Adventures with an Only Child

Staycation in Louisville, KY

2011-05-24T17:50:00.006-04:00

One of the blogs I follow, Smockity Frocks is hosting a Staycation in all 50 states today. She doesn't have Kentucky, so I decided to write a blog post and see if she'll link to it. It just so happens we are planning a staycation and I had already been doing some research. This list is by no means exhaustive of all the great things to do in Louisville, but these are the things that interest my family.

The Louisville Zoo

Every year my husband's father gives us a family membership for Christmas, but even if it weren't already free for us, it's still a good bargain. Adults are $12.95, Children 3 - 11 are $9.95 and 2 and under are FREE!

They just opened the new Glacier Run exhibit housing a polar bear and a grizzly family, including two of the most playful cubs you'd ever want to see. Calistoga Springs is included in zoo admission and is a fun water park when you need to cool off.

Waterfront Park

Eighty-five acres of green space right next to the river in downtown Louisville. There are water fountains, playgrounds, and picnic tables too. Unfortunately, there was a lot of flooding this spring, so we may not have as many fun free events this year.

Slugger Museum

Giant Bat - need I say more? Adults $10, Kids 6 - 12 $5, Kids 5 and younger FREE! Watch bats being made in the factory and tour the museum for fascinating baseball history. This is on "museum row" downtown, right across the street are the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville Science Center, and Frazier History Museum, which are all great, but now we're talking $$ if you do all of them. I would recommend hanging out downtown for the day, and if the Bats are in town, catching a game later that evening.

Louisville Nature Center - totally free

We've never been to this center, so it's definitely on our list. From the website, they offer widflower gardens, hiking and a bird blind, along with events on occasion.

Blackacre Nature Preserve

Another favorite outdoor place is hidden away in Eastern Louisville. Plan your visit to coincide with one of the many weekend events they offer during the summer, most of which are free. A favorite is the weekly Saturday morning farm feedings.

Of course, for our staycation, we have the local pool which is paid for under our condo maintenance fees, and if it rains, we can always have a movie day using Red Box movies for $1 each, or through Netflix for free (under our subscription).

Other fun (free) things include: the library's summer reading program and bi-weekly events to go along with it; the Speed Art Museum; picnics at one of the many parks designed by the famous Frederick Ohlmsted; movie nights at the zoo (free with admission...or membership); the list goes on.

If you live here and have some other ideas, please leave them in the comments for me.

Funny Story

2011-02-06T21:24:00.002-05:00

Today, there was an aritcle in the paper about local protestors of the Egyptian situation. An accompanying picture showed someone holding a sign that said "END U.S. SUPPORT FOR DICTATORSHIPS".

So I had just picked up that section and Samuel hops over to me and reads the sign out loud. Always on the look-out for a teaching moment, I asked him if he knew what "dictatorship" means.

Very seriously, he tells me that no he doesn't know that word, but that that he knows what dictation is, so his teacher at school must be a dictator! Actually in a way, I guess she is. LOL

Making Butter

2010-12-15T17:41:00.002-05:00

Samuel is reading Little House in the Big Woods and loving it. In one of the chapters, Laura details the butter churning chore. We made a simplified version:

Fill a clean baby food jar half-way with heavy whipping cream.
Shake, shake, shake for about 25 to 30 minutes. Obviously this step is better as a shared task. The cream goes to a whipped cream stage where you think shaking it isn't doing anything, and then all of a sudden the buttermilk starts to separate and the butter granules form. Just keep shaking.
I then dumped the contents of the jar into a strainer over a glass. Buttermilk was considered a treat for Laura's family and Samuel really liked it, too.
Here was my mistake...I used a spoon to try to get all the liquid out and some of the soft butter also went through the strainer. Next time, I'll be gentler.
You can salt it, but we didn't. We spread it on saltine crackers so that's where our salt came from. Delicious.
It only makes a couple tablespoons, but it was more than we wanted at the moment, so we put it in a small container covered in the fridge.

Honestly, I was a little intimidated by the idea of making butter. In fact, I bought the cream and waited until the best buy date before doing it. But Samuel kept pushing for it...he's such a crafty-minded boy. Too bad he got me for a mother :-)

The Spy Game?

2010-11-23T13:52:00.002-05:00

My son has a play date today with a girl from his class. They created a "Spy Club" which seems to consist, in part, of hiding "spy gear" around the house. I'm not sure what this spy gear is though.

Then they sneak (very loudly) around hiding behind the sofa watching me type on the computer until they burst out laughing and run away. This has already happened a handful of times.

I wish I could remember how the seven-year-old mind thinks, because I'm sure this is a great game, but my adult brain just can't seem to figure it out.

Afterschooling in the Second Grade

2010-09-21T18:09:00.005-04:00

School started on the day after Labor Day. With only three school days, there is approximately 4 hours of homework a week, with the majority of it being done on Mondays and Fridays. That curriculum/work-at-home has little to no flexibility.

So how do I afterschool? I supplement what they are already doing, and add in a few other things that I think might be interesting and fun.

They are reading The Courage of Sarah Noble. We read a different pioneer story with a boy as the main character. It also dealt with the issue of slavery, as the family in question was moving to Kansas Territory before it became a state so that when it did become a state, they could help make it a free state.

Now we are reading A Cricket in Times Square, which is on several "lists".

They are studying cave art as the first unit in art. I have ordered some additional books from the library, but the book on Jackson Pollock came in first. We skimmed it and then Samuel made his own art inspired by Pollock, using crayons instead of paints.

They are not working on multiplying or dividing in math, but we have had a half dozen or so times over the last month where we need to divide by 2 or 3, and I have had him "help" me figure it out.

As Cub Scouts gets in full swing, it seems that there are many opportunities for him to learn something and get rewarded (with a patch, belt loop, or pin) at the same time.

And there are ALWAYS animals. This is his main passion, if an average 7-year old has a passion. Be the Creature with the Kratt brothers is a new series being recorded on our DVR. We also have a binder where he received animal cards in the mail every 2 months, as well as many zoo trips. He knows things about animals I never dreamed existed.

So, even though I don't teach him everything at home, I am still "in charge" of his education. Thank goodness for his wonderful school, with curriculum I would choose if I were homeschooling, and teachers who really care.

Second Grade!

2010-09-10T11:47:00.005-04:00

Samuel has finished his first week of second grade. I thought it would all be review. Oh no. They started reading The Courage of Sarah Noble, learned five Latin words, and began the learning the 2,9,11 triplet. In first grade they learned the +/- facts by "fact houses"; this year they'll learn all the fact triplets up through 18, as well as multi-digits with carrying and borrowing. He's loving it all and very proud of himself for being a second grader.

I'm still dedicated to afterschooling to his interests (like animals), providing good literature as bed-time reading, and encouraging creative play during non-school hours.

Samuel's extra-curricular activities this year include Awana and Cub Scouts, and in mid-October he wants to pick up swimming again.

I never wanted an only child and I always wanted to homeschool, but I love my life the way it turned out.

"Math" Book Recommendation

2010-06-29T17:57:00.003-04:00

This book is hilarious! I would link to amazon here so you can see it, but I can't get it to work right now.

The book is called "Math Curse" by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. The narrator is a student whose teacher puts a "math curse" on him/her with this statement, "You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem." So, of course, the narrator proceeds to have a full day of being driven crazy by thinking of everything as a math problem.

The part that cracked us up so much we had to take a break is from the the page where the narrator is describing how each non-math subject is turned into a math problem:
"English is a word problem: if mail + box = mailbox:
1. Does lipstick - stick + lip?
2. Does tunafish + tunafish + fournafish?"

Fournafish...I'm even chuckling as I type this. There are a few real problems in the first few pages, but more importantly to me, this book shows that math can be fun (or funny...whichever way you want to look at it). We've been struggling with this a little because school sent home a bridge/review math workbook that needs to be turned in to his second grade teacher when school starts.

And on a totally unrelated note, Samuel and I have been team playing Family Feud on Facebook (my account). A few days ago, one of the Fast Money questions was "What do people call the smartest kid in school?" Samuel blurted out "awesome". I love that his school has a culture where the smartest kids are admired and not called names, like nerd, which happened to be the #1 answer.

Busy Summer

2010-06-25T17:55:00.003-04:00

Summer is getting to be a little busier than I planned, but I seem helpless to slow it down.

The second week of June, we spent in Edisto Beach, SC, which is not a real touristy beach and I felt that we were just enjoying each other and the down time. Samuel and Chris loved playing in the waves together and finding shells to bring home. It was great that they got to spend so much time together every day. I did not bring Samuel's workbooks with us. We read together as a family each night and Samuel had a book he had brought to read for fun and finished a few chapters.

When we got back, it was to an e-mail from school that we were to pick up a Math workbook for the students to finish during the summer and turn in to their teachers. So, now we have Math every day, cursive 3 times a week, and a summer reading list to work on (complete with "book reports" - one page that is half filled with a drawing). All this to turn into the teacher at the beginning of the school year.

I am actually fine with this in theory, but I had planned on doing my own math and writing reviews with him in a more fun/less workbook-y way.

Then he has friends wanting play dates, swim lesson once a week, our family volunteer commitment once a week. VBS one week, zoo camp one week, fun day camp one week. I am working about 5 hours a day Monday through Thursday, and I am starting to feel like that old commercial "Calgon take me away!"

I really didn't realize I was "overprogramming" but that is exactly what happened. I have to find a way to slow things down, at least for Samuel, so that summer can be a more relaxed, fun time for him.

Last Day of "Away" School

2010-05-28T21:33:00.003-04:00

...equals first day of summer home school! We do some after-schooling during the school year, but summer is so much more fun. Samuel loves school and learning, and is actually excited that he has some summer assignments.

In addition to the summer reading list where he has to turn in simple book reports (consisting of the title, author, sentence about the book, and a drawing) at the beginning of the school year, this year, he also has a summer cursive practice book with 3 assignments per week scheduled. Each page has 2 exercises, out of

practicing a particular letter,
copying a verse, quote, or grammar rule, and
listing certain things (like nouns that have a "b" in them, for example, or names of 4 of your friends).

His teacher also sent home a "bored bag" filled with little strips of paper with something to do written on each one. They can simply reach in, pull out a strip of paper, and follow the instruction. I'm planning to get him a special notebook to record the ones he chooses. Here are some of them:

Begin at 34. Count as far as you can by 10's.
Write words belonging to the _ig family. Read your list to someone. Write a story with those words.
Write the vowels on a sheet of paper. Think of three words for each vowel sound.
Go outside. Find out which direction is North, South, East, and West. Write what you see when you face each direction. Illustrate.
Cut pictures of foods. Make 5 categories: Dairy Products, Meats, Furits & Vegetables, Breads & Cereals, and JUNK. Arrange the picutres in the right category.
Plant something outside or help take care of a garden.
Write all the number facts you can think of that have 12 as the answer. (they did not do these facts in the first grade)
Use only the letters in your name to make as many new words as you can.
Find an object in your house that begins with each letter of the alphabet.
Fill the sink with water. Put a towel down on the floor. Gather objects that can get wet. Predict which ones will sink and which will float. Test your predictions.

And there are many many more. If I get any comments asking for more of these, I'll write them in another post.

