restarting the Christian Kid's Explore Earth and Space unit on weather since it was April when we last looked at it. I found some fun worksheets on the internet to review the seasons. On Friday we completed our first Outdoor Hour Challenge, which I blogged about in the previous post.

History: This week was a gentle introduction to Adventures in My Father's World. We talked about the pledge of allegiance, did some basic mapwork, and read a little bit about the Vikings discovering America. We didn't spend a lot of time on the Vikings since we covered this in history last year. I also gave Ryne and Grace their own history notebooks, and they were pretty excited. In the coming weeks I will continue my tradition of posting links to our favorite books for history (and other subjects), but for this week there was just one, so I will save it for next week.

Fine Arts: We finished Unit 1 in Artistic Pursuits, started learning the hymn Praise to the Lord Almighty, and read/listened to the section on the different musical periods in Story of the Orchestra. I wasn't planning on covering that much in SOTO, but Ryne wouldn't let me stop. He is really into classical music right now. He talks to me about different symphonies ("Momma, what do you think of when you hear Beethoven's 9th?") and is working on composing his first symphony -- Ryno style! The Artistic Pursuits lessons fit in perfectly with this because it talked about artists being composers as well -- they just compose with images. Ryne loved that!

Overview: We still have a few things to add in, such as Latin and spelling, but our first week felt solid. It does make such a huge difference in having Anna home only two days a week. We were able to get all the schooling for Grace and Ryne done in the mornings, which is so different from last year when we were often finishing up at 4 o'clock. On Monday we even had a 30 minute quiet time after lunch and then each did their piano practice and I still had time to get a few housekeeping things done. That is the type of day I envisioned. The rest of the week's afternoons were a little more chaotic, but mostly due to what I mentioned above -- getting used to a new routine. I'll spare you the details... One thing that I am particularly thankful for though, is that my research seems to have paid off. I put a lot of thought and prayer into our curriculum for this year, and so far I think everything is a winner. That certainly makes life easier!

Happy Homeschooling!

Week 36 in review: school year done!

Friday was our last day of school, and just like any brick-and-mortar school on the last day, we did almost no school work! Instead we went to swim practice and later dropped Anna off for a birthday swim party/tea party/slumber party (whew! that mom must have been exhausted!). In fact, that's how much of our last few weeks of school have been -- fitting our school year schedule into the new summer schedule. Nevertheless, we made progress and finished up a number of books.

Anna: It was a great feeling of accomplishment when she closed her Rod and Staff grammar book for the last time. She is on Lesson 22 for math, and will continue to work on math through the summer. She will also work on Latin through the summer, since she is about half-way through Primer B. She also made a little progress on her Reformation reading list, and completed Mind Benders B3, and practiced some writing skills by writing to her pen pal. I don't mention her "for-fun" reading very often, but for the last several months she has been reading the Lord of the Rings books aloud with her dad at nights. They are half-way through the last book, and she is hooked. Several times a day she makes some comment about how this or that relates to something she read in one of the books.

Ryne: As I type, Ryne is eagerly looking over his MUS Gamma workbook that he will soon be starting. He has one more lesson in Beta. I had a brief moment of panic when he got 6 answers wrong on his last Beta test. He's rarely missed more than one on a test the entire year, and now six?! But then I got a laugh when he explained he just wanted to try his column addition a different way -- the way aliens do. So it wasn't his math skills, it was the autism that got 6 answers wrong on the test! Ryne still struggles with determining when and where he can do things like this. To him a test seemed like a fine place to try out "alien math", whereas most children would realize the inappropriateness of such a choice. I am thankful for these moments, however, because we are able to pinpoint areas to work on. Ryne also finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Bring the Classics to Life. Like the Swiss Family Robinson book I wrote about in the last review, this was a Level 1 book, but the comprehension questions seemed a little more challenging. He really enjoyed the book, and I still plan to blog about Ryne and reading comprehension sometime this summer.

Grace: She finished up Bible Pictures to Read and Bible Pictures to Color by Rod and Staff. She loved these books! It was a great choice for her Kindergarten year, and I wish R & S had more of these books. Reading continues to go wonderfully. We will continue that and math over the summer. We never did start the phonics worksheets again because the order between her reading book and the phonics got so off that I was afraid she would get confused. So we will concentrate on finishing the reading book first and then decide when to start up the worksheets again.

Since I mentioned Anna's bedtime reading, I will also mention that while Marc has been reading with Anna I have been reading through the Narnia books with Ryne and Grace. We have finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and the Boy, and this week we finished the Magician's Nephew. It is a great feeling to have both kids begging me to keep reading more when I close the book.

We celebrated the last day of school with a few small gifts: Anna received a tote bag she really liked, Grace a fuzzy bathrobe she's been requesting for almost a year, and Ryne got a Nerf gun. So another school year is done, and overall I feel like it went well. Every year is an improvement, and I feel so blessed to be able to spend my days learning with my kids. This week is Grace's ballet performance, so I will be busy preparing for visiting grandparents and driving to dress rehearsals and swim practices. Next week I will focus on our planning for the 2009-2010 school year.

Happy Homeschooling (or planning, for those of you on a break)!