For my part, I plan to

Have him read for 20 minutes every day and write his book report on finishing a book.
Do his cursive book 3 times per week.
Choose from the bored bag 3 - 5 things per week.
He will have swimming class once per week and 1-2 hours 2-3 times per week in the neighborhood pool.
Read alouds according to interest. Right now we are reading from the Burgess Animal Book. We recently tried Twenty-one Balloons, but he wasn't ready for it, which disappointed me since I was really enjoying it. I have a list I work from, but only continue to read a particular book if he's interested. If he's not interested, that book gets moved to the bottom of the list. Usually by the time it comes around again, he's ready for it.
We're going to learn to sing "In the Garden" for my father for his birthday in September, since that's his favorite hymn (he calls it "Andy Walks With Me").
We'll continue to work on the States Song (Turkey in the Straw tune) and the Bible Book Bop (a Go Fish song), both of which we currently get lost in the middle :-)
Playing Yahtzee is a great way for practicing addition, including regrouping and carrying (when we add up the final points), with some minor introduction to multiplication. We just started a new game tonight and it went so well, I told him we could play every night.
We will continue our weekly service committment helping in a local collection ministry (they collect and sort donated items to send to area ministries, sometimes having a "drive" to meet a specific need).
Other learning opportunities as they come up. We are always on the look-out for these opportunities.

Crayon Logic

2010-04-16T17:48:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite things about the internet is that you can find such great ideas from ordinary people just like you. Not like me, though. I am a great collector and user of other people's ideas :-)

One of these great ideas is using ordinary crayons in logic puzzles. I have seen wonderful logic books, mainly from Critical Thinking, but they are very expensive, and well, it's still a workbook. My child looks at all things workbook with suspicion. But I have great luck in using games to teach. And this looks suspiciously like a game to me, and for a very reasonable price.

I just purchased the Level 1 logic set. I plan to use it on summer days that are too hot or too rainy to be outside. I'll let you know in a future post how much I like it.

Check it out at Ginger snap shots.

Need a Laugh?

2010-03-13T07:36:00.001-05:00

Oh my, I haven't laughed this hard in a long time...

Book Review

2010-02-27T19:51:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine recently recommended this book to me - The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. She was using this book in her decision to keep her daughter (who turns 5 in June) in preschool for the Fall and wait until the next year to start her in Kindergarten.

Now since my son turned 5 in July 2008 and started Kindergarten that same year, I guess I was feeling a little defensive. Also, I was a "young" first grader (they didn't have mandatory Kindergarten when I started the school system).

I don't really know where her child is in the "readiness", but it seemed in her e-mail that she was using this book to make her decision for her. She didn't mention her daughter at all in why she made her decision. Also, I don't normally "read" non-fiction. I don't know why I decided to read it.

I loved it! It's actually more about why certain people are successful and why others aren't. Only one example is given about age in starting Kindergarten being an unfair advantage to the older ones. All the stories though, were riveting, at least to me.

Actually, I kind of came away feeling that a home where the emphasis is on learning would be an advantage to any child, regardless of age. And it also gave me some things to be on the look-out for in helping Samuel be as "successful" as he wants to be, in whatever that might be.

So, I'm going to recommend it too, but for a totally different reason than my friend. And isn't that the mark of a really good book, anyway, that it can be different things to different people?

Spelling Bee!

2010-02-26T09:42:00.002-05:00

Samuel's school is out for "Spring Break". The reason for the quotation marks should be obvious as, not only is it not even officially Spring yet, it's extremely cold outside. Really, it should be called "Trimester" break, since the second trimester just ended. He's doing great in every area except timed math fact drills. He is fairly motion-oriented and that doesn't make for quick work.

Normally they have a spelling test every Tuesday, but since they would be gone for a whole week, his teacher decided to have a class spelling bee yesterday on their words for the week. Whenever we do "bee" type studying, he makes lots of mistakes while he dances around to the tune of "The Spelling Song" or whatever he hears in his head.

So, I'm trying to get him to act like a real bee, spelling the words while standing still...no mistakes. I point this out to him and it's like a light bulb in his head. He actually won the class bee yesterday, and if you ask him, he is very surprised because he thought either Meg or Tristan were the best spellers in the class.

So, now I'm going to work on translating that to the timed math drills - 21 problems in 1 minute. And he thought he wasn't going to have any school next week!

The Sweetness in Classic Literature

2010-01-29T18:12:00.002-05:00

Samuel received a Hardy Boys mystery in his classroom's Christmas book exchange. However, it was #3 in the series and he is one of those people who has to read the books "in order" even if they don't really build on each other. So we checked out #1 "The Tower Treasure" from our church's children's library and began reading it.

Now I don't want you to think I am confusing this with "The Classics", but since this book was originally published in 1927 and people still want to read it today, it has shown the undurance of "good literature".

We still have 6 chapters to go, but I want to say that even though the main characters, Joe and Frank Hardy, are teenagers, I think this is a great book to read to a six-year old. You can't say that about some of the teen literature out today.

Here is a really cute example of what I mean by "sweetness":
"...Frank's face lighted up, for he had recognized Callie Shaw, who was in his class at Bayport High. Frank often dated Callie and liked her better than any girl he knew."

Now isn't this much better sounding than today's world where boys and girls are acting like they are in adult relationships at age 13 and up? Just something I'm thinking about after watching Lifetime's "Pregnancy Pact" last night.

What We're Up To

2009-12-28T09:35:00.003-05:00

Life is a little more hectic in the first grade than in previous years. I find myself with not as much to say or time to say it in. Here are some of the learning activities we've been doing:

Budgeting - using the Kid's Wealth Program.

Crafts - including painted and decorated wall letters and Christmas ornaments.

Math - for some reason he likes flash cards right now, so in addition to "living math" he is up to the 8's in addition and 7's in subtraction.

Art and Music Appreciation - saw The Nutcracker for the first time, as well as attended the lower and upper school Christmas Cantata which is a Lessons and Carols format

Compassion - shopped for two Christmas children and worked at the "toy store" for one charity's gift distribution.

Chores - cleaning, folding and putting away clothes, setting the table, helping in the kitchen.

Reading - began team-reading (I read one page, he reads the next, etc.) his first real chapter book, even if it is "twaddle".

Literature - read a wide variety of Christmas tales and poetry (Christian and secular) every day from Thanksgiving until December 26. I didn't keep an exact list of these, but I worked from another blog's list that I had cut and pasted a couple of years ago to my own Word Document, so I can probably re-create a list and may do that in a subsequent post.

Samuel's First Story

2009-11-17T17:31:00.004-05:00

Totally out of the blue. A big secret. Samuel found a small empty notebook and decided on his own to write a story. Occasionally he asked me how to spell a word. Usually I would encourage him to use his phonics and see if he could figure it out first. Here is the finished product (I left in his spelling and grammar):

The place

ther was a 6 year old. he was A nice boy. Who Loved books! (a note at the bottom of the page to "Go on")

one of his books The Gengerbread man. another of his Books Was the place. The place It was his faveret book ever!

Onece he jumped into the Book. there Was candy. there was dinosaurs. even rainbows every day. But he got tired of eating candy he got a bellyache. he desidced he wanted to go back home. so he jumped Out of the book And went to bed

The End

Spelling and grammar aside, I was impressed with the fact that his story had a clear beginning, middle and end. Now that I know he is interested in writing stories, I think I will encourage it just a bit :-)

Swine Flu, Anniversaries, Afterschool, Vacations, and Birthdays

2009-10-14T19:00:00.003-04:00

I just realized it had been a few weeks since I had posted, but since I don't have a post idea in mind, I'm just going to ramble about some stuff:

Swine Flu
There have been a lot of absences in Samuel's school, making me slightly paranoid. Not that the swine flu is much worse than regular flu, unless you have something else wrong with you. I'm paranoid just the same.

Anniversaries
My mother-in-law passed away almost a year ago. My husband doesn't talk about her at all. He didn't want to go visit her grave on Memorial Day or Mother's Day or her birthday. I'm worried he's bottling in his feelings.

Afterschool Efforts
Not going as well this year as last year. We still read at bedtime and look for educational opportunities at other times. Our two "spines", so to speak, "The Burgess Animal Book" and "The Story of the World". We don't read from these every night, but usually at least once a week. We have one novel from my "list" going at all times. I throw in poetry, living math books, living science books, artist and composer study periodically, but not regularly. There's a lot more homework this year, and less time with Dad (due to work and school schedules overlapping), so the time we have for this is significantly less. I also want to give him lots of free creative play time. I just think that's what he needs right now. So I'm happy with what we're doing, it's not what I planned.

Family Vacations
Four years ago this Christmas, my dad had a great year business-wise and gave all of us an extended family cruise. We all had such a great time together and we kept saying we're going to do it again soon. Well, it looks like "soon" might be next year (although it's not a gift this time, just all of us going to the same place). We've talked about another cruise or maybe renting a beach house. I'm hoping for someplace we can drive to.

Birthdays
I turned 41 on Sunday. Although other birthdays have had special significance for me, this one was just a number. I had a great day though. Samuel and Chris let me sleep in and fixed me cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Samuel gave me my fourth pair of annual Halloween birthday socks (after the first pair, I told Chris I didn't want any more Halloween socks or jewelry, which I have also gotten; he thinks it's funny to let Samuel get me a pair every year...now I love it)! Then he made me a sweet little bracelet of orange yarn and rainbow-colored shiny beads. We went for "Sunday Supper" at my parents house with my sibs. I just love spending time with my family!

There once was a...

2009-09-30T18:48:00.004-04:00

Limerick!

Recently while surfing through our channel guide on PBS, I discovered something wonderful...The Electric Company is back on TV! It's actually an updated version and after watching the first episode we could DVR, I think it may even be better. It has some of the old favorite bits like the shadow people sounding out words. That doesn't really describe this, but if you are a fan, you should know what I'm saying, and if you aren't a fan, then just trust me :-)

But it's got some real characters with a short story running through it and phonics rules set to rap music. One of the favorites we've seen a few times now is the "Bossy R".

Anyway, back to my post title. The very first episode we watched had one of the characters accepting a dare to enter a limerick battle, but she didn't know what one was. Samuel loved the sing song rhythm so of course, I had to check out a couple books of limericks from the library. The first one is "There Once Was a Very Odd School" by Stephen Krensky with poems all about being in school. We are now ready for the second book titled "The Hopeful Trout and Other Limericks" by John Ciardi. We've also tried our hand at composing a couple of limericks together. We're not that great at it. I'm not ready to post one of our joint efforts yet.

Another Fun Living Math Book

2009-09-25T19:46:00.003-04:00

This fun living math book was too advanced for Samuel, but this one does offer a lot that he can do without my help and some that he can understand with my help.

Zookeeper for a Day plays into Samuel's love of animals as well as his love of math. The premise is that the child gets to walk in the steps of a zookeeper for a day and see how they use math in their jobs. Some is mental math and some needs a pencil, paper, and sometimes ruler. It's part of a Math Adventures series so I will have to see if we can find additional books.

So that's my share of the day! Hope you find it useful.

Homeschooling Dreams

2009-09-24T16:57:00.002-04:00

There's a lot less time for homeschooling in first grade. I love Samuel's school, but I still hold on to that illusion that I am a homeschooler. He's in class 3 days a week, plus chess club and Awana. On Thursdays, he gets enough homework for Friday and Monday, but it's the school's homework, not mine.

I love his school. If I were a full time homeschooler, my curriculum would be very similar to their's. I still view myself as a homeschooler. I can't help it. I still faithfully read homeschool blogs and Yahoo groups. When will I give up my delusion?

I still have a booklist I put together for bedtime reading. This is fluid and other "fun" books get slipped in there. For instance, right now, we are reading the Burgess Animal Book, Story of the World, The Jungle Book (Kipling, not Disney), one of the A to Z Mystery series (Ron Roy), The Mouse and the Motorcycle (Cleary), and The Van Gogh Cafe (Cynthia Rylant - we love this). We don't read from each book every night. I let him choose which books, but not the same one two nights in a row, except for the A to Z Mystery which has very short chapters.

Also, periodically we will bring home another cool non-chapter book from the library (like a living math book or biography from Mike Venezia) or we read an old favorite in our home library. He also reads to me probably 4 nights a week.

So, I'm homeschooling, right? I'm homeschooling, but I'm not.

Fun Living Math Book

2009-09-16T18:45:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure if this find was discovered because I saw it on someone's blog (if so, let me know and I'll give you credit and a link) or if I did some weird search on my library's web site, but this book came in for us and I LOVE it! The math is a little too much for my first grader, but I could see him being able to do some of the problems over the next few years.

The book is called Arithme-tickle by J. Patrick Lewis. There are 19 rhyming riddles that ask you to solve a problem. Here is and example using on of the short (and one of the easiest) riddles:

Dr. Nast said, :I'll give you three shots
to get rid of those hideous spots.
One shot every half hour." Goodness sake!
How long did those nasty Nast shots take?

The answer key is at the bottom of each page, but you need a mirror to read it!

When I see something cool, I like to share it, mostly because I [steal] get so many good ideas from reading other blogs. It's my "pay it forward".

First week complete

2009-09-14T17:39:00.004-04:00

Despite the fact that we learn year-round and had already begun some books from our first grade list, this past week constituted Samuel's first week of first grade. His school does require a parent signature promising 11 hours of home instruction per week (due to the shortened school week/school year, even though they provide a full curriculum). Because we are parent-directed, child-led around here, I was a little worried about the homework/seatwork. Last year was really tough, getting him to sit still to do the work. It would often take him over an hour (split up by many breaks, but an hour total doing the work) to do work that I believed should have taken only 15 to 20 minutes. His attitude was much better this past week, though not perfect.

We've been reading several chapter books (including Story of the World, which is not really a chapter book) at bedtime in the tradition of CM-style savoring. One of those is The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary, which we had listened to on CD on a vacation one and a half years ago, but he didn't remember it. Just last night, he decided to have me start reading The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (parent-directed as this was among the choices I provided, but child-led because it was his choice).

I've also checked out some living math books which we'll look at this week. Tomorrow he starts an after-school chess club. They learn for the first half hour and then play for the second half hour. He's really excited.

New School Year

2009-09-01T18:55:00.003-04:00

In July, I posted my final first grade curriculum plans. Hah! I should know better than to put the word "final" on anything. My outline is more of a fluid document and always has been. Well, anyway, Samuel begins Latin School (although they don't actually learn Latin until the 2nd grade) next week. Here is what we began last week in order to ease us into my plans for the home part of his education.

Christian Studies
He signed up for Awana Club. He will also be reading from "The Beginner's Bible". There is a strong Bible component at his school with most copywork and memory work relating to the Bible in the early grades. And, we attend church as a family.

Math
I still don't have a real plan for this because the living math way has been working for us. His school curriculum is Rod and Staff.

Music
We heard George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on the radio on the way to the library so we checked out a CD and the Mike Venezia book on Gershwin. At school, he will have music twice a week for lessons in basic elements of music, including ear training, note reading and choral performance. We are debating whether to also join the elementary choir at church.

Reading
Finished up two books on his summer reading list, "Floss" by Kim Lewis, and "Wind in the Willows" adapted from Kenneth Grahame.

Literature/Poetry
We began "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" by Beverly Cleary.

History
I had not planned to do Ancient History; however, I found The Story of the World, Volume 1 on ebay for a good price (remember me mentioning fluidity in my plans?). This past week, we read the Introduction and the chapter on Nomads. I did a search for books to supplement this and hopefully some of them will come in this week. Tonight, I am reading him the story of Jericho from "The Beginner's Bible" because when the book mentioned Jericho as one of the first cities, he did not know about it.

Nature/Science
We have been going back and forth between reading books from the library about African animals and reading "Poor Mrs. Quack" by Thorton Burgess. We also made a trip to the zoo last week and the week before.

Extracurricular

2009-08-26T08:43:00.002-04:00

Samuel will be going to his classical school three days a week this year. When the time came to pick outside activities, we had the choices of Awana, children's choir at church, tennis clinic, swimming, and chess club. I don't want to overprogram him so he never has a chance for creative play, so I told him he could only do one activity on a school day and another, if he chose, on a non-school day. I don't know if this was the right thing to do or not, but it seemed right at the time.

If it had been me, I would have chosen choir and swimming. He chose Awana and chess! Of course I don't even know how to play chess, so I guess I'll have to purchase a chess set and learn the basics so he can play/practice at home.

Changing how we do things

2009-08-17T22:21:00.003-04:00

The answer to this question is "yes", I am too dependent on my library's computer catalog. :-)

So, I guess I will do things the old fashioned way. Tomorrow I am actually going to visit the library with a list of books and try to find them in the stacks myself!

Here is my list of readers for the next three weeks (after school starts, he'll be reading school reading assignments and/or The Beginner's Bible):
Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel
Floss by Kim Lewis
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
The Magic Fish by Freya Littledale
Gregory's Shadow by Don Freeman

Here is my list of literature read-alouds (for starters, I'm only going to check one or two out at a time):
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
Homer Price by Robert McCloskey
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

For History, I recently purchase Story of the World, Volume 1 (Ancients) on eBay. I plan to read a chapter or two a week, along with checking out other books to go along with those chapters. I won't start this until I get the book and the library online catalog is up and running.

Math and printing will primarily follow the school's curriculum; however, I will always be offering real life uses of these two skills for practice and enrichment.

Later on in the school year, I will add math history, nature study, artist and composer studies.

Am I too dependent on my library's computer?

2009-08-08T11:39:00.002-04:00

I had planned on starting to request books from my literature and history book lists for first grade and beginning to read from them next week. Currently we are on a child-led tour of African Animals, which is science and also kind of geography. But our literature choices this summer has been pretty much child-led (and mostly twaddle) and he hasn't been interested in history at all.

Now to the point of the post title. We had severe storms and flash flooding in our town on Tuesday. The Main branch of the library lost many books, as well as electrical and the computer server. Now, not only can I not order new books, I don't know when the books (mostly readers from Samuel's summer reading list) we have checked out are due and I can't renew them because it's all on the computer.

They say that the server may be up sometime the beginning of next week. I am trying to decide whether to return all my books "just in case" or risk a fine waiting until I can check on the computer. I still want to start Literature and History next week, so I will go into my branch on Monday and look for one or two of the titles on my list.

Birthdays, Books, and Busted Cars

2009-07-28T18:58:00.006-04:00

Samuel turned 6 last week. We went to see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and ate lunch at his favorite restaurant. On the weekend, we had the family party. The summer he turned 2, the movie Cars was coming out. Now, he hadn't seen the movie (at that point, movies were limited to those we could rent and watch at home), but he really wanted a Cars birthday cake. Since the movie was so new, I could not find a bakery that had the Cars stuff to put on cakes. Thus began my foray into the amateur world of cake decorating. I bought a small Lightening McQueen car and a couple of others from the movie and made a race track cake and placed the cars on the race track (after thoroughly cleaning them, of course).

The following year, he wanted a Mystery Machine cake. Last year, a camping cake. This year, a jungle cake. Here is what I came up with:

Next, to books. Whenever we are in Target, we always stop by the dollar bins to see what's there. This time, they had some readers. Samuel picked one called "Animals in Africa". After he read it, he wanted to learn more about African Animals (OK, I put the idea in his head, but he definitely got excited about it). So, that ended up being a lot of bang for our buck.

And busted cars...why, oh why, do cars seem to run great until you make your last car payment? Our last payment was in May; beginning in May, the car has broken down (meaning, won't run) twice. We have also had to replace the key tumbler because my key kept getting stuck, the brakes, and two tires. This latest break down is going to cost us over $1300. It almost seems easier to buy a new car, but wait, we've replaced so much stuff, this one is almost new!

ABC Meme

2009-07-19T16:15:00.002-04:00

I saw this at Whimsy Way and decided it looked like fun:

Accent: Mostly middle of the road, but sometimes southern when I get emotional.

Breakfast or not: Always.

Chore I don't care for: Vaccuming...or dusting...really anything that kicks up dust, and therefore, my allergies.

Dog or Cat: Cat, although I've had dogs as pets before. No pets now.

Essential Electronics: Computer and cell phone

Favorite Cologne: Mostly cologne bothers my sensitive nose, but sometimes I spray on a vanilla perfume that smells like cookies.

Gold or Silver: Silver

Handbag I carry most often. In the summer it's a sand-colored crocheted purse. In the winter, plain black.

Insomnia: It probably wouldn't be classified as insomnia, but sometimes I stay up till the week hours reading a good book....and then suffer for it the next day.

Job Title: Wife, Mommy, Financial Advisor

Kids: One beautiful six-year old boy

Living arrangements: Second story 3-bedroom condo with 17 steps to reach it.

Most admirable trait: Commitment

Naughtiest childhood behavior: One time I got mad at a babysitter for tearing the bread on my jelly sandwich and threw the table knife at her.

Overnight hospital stays: Two nights after my c-section

Phobias: people not liking me

Quote: "Walking around with the toothbrush in your mouth is not the same as brushing your teeth." I say this almost daily.

Reason to smile: Chris and Samuel

Siblings: Two younger brothers

Time I wake up: Most days between 7 and 8 am.

Unusual Talent or Skill: I don't really think of any of my talents or skills as unusual.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Hot peppers

Worst habit: Losing my focus during a conversation.

Yummy stuff: Anything chocolate, and cheesy anything.

Zoo animal I like the most: Elephant

First Grade Curriculum - Final

2009-07-15T19:42:00.002-04:00

As Samuel's private school grows in enrollment, it is falling under some state guidelines. One is time - number of hours of instruction. All homeschoolers know that quantity of time is not important, but quality of time is. This school also knows that. First graders only go to school three days a week (8 - 3:30) and for a shorter school year than public schools. They learn more (based on what I see from my nephew's homework who is in the same grade as Samuel) and have high test scores (they take the Iowa Basic Skills Test). Still, the state rules, so as a parent I had to sign a statement that I would provide 11 hours per week of instructional time. LOL...I already do more than that!

Phonics, Writing, Memory work, and Math Skills- I will let the school direct that and only provide enrichment and practice at home. I have an extensive booklist supplementing my outline, but I know I will nver get through it all. So here is my first grade outline and I will add my booklist in my monthly updates and in full next summer.

Bible Study
Samuel will read The Beginner's Bible throughout the year.

History
Personal Family Tree
Genesis through Deuteronomy
American History - exploration of the American West
Famous Americans
American folk tales, stories, and songs

Geography
Cardinal directions (north, south, east, west)
Identify major oceans and continents, equator, north and south poles on a globe and/or map
Find our city, state and country on a map, as well as Canada and Mexico

Literature/Poetry
Great books for read-alouds, approximately one per month (although I have about 20 books on my list!)
Children's Collections of Poetry (whatever we get from the library, such as the Oxford book)

Reading
Graded readers from personal and public library, Levels 1 - 3
Finish any books from the rising first grade summer reading list we didn't get to

Math
Fibonacci - Math in Nature
DaVinci - Math in Art
"Mathematicians Are People Too" - Math in History

Science
Life Science - habitats, food chain, plants, introducation of animal classification (add to Zoo Notebook), extinct and endangered species, environmental studies
Earth Science - Composition of the earth, weather
Continue Nature Walks, nature journal and zoo notebook

Art
Artist Studies - Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Picasso, Georgia O'Keefe, Edward Hopper
Experiment with a range of art techniques, including drawing, painting, collage, modelling media, printmaking, and weaving

Music
Composer Studies - Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinky, Duke Ellington, Aaron Copeland, George Gershwin
Learn the four families of instruments in the orchestra

Life Skills
Charity/Outreach
Tying shoes/knots
Learning to prepare one breakfast, lunch and dinner without help
Washing dishes

Physical Fitness
Encourage indoor and outdoor activity, to include swimming and basketball

Star-Spangled Banner

2009-07-15T07:25:00.002-04:00

One of the things we have been working on over the last year is learning all the words to the Star-Spangled Banner. That is not so easy for a five-year old. Part of it is answering questions like "what does twilight's last gleaming mean?"

I found a wonderful book at the library to help with this. And since one of my best sources of good books is other people's blogs, I thought I would share it here in case someone else does this too.

The book is called "The Star-Spangled Banner in Translation: What it Really Means" by Elizabeth Raum. It seems to be geared to elementary age and tweens. It basically gives a little history behind the poem and song and then goes stanza by stanza (first verse only, which is ok since the first verse is all that is ever sung) and gives a modern day translation.

This was good for me as well, since maybe I had gotten to where I was just singing the words and not thinking about what they mean.

Library Finds

2009-06-22T22:35:00.004-04:00

Almost every day I am adding requests for books to the library's website. These are books I choose from curriculum book lists and recommendations from homeschool bloggers and homeschool Yahoo groups. On occasion, I will also look for books by subject matter. Very rarely do I even take Samuel with me to pick up these requested books. But today I did and here is what he picked up off the shelves:

"The Great Snake: Stories From the Amazon" by Sean Taylor
This is a collection of short animal stories. The first one was along the lines of "how the Amazon came to be".

"The Kid's Natural History Book" by Judy Press
Samuel chose this one because he thought it was a book of crafts. There are a few crafts in it. The "facts" are written in an engaging style. However, it is definitely an evolutionist theory book. There are statements about how dinosaurs evolved into birds and how flightless birds evolved that way. Fortunately he is really only interested in the crafts in the book. I really must be on the search for some good books that present all sides of the argument fairly.

"Harriet's Halloween Candy" by Nancy Carlson
Pure twaddle - the only reason I let him get this book is because I told him I would not read it to him, that he would have to read it himself.

"The First Gift" by A. S. Gadot
I was very surprised to find this book. It was on the display shelf, probably because it is a new and shiny picture book. The illustrations are very nice. The "first gift" is the gift of a name, but much of the text is Old Testament and the last page shares a few paragraphs on Jewish Naming Customs.

"Mouse in a Meadow" by John Himmelman
This is a beautifully illustrated picture book that starts with a mouse in a meadow and takes us on a journey of all the animals, insects, birds, plants we find in the meadow, only to end with a weasel looking to make a meal of the mouse. The last pages of the book, show individual drawings of the different, animals, insects, birds, plants found in the book with their proper names so you can go back and make sure you saw everything. I checked and the author has several other picture books, some that look like living learning books and some that look like just fun.

So, all in all, a successful trip to the library. And a reminder to let my son choose some of his own books - I might just be pleasantly surprised.

Summer Reading

2009-06-15T21:36:00.010-04:00

Samuel is participating in four summer reading programs.

The first one is for school. He is to read books from the list in this post (although I don't think he has to read them all) and complete this book report form for each book read. I like it because it gives a little bit of writing practice, but let's him be creative by drawing his favorite part of the book.So far, he has read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie", "Morris Goes to School", "Frog and Toad Together" and "Each Peach Pear Plum". The Morris and Frog books are chapter books and he would read one chapter per day, which is why the list is pretty short. Plus the fact that he is also reading other books for other lists.

The second one is from Barnes and Noble. After reading and recording eight books on a reading log, he gets a free book from a list that you can see on the website.

The third one is from the public library - ten books read (including those read to you if you are a beginning reader) gets a little backpack filled with coupons for things like a free frosty at Wendy's or admission to the art museum.

The last one is from our church. This is the first year for this so I don't know what the prizes are. The goal is to read (or have read to you if you are a beginning reader) 25 books by the end of the summer. For each 5 books read, you get a prize. Each reading log has space for 15 books. For each reading log completely filled and turned in, you get a chance for the "big prize" drawing at the end of the summer. I don't know what the big prize is, probably a bible. The only rule is that you have to include at least 5 bible stories on your list. I have started asking Samuel to read stories from "The Beginner's Bible" at bedtime, but I haven't put any of these on the list. I think they should count, though, don't you?

Kids Wealth Program

2009-06-05T16:10:00.007-04:00

Summer has always been a time for us to learn new things. Potty training and learning how to put on his own clothes were big ones. This summer we are beginning is Kids Wealth. Samuel turns 6 in July and it would probably be the time we start an allowance. This is different from an allowance. He got his first Kids Pay on Monday and is now learning the painful lesson of choices. It's awesome. Here are the basics:

Parents:

Determine how much you spend on your child's wants each month. I did not include college funding or birthday and Christmas gifts. I did include souveniers when we go on vacation, his weekly treat from the grocery store, the money he puts in the missionary globe at church, fast food when he is the only one who wants it, fun books, movies, etc.
Divide that amount by half and make that the "Kid's Pay" which is paid out monthly. You still get some discretionary "treat your kid" money.
Stop saying "no" all the time and let your child make their own decisions and learn consequences of those decisions.

The Kid's Pay is divided into different "accounts", each one having it's own color-coded wallet. The wallets are 30% to Wealth, 20% to Plan, 20% to Learn, 20% to Fun, and 10% to Angel. This next part is a description of each account.

WEALTH - The Wealth Account is your child's long-term investment account. The program talks about "paying yourself first" but because I believe you pay God first, I just altered this aspect. When enough money has accumulated, you open a savings account and eventually an investment account. They don't touch this money ever, just watch it grow.

PLAN - The Plan Account teaches your child how to set a goal and develop a plan to achieve it. This allows them to plan for more expensive items using their own money.

LEARN - The Learn Account reinforces that learning is a lifelong precess worth investing in. This money is for books, software, museums and any other educational activites. This should be spent each month.

FUN - The Fun Account is your child's monthly fun money to buy things they want. Kids learn to make wise spending decisions as they learn to live within a budget. This has already come into play a couple of times this week when Samuel asks for something. So far he has not spent his money because each time I tell him how much something costs, he decides it is not worth it! This money should be spent each month.

ANGEL - The Angel Account should be spent each month helping others, giving to church, charities, benefits, or other worthwhile causes.

I had signed up for their e-mail list long before I purchased the kit. It sometimes goes on sale, which is when I purchased it.

May Afterschool Report

2009-05-29T21:35:00.003-04:00

"Regular" school finished up May 19 and we've been doing more unschooling types of learning at home -

Math - He learned to play Yahtzee. Although I do most of the adding, I let him do what he can and the rest I do out loud so he can see my thought processes. We have also begun practicing adding coins of different denomiations together. Previously, he has counted money of only the same denomination. We have also begun setting the stage for our summer (and hopefully continuing throughout the years) unit on money, using the KidsWealth program, which we are starting on June 1. More on this to come.

Music - We listened to Brahms Hungarian Dances in the car some. Samuel found my Fantasia 2000 DVD which I had totally forgotten about and watched that all the way through once and the Saint-Saens piece several more times. In March 2008, we had spent a month with this composer and piece of music, and he decided he wanted to do it again in June, so I've just requested all the materials from the library including a CD, a DVD concert, and Ogden Nash's ZOO for our poet since these poems are used in the DVD. Any ideas on other activities or books we should try?

Art - Art was a little ecletic this month also. Instead of me picking one artist, I checked out several books of artwork geared to children, including "Seen Art?" by Jon Scieszka (of Time Warp Trio fame); "I Spy a Lion:Animals in Art" by Lucy Micklethwait; and "Come Look With Me:Animals in Art" by Gladys Blizzard.

Literature and Poetry - We finished "Charlotte's Web" and "The Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry"; we also read another book in the "Littles" series by John Peterson and began "The Llama Who Had No Pajama" by Mary Ann Hoberman for our new poetry book. Samuel really likes poetry. In this book, he found one poem that he just had to memorize:

Frog
Pollywiggle
Pollywog
Tadpole
Bullfrog
Leaps on
Long legs
Jug-o-rum
Jelly eggs
Sticky tongue
Tricks flies
Spied by
Flicker eyes
Wet skin
Cold blood
Squats in
Mucky mud
Leaps on
Long legs
Jug-o-rum
Jelly eggs
Laid in
Wet bog...
Pollywiggle
Pollywog

He says it in a sing-song way, but this is not easy to memorize.

Geography - we finished listening to "Paddle to the Sea" by Holling C. Holling. We also are trying to memorize the song in this video:

We've got the first verse pretty much down, but he's picked another hard one to memorize!

Nature Study - We finished reading "The Adventures of Grandfather Frog" by Thornton Burgess and began "The Adventures of Chatterer the Red Squirrel". I like these books because they are fun stories that teach something about the animals, but also help teach character. For instance, Grandfather Frog keeps getting into trouble because he thinks he already knows everything and doesn't need any help or advice from anyone. So we learn that being humble will help you out in life. We also made two trips to the zoo, the first one spent mostly observing the ducks (not an exhibit, just hanging out there) and the second one spent mostly in the bird house and penguin house. See a theme here?

The most exciting thing that happened was being able to observe a mourning dove nesting in the gutter that can be seen from Samuel's bedroom window. We also got to see the baby (called a squab) in the nest and hopping up the roof (with Mama watching from below and Papa watching from above) before they all flew off. Last year we knew there was a mourning dove nest in the tree outside our balcony, but we could never get a good look because of all the leaves. We were sad to lose our tree in the big ice storm that hit this winter and were afraid our mourning dove couple would find somewhere else. Fortunately we had a great view of their new home. We all felt bad because it hardly stopped raining during one of the nesting weeks, until we learned through some online research that they are also called Rain Doves! They are all gone from the nest now, although we still see them flying around the area occasionally.

Planning for First Grade

2009-05-18T19:13:00.000-04:00

I probably put as much thought into Samuel's afterschool curriculum as some mom's do for a full homeschool curriculum. I actually think the curriculum at his school is great and if for some reason he couldn't go there anymore, would use a lot of what they use. The only subject where he is at a different level than his class is reading, and I continue to use graded readers for that, alternating between the level one step ahead of his class (for confidence) and two steps ahead (for challenge).

However, I have dreamed of homeschooling my child(ren) since I was in college and accidentily found a book on homeschooling in the library stacks while doing research for a paper on math anxiety in girls for my Educational Psychology class. Now, I have one child and so far full-time homeschooling remains a dream.

While I sweat and plan and revise my curriculum, I never stay married to it, knowing that the essentials (and some of the non-essentials) are "covered" by the school. Still, a big part of my parenting philosophy is that the parents should be the main educators and influencers in their children's lives for as long as possible.

Therefore, I have already spent many hours thinking about the summer and first grade. My Kindergarten curriculum has been based in large part on "Home Learning Year By Year" by Rebecca Rupp (who also has some interesting teen fiction under her belt) with a little Sonlight, Tanglewood, and Charlotte Mason ideas thrown in.

I have two schools of thought for a Core theme, since he is attending a classical school and I want enrichment, not repetiveness.
Number One: Use the Sonlight Cores as my "spine" for history, literature, and reading. I really don't like the clutter of Usborne books though, and my library has most of the books anyway, so I'm thinking about getting the IG (Instructor's Guide) and Reader's Schedule from Sonlight and filling in with other books along the same lines when necessary, probably using Rupp's suggestions, as well as Tanglewood's book lists. I want the IG more for the order to read the books as opposed to a schedule, but also for some questions and activities. I'm calling it "Sonlight Lite".
Number Two: Keep doing what I have been doing for literature, poetry, and reading; that is, use the various booklists I have been using and just read what I can get from the library when I can get it. If he isn't taking to it, move that book down the list and on to the next one on our list, and keep using graded readers from the library. For history, just supplement whatever they are studying in school with books from the library and projects I find online.

For science, I want to continue nature study, but also place an emphasis on Life Science and possibly some Earth Science as well.

For math, I am thinking of ordering the Mathtacular DVD and the Rainbow Rock CD-ROM game from Sonlight, and continuing our living math readings and enrichment activities, including studying some of the great mathematicians in history.

For art and music, I am borrowing from Ambleside Online's idea of picture and composer study, but we will pick these together as opposed to using the ones designated by the site's schedule.

I am wanting to continue working on "Life Skills" as well as encouraging physical activity, but I have no plan for this yet.

So this is my overview and I'd love to see some comments from others who afterschool or who have other insight.

Testing

2009-05-09T08:21:00.003-04:00

It's been a very informal month for learning. There has been some catch-up at school since weather lost them a week and the school opted not to extend the school year. They also spent three days taking the Iowa Basic Skills Test. He said he likes taking tests! He was sad when it was over and they went back to doing all their regular school work. In all honesty, I always liked testing week too.

Here's my example of why testing does not always work:

When I was a sophmore in college, I was really having a hard time finding a minor for my math major. I had tried accounting and computer science but didn't like either one. So I took an Introduction to Secondary Education class and decided that I would do that. However, that was not a minor, but a certification. I still needed a minor. I heard that the university was giving CLEP tests and although it had been two years since I had taken Spanish in high school, I decided to try that. I was pretty sure I could pass and semi-enjoy Spanish classes, but I didn't want to be behind on my four-year schedule. And if I didn't get a job teaching Math, I could maybe get one teaching Spanish. Perfect!

So, I signed up and went to the CLEP test one Saturday. Part of the exam was a tape (no, not a CD...I'm that old!) of someone reading a short paragraph in Spanish and then reading aloud a question and the A through D answer choices. I really didn't understand the gist of most of that, picking out 3 or 4 words here and there that I grabbed onto. The second part was a little easier, since I had written paragraphs to read and I could take my time. Still I left there thinking I had not done very well. At the very least, I didn't deserve any credits.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I received 6 hours in college credit! This was enough to start me in 200 level classes and make my 4 year time line.

As an aside, I miscounted on my 4 year timeline. Oh, I had all the credits I needed to graduate with a double major in Math and Spanish, but I forgot to count in the Student Teaching semester for my teaching certificate when I was organizing my education classes on my schedule. Never did get that teaching certificate...

Now, back to the present day. Now I realize getting accurate information out of a five-year old is not always the easiest thing to do, but I wanted to know what his test was like. I asked him questions:
"Did you have to count anything?"
"No"
"Did you have to read anything?"
"No"
"Did you have to complete a pattern?"
"No"
"Well, can you give me an example of a test question?"
"There were pictures in our booklet and Mrs. Oakley asked us to find the picture of the girl eating lunch and fill in the bubble."
What?!!?? What could this possibly tell you about what the child is learning?
"Was there anything on your test besides pictures?"
"No"

See what I mean? While tests may be fun for me and my child, they don't appear to be an accurate gauge of either our knowledge or intelligence.

Kids Are So Funny

2009-05-04T17:46:00.002-04:00

We received an invitation to my niece's ballet recital. I told Samuel it was next Tuesday and would he like to go. He got a very serious look on his face and said he thought he had something else on Tuesday, but that maybe he could "squeeze it in"!

April Afterschool Report

2009-04-27T19:35:00.003-04:00

Well, this month has two holidays that we spend quite a bit of time on. I already blogged about Easter and Earth Day, but we also did quite a bit that was not tied to a holiday.

Math - Mostly we are just practicing addition within 7 and subtraction within 5. I have also had him practicing counting nickels, dimes, and quarters. My find of the month is Sudoku puzzles. Here is a website that has some sample puzzles for kids. There are 6 altogether that are 4x4 in size. The first two I walked him through, asking him for the answers after leading him there. By the third puzzle he was leading me through the "logic". Then I printed out the second sample page of three puzzles and he did the first two all on his own, asking for one hint on the third one. I'm going to see if I can find more 4x4 puzzles before moving on to 6x6.

Music - We spent some time earlier in the month on Sergei Prokofiev and "Peter and the Wolf". Our library has a book with CD and a DVD of a ballet. We had fun trying to pick out the instruments and move like the animals.

Art - Because the first Saturday in May is the Kentucky Derby, which is like a two-week holiday where we live, I chose Degas for his "Racing Horses" painting. We also read "What Makes a Degas a Degas?" by Richard Muhlberger.

Also, I found this wonderful blog called ART PROJECTS FOR KIDS. It's awesome. Samuel did this project, except his chameleon had stripes and polka dots and his background color was orange. It was his first time doing a watercolor resist and he was so amazed at how his crayon marks showed through the paint. We put it in a frame and put it on his art gallery wall in his room (it's just three dollar store frames in a row on the short wall next to his window).

Reading - I've moved into some challenging books for his reading aloud time, mostly level 2 and 3. He's doing very well. I always have a fairly large choice, but he gets to choose which ones he reads. For his "fun" reading time he usually chooses easy picture books, which is good too. Just recently we started a reading journal, where he records the books he reads and draws a picture from the story. I'll blog about that more later, after we've had a chance to develop it more. Here are the challenging books he has read for me:
"Dolores and the Big Fire: A True Story" by Andrew Clements
"The Berenstain Bears and the Tic-Tac-Toe Mystery"
"The Case of the Puzzling Possum" by Cynthia Rylant

Literature/Poetry - We are reading Charlotte's Web" by EB White and poems from "The Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry". We'll probably finish up both of these in May. A la Charlotte Mason, I usually only read one chapter from the 2 or 3 books we have going at any given time each day or two, plus one or two poems each day, in order to "savor" them. We also have two chapter books going that fall in the Nature Study category.

Geography - We are listening to "Paddle to the Sea" by Holling C. Holling once a week in the car (although we usually listen to 2 to 4 chapters at a time). I also checked out the book and we look at the pictures and use our US placemat map (I really need to get a bigger map!) to see where he is. A really fun thing we've been doing geography-wise is singing "The Fifty States That Rhyme" song. There are several versions on Youtube and I wrote down the words to the one we like and we listen and sing along. It's very hard. I don't think he's learning anything from this, but it's just showing how learning can be fun. Here's the version we like:

Nature Study - This is one of our bigger areas of study just because it's so much fun. We finished up Thornton Burgess' "The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse" and began "The Adventures of Grandfather Frog". We have also been reading from "The Tarantula in My Purse" by naturalist Jean Craighead George. Strangely enough, we haven't heard one word about a tarantula! We also visited the Louisville Science Center and spent a whole afternoon exploring, learning, and having fun. Of course, the weather has been nicer and we've spent countless hours outdoors, exploring the effects of our winter ice storm on our little patch of trees we watch. We lost our tree that was home to a pair of mourning doves, but we have still seen them around.

Earth Day - Hooray!

2009-04-15T20:07:00.006-04:00

Usually I do not post plans because I am sure to change them. Just compare my Kindergarten Curriculum posting in relation to my Monthly Reports. However, Samuel is taking an interest in my blog and wants me to post everything. While we have started our Earth Day fun/lessons, there is still time before Earth Day (April 22) and maybe it would be of interest/use to you for this year.

These are the books and videos I have gotten from the library so far:

Every Day Is Earth Day, by Kathy Ross (A Craft Book)
Earth Day -- Hooray! by Stuart J. Murphy (a living math book and the inspiration for my post title)
The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss (in DVD and book format)
The Magic School Bus Holiday Special DVD (three programs about recycling, saving desert animals, and the rainforest)
I also plan on reading the creation story from the Bible to relate how we should use what God provides, but still take care of His creation.

The first book I got was the craft book. Samuel loves crafts and was desperate to find one we could do RIGHT NOW, without having to go to the store or wait until we had collected whatever trash we needed to make the craft (like toilet paper rolls, etc). The one we decided on was the TRASH MONSTER!:

Side View

Top View (Face)

Here are the directions:

Cut a large oval hole out of the bottom of a grocery bag (Samuel drew the oval and I cut it out). Open a second grocery bag and slide the first bag inside so that the bottom with the hole is at the top. The hole is the monster's mouth.
Crumple newspaper into balls (we used half a page for each ball) and glue them above the mouth for eyes. Cut sharp teeth (triangles) from an old magazine cover and glue them around the inside of the mouth (we used scotch tape instead of glue).
Cut large letters from the magazine to spell out "trash monster" and glue them to the front of the bag (our bags had writing already on them so we first glued our letters to the back of a piece of paper that we had previously drawn something on the front - more re-using!)
The directions in the book made a nose out of a pipe cleaner that you could also use as a handle, but our bags had handles on them and Samuel wanted to draw on his nose so that's what we did.
Take your trash monster for a walk and feed it trash you find along the way. Since we made this, we have had wet weather and I didn't think it would be a good idea to put wet trash in a paper bag, so we have been "feeding" it with bits of trash that cannot be recycled like the plastic from clothing tags and Easter candy wrappers.

I'll post pictures if we do any other crafts from this book. It's out of print as far as I can tell, but it's pretty good and I recommend trying to find it at your library or you can find it used through Amazon.

To Bunny or Not To Bunny?

2009-04-12T11:12:00.009-04:00

It's not about the Bunny. I know that. But the Bunny is a part of the day, just a very small part.

Beginning on Palm Sunday, I began our bible readings with Matthew 26 and continued each day through the rest of the story. I was happy, when I got to the part where Peter denies Jesus three times before the rooster crows, to hear Samuel say that was the bible story at school that week. At least I know he's getting some religious training, but I am not going to rely on that or our church for teaching him the important things.

We went to church on Saturday afternoon because our church asked its members to save the Sunday morning services for guests and those who were bringing guests. Then we went to dinner in a non-crowded restaurant because it wasn't Easter Sunday, and stopped by the Wal-mart to pick up a basket because we realized earlier that day that Samuel's basket from the past 3 years was missing.

Saturday night we also began making Resurrection Cookies. This was something I wanted to try last year, but we ran out of time. You can find the directions on many sites. I used something I printed out last year, but is no longer posted on that site. I googled "resurrection cookies" and came up with lots of sites, but linked Annie's Page.

Basically, you are making merengue cookies, but every step has some significance to the Easter story, with a bible verse reference to read aloud. The last step is to put the cookie sheet in the oven (tomb), turn off the oven and seal the oven/tomb with a piece of tape. In the morning you open the oven and give everyone a cookie to break open and see that the cookies have a hollow middle or are empty like the tomb, and read one last verse of the resurrection.

So, Sunday morning, the first thing is the basket. But while he was looking at the basket, he saw the first of the Resurrection Eggs that Hubby and I had hidden. This is the third year for this and he loves it. You can make your own eggs and follow an outline from many sites that you can find with Google. But I couldn't get it together, so I went to the local Christian bookstore and bought the eggs put out by Family Life, and the book "Benjamin's Box" by Melody Carlson that specifically goes with these eggs. Each egg has something in it that helps tell the Easter story, like a piece of cloth for the buriel clothes or a dice for when the soldiers cast lots for his clothes. The last egg is empty to signify the empty tomb. We all love this tradition.

Then we opened the oven/tomb and broke open the cookies to see they were "empty" and read the last verse. Non of us liked the cookies, but we all enjoyed the process and story.

Then we visited family and there was one way-too-many-eggs Easter egg hunt. All in all I think it's a pretty good balance with the main focus on Jesus.

Samuel's Zoo Notebook

2009-04-01T17:13:00.005-04:00

I mention this often under the Science/Nature Study heading of blog entries, and since this is an ongoing project, I thought I'd take some time to describe it.

I am a sometimes scrapbooker. I am usually about a year behind, but Samuel loves my scrapbooks and asks to look at them often. Of course, he is the main subject of most of them of the last 5 1/2 years!

Since Samuel loves animals, we go to the zoo often. While other kids are running from one animal to the next, Samuel "observes" each animal for more than a few seconds. While other kids are shouting "hey look at the monkeys", Samuel knows that they are actually lemurs and the names of the 3 different kinds of lemurs in the exhibit at that. That is just his "thing" like other kids might be into dinosaurs (Samuel couldn't tell you much about them) or cars (knows nothing beyond the color of the car). So we usually visit a zoo when we are on vacation and between these trips and our local zoo trips, we have a LOT of pictures.

When Samuel was four, I started a Zoo Notebook with him. First we bought a cheap 3-ring binder in his favorite color (orange) and he helped me design the cover with a picture of himself eating pizza at the zoo and the title of "Samuel's Own Zoo Book". I anticipate he will want to change this when he gets older :-)

Next I sorted all the pictures by animal and asked him to pick an animal. He chose the Red Panda which we saw at the Atlanta Zoo. I asked him to tell me something about the Red Panda which I wrote in the journal box. The page ended up looking like this:

If you can't read the journalling, it says:

"Once upon a time, there was a little red panda, and the red panda climbed up a tree and he went into his cozy warm house. I saw this at the Atlanta Zoo." :-)

Clearly, I had a little work to do on the journalling aspect of this project. For the pages after that, I would first ask him what he knew about the animal, then we would go to wikipedia, where I would read him some of the facts from that animal's entry. THEN, I would ask him to tell me about the animal and I would write it down. It's been a process. The last page we did was a few weeks ago on the Polar Bear, which I think we saw in Palm Beach, FL.

The journalling reads: "Polar Bears eat seals. They live in the Arctic and spend a lot of time on the frozen sea. They like ice because it helps them hunt for seals. The polar bear is an excellent swimmer. They are a vulnerable species which means they are endangered."

He also is now designing the pages himself, picking the colors, papers and stickers and placing them where he wants them on the page.

After the first few pages, I added some alphabet tabs and put the animals in alphabetical order. I can see this being something that Samuel continues to add to and the pages getting a little more descriptive. I have an idea to go back and add the Latin Scientific names of the animals at some point.

March Afterschool Report

2009-03-30T20:28:00.003-04:00

March has been a fun month as I have tried an even less formal approach and allowing more input from Samuel.

Music - We have been listening to a Bach CD from our library, "The Essential Bach". It's a two disc set and we have listened all the way through twice (we only listen in the car) and we both have decided Bach is our favorite composer out of at least the last two. We also read a little about Bach's life from Mike Venezia's series of books.

Reading - I have been alternating between books that he can read with little or no help (mostly Level 1 and some 2)and books that require more help, with both the punctuation and words (mostly level 2 or "beginning chapter books" that are not graded). I don't know that the actual titles will be of interest to others. I try to find non-fiction readers about animals, because that's "his thing" or mysteries which he also likes. Lately he has started to read the "Henry and Mudge" books by Cynthia Rylant, which are at the comfort-zone level.

Literature and Poetry - We started "The Family Under the Bridge", but we find it difficult to keep more than two chapter books going at a time, so I took that back to the library for now. What we've been reading and will finish by the end of the week is another in the Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner, "Mike's Mystery". I personally do not like the sequels, but Samuel keeps asking for them, so every few months, I'll check out another one.

We also read a book of poems written and collected by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, entitled "The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars" to go along with our impromptu study of the solar system (see the Science entry).

Finally, we read some of the old favorites from our very own bookshelves.

History and Geography - We finished up our thirteen original colonies study and began reading books about national symbols. So far we got to the White House ("If These Walls Could Talk" by Jane O'Connor), the Liberty Bell ("The Liberty Bell" by Mary Firestone), and began learning the Star-Spangled Banner (from the book by the same name illustrated by Peter Spier). I also downloaded a United States puzzle from Owl and Mouse Software and Samuel had a lot of fun and I think maybe learned a little.

Nature and Science - We finished up "The Adventures of Reddy Fox" and began "The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse", both by Thornton Burgess from a box set I gave Samuel for Christmas. Hubby planned a trip to the planetarium at the beginning of March to see a show designed for children called "Our Place in Space" and this what prompted enough interest for a small study on the solar system. We read "The Planets in Our Solar System" by Franklin Branley and "Zoo in the Sky: A Book of Animal Constellations" by Jacqueline Mitton, along with the book of poems already mentioned.

Life Skills - We did some more cooking in the kitchen, including some guided cutting, with my hands on his, and worked on setting and clearing the table. Clearing the table includes throwing away food and paper in the garbage and either putting the dishes/utensils in the dishwasher or sink. Also, I've had to work on th concept of "tone of voice" and the fact that how you say something is often more important than what you say. I think this is something most parents deal with on a daily basis!

I also found a good book at the library called "A Little Book of Manners for Boys" by Bob and Emilie Barnes which we have been reading about once a week.

And lastly, he began another set of swim lessons, which he also did last spring and summer to get ready for and practice during swim season. My secret hope is that one day he will want to swim on a swim team and I can be a swim mom (I will not push, I will not push, I will not push...)

How Protective Am I?

2009-03-16T17:44:00.004-04:00

I was reading this post at Funschooling and got to wondering if I am an over-protective parent. Like Suji, we live in a yard-free environment (in our case a condo complex). So I decided to do a little inventory -

Knives - I have allowed Samuel (age 5) to use a table knife to spread and cut, although I started with a plastic knife, and after I taught him knife safety. Once I allowed him to use a sharper knife under my supervision, but he couldn't get a good enough grip without getting his fingers in the way, so I volunteered my fingers to do the gripping while he did the cutting. I'll probably wait a while longer to try again.

Climbing - we don't have any climbing trees in our complex, but I think I would let him climb a tree if we had one. He has climbed grassy hills (one so steep I couldn't even follow and when he couldn't walk back down, I had him scoot down on his rear) and ice covered hills, but I won't let him climb on the sofa, mostly because he tends to also want to jump on it and I am afraid for the life of the sofa more than the life of my child if he jumps).

Stoves - we do a lot of cooking together. He is the one who usually wants me to do the "hot" work. I wonder if this is because of the "don't touch the stove" warnings when he was smaller.

Fire - I haven't let him play with fire, but he does love to blow out candles.

Throw a spear?!! - What? I don't know anyone of any age who has thrown a spear.

Deconstruct appliances - In theory, if we had something that didn't work, I'd be all for it if he were interested, but I also think I've heard that some appliances have some dangerous chemicals in some of the pieces, so I think I would want supervision by someone who knows about that appliance.

Break the digital media copyright act? - I don't even know what this means.

Drive a car - Well, I do remember sitting in my Grandaddy's lap driving a tractor, but that was way out where no other traffic could find us, not in suburbia. Maybe in an office bulding parking lot on a Sunday. But he hasn't asked me to, so I probably won't offer.

So, even though somedays it feels like the only words I know are "don't", "no", and "ok time-out, mister", I think I am maybe more free-range than some, but not as much as others. However, I do desperately wish for a house with a yard where I can tell Samuel to go outside and play and I don't have to go with him because our "outside" is a parking lot.

February Afterschool Report

2009-03-01T16:08:00.004-05:00

Bible

Samuel has been attending "big church" with us. I don't know how much he gets, but it has led to a few questions on baptism, communion, and giving. We are also doing devotions from Gotta Have God, but not daily. When we do the devotions, we are also reading from my NIV bible. I think I may switch some of his daily reading with me to the Beginner's Bible, which is on the Sonlight Curriculum Readers 2 list.

Math

In school, Samuel has been working on addition fact families. They made it through the "7" family. They also have been "counting pennies". I decided to enrich that aspect of school with living books on money, as well as talking more about money and adding change at home. These are the books I found that worked for us:

“One Cent, Two Cents, Old Cent, New Cent: All About Money” by Bonnie Worth

“How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” by Bob Merrill, retold by Iza Trapani

“Jelly Beans For Sale” by Bruce McMillan

“Counting Money” by Tanya Thayer

“You Can’t Buy a Dinosaur with a Dime” by Harriet Ziefert

Reading

“Honeybees” by Joyce Milton (All Aboard Science Reader, Station Stop 2) – This was by far the hardest and longest book (at 45 pages) he has read, but he kept plugging away and finally finished it. I am so proud of my little reader! And of course, this also counted as science.

He also read "There's a Wocket in My Pocket" which challenged him to use phonics to read all those nonsense words Dr. Seuss loved. And some other readers that I forgot to record.

Literature

We finished "The Story of Doctor Dolittle" by Hugh Lofting. This was a favorite and he even ended up naming two of his Webkinz after two of the animals in this book. We began "The Five Little Peppers And How They Grew" by Margaret Sidney. This book will take quite a bit of time. The language is so difficult that we only read 3 or 4 pages at a time, and we don't read this every day. So, I guess we're "savoring" this one.

History and Geography

We finished reading about the thirteen original colonies. When I requested some children's books from the library on the Revolutionary War, I made the judgement not to read any of them due to Samuel's sensitive nature. He knows that the war happened and the basic "why", but I decided not the emphasize the "how". Instead I read two of David Adler's "Picture Books" on George Washington and Paul Revere. For the next few months, the plan is to read more biographies of famous Americans and books like "Meet Our Flag, Old Glory" by April Jones Prince on national symbols.

Nature Study

We've been reading "The Adventures of Reddy Fox" by Thornton Burgess. Of course, his reading selection taught us about honeybees. And I already posted about our bird observations in this post.

Art

This past month we focussed on Leonardo Da Vinci. We read "Katie and the Mona Lisa" by James Mayhew and "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists: Da Vinci" by Mike Venezia. I used the color printer to print out The Last Supper, Mona Lisa, and Lady With an Ermine and placed them in dollar store frames for our own art gallery.

Life Skills

We practiced more on making his bed, and added setting and clearing the table. I also found a cute book on manners at the library - "Do Unto Otters" by Laurie Keller.

Interview With a Five-year Old

2009-02-25T15:55:00.007-05:00

I loved this post over at Life With My 3 Boybarians, so I decided to steal the idea. So, thanks to Darcy for the post idea and Darcy's cousin Amy for the questions.

1. What is something mom always says to you?

"I love you."

2. What makes mom happy?

"Hugs and kisses"

3. What makes mom sad?

"When I get hurt."

4. How does your mom make you laugh?

"Tickle me."

5. What was your mom like as a child?

"I can't ...oh I just can't do it. "

6. How old is your mom?

"My brain wants to say 25, but I know you're not 25."

7. How tall is your mom?

"I think I'll just....pass this question. I just don't know."

8. What is her favorite thing to do?

"Look at a book"

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?

"Read a book"

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?

"Reading a book"

11. What is your mom really good at?

"Reading a book"

12. What is your mom not very good at?

"Running"

13. What does your mom do for a job?

"Work at the office"

14.What is your mom's favorite food?

"Lean Cuisine....hmmm....maybe chocolate?" Oh, you think?

15. What makes you proud of your mom?

"Because you read me stories"

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?

"Scooby Doo"

17. What do you and your mom do together?

"Read stories"

18. How are you and your mom the same?

"We both like reading stories."

19. How are you and your mom different?

"Mommy has longer hair than I do."

20. How do you know your mom loves you?

"She's nice to me."

21. What does your mom like most about your dad?

"He makes you laugh."

22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?

"the bookstore"

Hmmm...I wonder if I read too much? Naaa...

New Reading Idea I "Discovered"!

2009-02-20T20:49:00.002-05:00

My title is very tongue and cheek. Mostly I steal ideas from the much more organized and experienced homeschooling mom blogs I read. However the seed of this idea actually came from my cousin who does not homeschool, but has two voracious reader sons. She was telling me at Christmas that they both always have a book or two in the car to read. Well, most of our car trips are very short in-the-neighborhood errands, so I didn't really think about that as a homeschooling idea. Plus he is reading on his own, but not silently and I thought I had to be looking at the same page so I can correct if needed.

Today I decided to throw that out the window. By accident, at the Half Price book store, I discovered a "Junior Chapter Book" version of a series of books he and his dad read together. Flipping through the pages I knew this would be a challenge for him, but thought the familiarity with the characters and stories would keep him going.

Fridays we have two 20 minute or so drive times. This morning we were listening to an audiobook. We had not finished it and I expected him to want to hear more for the afternoon drive. I had forgotten I had thrown the new book on the back seat. He saw it and decided to read. Remember he is not a silent reader so he is reading aloud to me, although often I couldn't hear his precise words due to traffic and road noise. Every now and then he would speak up louder and read a sentence with a spelled word and then tell me his "guess". He was usually close, but it allowed me to help him with unknown words even though I couldn't see the page.

This I decided was a much better way to teach a LOVE of reading, as opposed to just reading lessons (although he will certainly still get those). Later he told me he loves so many things - dancing, singing and reading!

Changes to Curriculum

2009-02-12T08:11:00.003-05:00

The next book on the history list was Sam the Minuteman. I pre-skimmed it and while I thought it was a good book, I thought the talk of war and fighting would be too much for my five-year old. He's very sensitive to scary and sad things. So, I took it out of our book list and decided instead to look for some books about the national symbols from that time...the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell, and the Flag. I have requested several books from the library, and if we end up using these books, I'll add them to my Kindergarten Curriculum post. I made a few changes today to reflect what was "planned" and what has actually occurred. History for a five-year old is more about exposure to the "idea" of history in my personal educational philosophy anyway.

I kind of chuckle when I use the word "curriculum" because to me it is just a guide of the books and ideas I want to expose my son to. I gather these ideas from all over the web and from homeschool curriculum books. Sometimes reality sets in. It has always been my practice to not push anything. Sometimes I make him listen to a few pages from a book before making up his mind (don't judge a book by its cover, you know), but if he doesn't want to finish it, I don't make him. Usually, I just move that book title down my list and the next time it comes up, he is receptive.

I recently was reading posts by a mother who was reading The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew to her sons (I believe...if this is you, please leave a comment and I will edit my post to link to your blog). She was not particularly enjoying the book. I remembered reading my mom's childhood copy as a child and knew she still had the book. I didn't really remember anything about the story though. I decided to bring it home to re-read.

But when my son found out it was his "Mommy Anne's" book as a little girl and that I had also read it when I was a little girl, he wanted it as a read-aloud. I started it and after the first page thought, "There is no way he will understand this language and context", but to my surprise he wants to keep reading it. The language is very hard and I had to stop and explain some things. One example is when the family was getting excited over the idea of 200 candles burning in the house and I had to explain that the story took place before there was electricity in every house so they wouldn't have had lights at night or on dark days. He especially liked a section where Polly is talking to an older lady who is deaf and mishears quite a few words.

So, it's been two nights now and I will keep reading it to him as long as he likes, but I won't make him finish it if he stops being interested. But for now, I added it to the Kindergarten Curriculum post.

Summer Reading List

2009-02-03T12:02:00.002-05:00

Sheila left me a comment on my last post about public school. Don't worry, Sheila, I didn't take it personally, but I thought I'd use that as an opportunity to blog about my son's school and why we made the decision to send him there.

He goes to a private school. I'm pretty sure they are further ahead than the public school kindergarten classes here. Second, the kindergarten is only two days a week. First and second grades meet three days a week and third through twelfth meets four days a week. They have three 11 week trimesters. Independent work is emphasized. In fact, the school started as a homeschool Latin class in the founder's basement and grew from there. What I love about it is that if I were going to homeschool 100%, this would be the kind of curriculum I would use. But as you do in every "class" situation, your child does not always get to move at their pace. Which is why I "afterschool" so I can help him where they are moving faster than his pace and keep him challenged where they are moving slower than his pace.

There are a couple of reasons we decided that homeschooling was not the best solution for us, but if we didn't have this school as an option, we probably would be homeschooling. The first reason is work schedules and the second reason is that Samuel is an only child with limited opportunities for interactions with other children of any age. I have gone to some of the local homeschool group activities and while the activities were good, I have not been successful in building any friendships, either for myself or my son.

And since the comment came in regards to the reading level of his class, I thought I would share his summer reading list with you. So if they are reading these books by summer time, I think they will pick up the pace in the last trimester (beginning in March).

Rising 1st Graders

I Can Read Books
• Morris Goes to School (Level 1)
• Frog and Toad (5 book series, Level 2)
• Mouse Tales (Level 2)
• Wind in the Willows
I Spy, Each Peach Pear and Plum, 32 p.
Drummer Hoff, 32 p.
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, 20 p.
Doctor DeSoto, 32 p.
Corduroy, 28 p.
Circus Caps for Sale
Curious George, 36 p.
Harry the Dirty Dog, 32 p.
Bread and Jam for Frances, 32 p. (5 book series)
The Little Engine that Could, 37 p.
Floss, 32 p.
Ox-cart Man, 40 p.
Blueberries for Sal, 32 p.
The Magic Fish, 32 p.
Gregory’s Shadow, 32 p.
Maybelle The Cable Car, 42 p.
Madeline, 46 p. (6 book series)
Seaman’s Journal: On the Trail with Lewis and Clark, 32 p.
Poems to Read to the Very Young, by Josette Frank

January Afterschool Report

2009-02-02T17:38:00.002-05:00

This month we focussed mostly on reading and math. In his Kindergarten class, they are still on CVC short vowel words. Mostly I view this as writing practice. In math they are doing addition by "fact houses". All the combinations that add up to a certain number...so the "four fact house" consists of 0+4, 1+3, 2+2, 3+1, and 4+0. They are on six right now. This is what we did at home the other 5 days of each week:

Bible
· “Fun Devotions for Boys: Gotta Have God” by Diane Cory - we actually just started this and are enjoying it so far.

Math
· Math History - “Mathematicians Are People, Too: Stories for the Lives of Great Mathematicians” by Luetta and Wilbert Reimer – Thales, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Hypatia
· Tangrams – “Grandfather Tang’s Story: A Tale Told With Tangrams” by Ann Tompert
· Regrouping (adding 2 digit numbers) – “A Fair Bear Share” by Stuart J. Murphy
· Area – “Bigger, Better, Best!” By Stuart J. Murphy
· Symmetry – “Let’s Fly a Kite” by Stuart J. Murphy
· Understanding Halves – “Give Me Half!” by Stuart J Murphy
We also played some Uno and Battleship.

Music
· Beethoven – Fifth Symphony, Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata
· “Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Composers: Ludwig van Beethoven” by Mike Venezia

Reading
· “Addie Meets Max” by Joan Robins (An I Can Read Book)
· “Frogs” by Laura Driscoll (Station Stop 1 All Aboard Science Reader)
· “Honey Bunny’s Honey Bear” by Marilyn Sadler (Step into Reading 2)
· “Blue Goose” by Nancy Tafuri
· “My Friend Rabbit” by Eric Rohmann
· “Water” (An All Aboard Science Reader Station Stop 1) by Emily Neye
· “A Dollar for Penny” by Dr. Julie Glass (Step Into Reading Step 1 – also math)
· “Snow Wonder” by Charles Ghigna (Step Into Reading Step 2)
· “Cat on the Mat” by Susan Schade (Step Into Reading Step 2)

Literature
· “The Story of Dr. Dolittle” by Hugh Lofting - we are also reading a new "fun" series (A to Z mysteries by Ron Roy), so we still have a few chapters left.

History/Geography
Read from the Library of the Thirteen Colonies and the Lost Colony series:
· “The Colony of North Carolina” by Susan Whitehurst
· “The Colony of Connecticut” by Susan Whitehurst
· “The Colony of South Carolina” by Susan Whitehurst
· "The Colony of Maryland” by Brooke Coleman

Nature/Science
· “The Adventures of Peter Cottontail” by Thornton Burgess

Life Skills
· Making his bed - this is a HUGE deal since his Dad never makes the bed. With his work schedule, he sleeps later than us every day and I don't always remember to go back and make the bed as an example to Samuel.

Bird Study

2009-02-01T21:39:00.002-05:00

I mentioned in this post about our cool bird field guide. It's sometimes hard to use because we don't get a great look at any bird before they are scared off by our movements or sounds. We have a tree just outside our balcony and we sit out there sometimes trying to intice them to come to our tree so we can look at them. Last spring we were excited to see a mourning dove build a nest in the center of the tree, but soon the leaves filled in and we never got a good look at the pair (or any babies they had) after that.

This past week we had an ice and snow storm that broke off a branch of the tree, so we are very sad about that. But one good thing is that Samuel spied several "blue" birds alighting on the white branches. We tried to get closer looks and even a close up picture, but we always seemed to spook them away. Still, Samuel got out his trusty bird guide and decide they were barn swallows. Even though our field guide said they were summer birds in Kentucky, he was adament. They did look more like this bird in our guide than any other. I just was unable to give him another option.

So I asked him if he wanted to try drawing a picture in his nature notebook (and other stuff). It's just a small notebook we infrequently write nature notes in and sometimes he draws a picture. He said he couldn't do it. I told him of course he couldn't do it if he never tries. This is an area we struggle with. If he can't do it perfectly or without help, he doesn't even want to try. I told him to look at the picture in the book and copy it. I left him alone for a while with his notebook, field guide and some colored pencils. When I came back in to the room, I was shocked and amazed to see this:

This is probably better than I could do and he's only 5 1/2. I am definitely going to encourage him to draw more. He's not interested at all in the Draw Write Now book we have though, although I love it.

Product Review - ETC Online

2009-01-27T16:35:00.004-05:00

I received an e-mail from Homeschool Buyers Co-op and followed a link to this product and to look it over. I am thinking about purchasing either a math or phonics computer "game" for summer school around here. I looked it over on my own and then called Samuel in to do the student demo. I started him at the end of Book 1 which I knew would be no challenge. Most of the exercises entailed reading two sentences and matching one of them to a picture.

It kept working him up the demo levels (not all inclusive) until I knew he wasn't reading or comprehending all the words in the sentences. However, he could read enough of the words to match one correctly to a sentence. To me, this defeats the purpose of telling me where we need to do more off-line work. To be fair, I skipped ahead to a higher level (words ending in -ed) and there were no pictures. That "game" entailed filling in the blank from a list of words to make the sentence make sense.

I have not used the ETC books before, so this may be a good fit for a family who likes and uses these books. It just isn't what I am looking for.

Summer Planning

2009-01-19T19:23:00.004-05:00

I have just begun thinking about summer. It might have something to do with the fact that we have had several below freezing days in a row and snow two days in a row. I know my friends to the North are saying, "that's nothing", but to us in the Ohio Valley of KY, it's something.

So, on to to summer...

The obvious start is reading and read-alouds. This will continue as part of bedtime, as usual. Nothing to plan other than to make sure I have some good books in my running list that I can check out from the library. I will include some biographies and historical literature in this category.

My idea from there is to have each day be a specific "camp" day. So far I have

Art Camp

Watercolor Tutorials from Hearts and Trees (scroll down to the links on the sidebar) - currently she has 8 lessons
Usborne's I Can Draw Animals - I'm on the waiting list to check this out of the library. If I like it, I'll buy it.
I also may purchase the Clouds Art Show pdf, also from Hearts and Trees
Field trip(s) to the KY Museum of Arts and Crafts and the Speed Art Museum

Cooking Camp
Kids Cooking Lessons from Kids Cooking Activities, possibly finishing with a end of summer Pizza Cooking party with a few friends. There are 13 lessons and I may combine the Assistant Chef and the Chef in Training program because he already has kitchen experience.

Science/Nature Camp

Walks at local parks, exploring some we haven't been to before
easy science experiments from a kit he received for his last birthday and this website
Field trips to the Science Museum

And that's as far as I've gotten. I know I don't want to forget math, but we use math almost day, and I know that his skills are already at first grade level, except perhaps with money and time. However, having never used a formal program before, I don't know how to come up with "math camp" ideas.

My other thought is to have a whole week devoted to each subject on a rotating basis so he would have a whole art camp week, capped off by a field trip to a museum on Friday and then we wouldn't do it again untit it came up in the rotation again. However, I'm leaning more toward each "subject" being a day of the week.

But this is just my preliminary thoughts, so I'll be searching and looking for ideas all the way up to June, which is when we will start our summer, probably with a vacation.

Math Living Book Reviews

2009-01-12T18:05:00.003-05:00

I really want to make math interesting in a real way to my son. I include him in most of the math I do to get through the day. He likes doing math worksheets now and enjoys his addition flash cards every once in while.

I love introducing new math topics by way of a story. We have read most of the Stuart J. Murphy Level 1 books more than once, and some of th Level 2 books. We even check out a Level 3 or 4 (can't remember now) book each spring called "Earth Day Hooray" which teaches recycling AND place value, even though he is just now starting to understand the idea of place value.

Grandfather Tang's Story by Ann Tompert is another book that I recently discovered. A granddaughter is playing with tangram puzzles with her grandfather and begs him to tell a story using the tangrams. The story he weaves is full of animals and they use their tangrams to make the animals in the story. The story itself is a story about friendship.

I know some people own sets of math manipulatives and probably own plastic or magnet tangram puzzles, but there is a page at the back that you can copy and cut out to have your own set. I enlarged my copy.

Samuel is 5 1/2 and this was a good introduction to using shapes. It was not easy for him and I had to help quite a bit, even though we had a pattern to follow, but he really enjoyed both the puzzles and the story.

The other book, Mathematicians Are People Too, is a great way to introduce math history. Each chapter tells of a different mathematician in history. The stories read like fiction and it really is interesting. My son enjoyed the first story about Thales; however, the next two chapters, while interesting to me, were just a little above him. I plan to check this out again in another 6 - 12 months and see how it goes over then.

One Year Bible

2009-01-01T19:22:00.002-05:00

I just added a new widget for the One Year Bible Blog. I have four resolutions for 2009 and beyond to improve myself in regard to these four areas:

Financial
Health
Relationships
Spiritual

Using the One Year Bible blog is one way of working on the spiritual area. I know that it would be better to let the Lord lead me in daily bible readings, but I am not disciplined enough to have daily or even weekly bible time. This is my way of having some accountability for reading the Bible. If you think this is something you would like to try, please check out that blog.

December 2008 Review

2008-12-26T20:17:00.005-05:00

I'm always amazed when the hustle and bustle of Christmas is over and I am looking back over what we did that could be considered educational. In my mind, all I am doing is making lists, cleaning, shoppings, wrapping, and cooking. Of course, we have church and reading the Christmas story and such, but I really don't realize how much we are actually learning.

In the area of Math, in addition to helping me measure and cook in the kitchen, he is beginning to understand large numbers, counting by 5's and 10's to 100, but also took it upon himself to figure out counting by 100's to 1000 and 1000's to 10,000. He got a Scooby-Doo pinball game as one of his Christmas gifts and so he is also now learning how to read numbers with a 100 place value. It is cute how he started by asking, "Mom, what is 8-2-3?" which would be his score, moving on to "Mom, is 8-2-3 the same as eight hundred twenty-three?". It wasn't something I tried to teach, but when he needed the information, and wanted to learn it, I helped him.

We read a lot of Christmas picture books: "The Crippled Lamb" by Max Lucado; "The Little Drummer Boy" illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats; "Allie the Christmas Spider" by Shirley Menendez among others. We also read a chapter book by Ruth Graham Bell titled "One Wintry Night". It is the story of a young mountain boy who gets caught in a storm and seeks refuge at a nearby cabin. While waiting for the storm to end, the woman in the cabin tells him the Christmas story, except she begins with the beginning of the world (Genesis) and ends when Jesus arose from the tomb. Our other Literature picks were "A Bear Named Paddington" by Michael Bond (listened to on CD on a car trip) and "The Apple and the Arrow" by Mary and Conrad Buff. This last book is part of Sonlight's list for this age and I actually thought it might be too advanced, but Samuel liked it because we had recently had the William Tell Overture as our musical selection. We also looked on the map for Austria and Switzerland.

We made a fleece blanket for my mother. Samuel picked out the fabric and then I cut strips around the edges to tie into fringe. I used this to show Samuel how to tie a knot and he did one whole side with my help. I count this as Life Skills.

While we learned some History and Geography from reading "The Apple and the Arrow", our main lessons in this area was Colonial America. I found a great series in our library published by The Library of the Thirteen Colonies and the Lost Colony. We had already covered Virginia from our Pocahontas books, and Massachusetts from our Mayflower books, so I started with Roanoke and moved on to Mew Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, and Delaware. I have the others on order now. I also found a black line map of the thirteen colonies and he is coloring in the colony after we read each book. This was not on my original "Curriculum", but I'm all about being flexible when you find something that works (or changing it when something does not work).

Our Science and Nature study has probably been the most lacking. However, we did take a short trip the the Great Smoky Mountains and saw several deer, some wild turkeys (we think) and some wild horses (again, we think they were wild since they were actually in the National Park area and not on some farm). For one of his Christmas gifts, I purchased a set of Animal Stories from Thornton Burgess. They are more story than fact as in his Animal Book, recommended by Ambleside Online, which we own, but sometimes get a little lost in. So I plan to read through those to get him more interested in the characters again and then try the bigger book again.

I continue to have him Read aloud to me almost every night before bed, teaching Phonics rules as needed. Since he is advanced in this area as in Math, I do not have a curriculum here except to offer opportunities to practice both.

Christmas Book Review - Level 1 Appropriate

2008-12-02T19:43:00.003-05:00

We have checked out two Christmas books recently that Samuel could read. He is currently reading Level 1 readers with minimal help. Both are secular.

"Christmas Mice" by Bethany Roberts is a cute story of how some mice prepare for Christmas, decorating, baking, wrapping presents, singing, etc. There is also a sweet surprise.

"Claude the Dog: A Christmas Story" by Dick Gackenbach tells of a dog who receives some presents from his family and then meets a homeless dog and ends up giving all his presents away because his family is the best gift of all.

November 2008 Review

2008-12-01T18:56:00.008-05:00

The following is what we accomplished in November. Based on availability of library books, some changes were made to the Kindergarten Curriculum. The edits to that post are that books I added in are in green and books we didn't get to are in red.

Bible/Writing
· Memoria Press Copybook I - Stories from Genesis

Math
· Counting by 2’s to 20
· Addition – 4’s, 5’s (all combinations where the sum is 4 or 5)
· Counting change in groups of ten; learning to identify different coins; and being introduced to the concept that I don’t know the name for, but an example is that 5 pennies equals 1 nickel.

Music
· William Tell Overture by Rossini – defined what an overture is
· Listened to selections from Handel’s Messiah
· Read some of Mike Venezia’s book on Handel

Reading
· Grammar – “a” vs. “an”
· Fred and Ted Like to Fly by Peter Eastman
· Big Dog…Little Dog by P.D Eastman (read aloud to two preschool classes for former preschool teacher)
· Diving Dolphin by Karen Wallace (a DK reader)
· Fred and Ted Go Camping by Peter Eastman
· Honey Bunny Funnybunny by Marilyn Sadler
· Turtle and Snake at Work by Kate Spohn
· Monkey See, Monkey Do by Marc Grave

Literature
· Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
· The Elves and the Shoemaker retold from the Brothers Grimm by Jim LaMarche
· The Pumpkin Runner by Marsha Diane Arnold
· The Market Square Dog by James Herriot (we had already read this once in the James Herriot Treasury, but this was a picture book we found in the library)
· The Cow-tail Switch and Other West Africa Stories by Harold Courlander and George Herzog

History/Geography
· Pocahontas: Peacemaker and Friend to the Colonist by Pamela Hill Nettleton
· Pocahontas by D’Aulaire
· If You Were at the First Thanksgiving by Anne Kamma
· Geography for A to Z by Jack Knowles
· In conjunction with the Cow-tail Switch book, we are also doing some map work of Africa

Nature/Science
· We took a nature walk to look at leaves, berries and pinecones. We collected some items and together with a partially eaten (by birds?) corn on the cob we found in a harvested field and some fresh water mussel shells from an October trip to a farm, Samuel made a “cornucopia”. It wasn’t fastened together by anything, so we took some pictures before it fell apart.
· Zoo trip to check out the armadillo (because we read the Just So story about how the armadillo came to be), which led to reading several books on and about armadillos from the library.
· I Love Whales and Dolphins by Steve Parker.
· I Love Crocodiles by Steve Parker
· I Love Dinosaurs by Steve Parker
· Pages in his zoo/animal notebook on manatees and meerkats.

Art
· Mary Cassatt – The Boating Party
· Read through Mike Venezia’s book; then paged through a second time to pick out his favorite – Girl in a Blue Armchair. He imagined she was reclining watching TV just out of sight until I told him TV hadn’t been invented yet!

Life Skills
· Cooking - Corn Pudding
· Learning empathy and funeral conduct (we miss you Nana)

The Benefits of "Review"

2008-11-26T16:04:00.002-05:00

This morning, Samuel wanted to look at all his preschool work, which I had in a stack and hadn't gotten around to doing anything more concrete (I was leaning toward throwing it out because I am the total opposite of a packrat - just a procrastinating one - but now I'm thinking to three hole punch and keep in a binder).

One of the pages contained some drawings of food he would like to have in a sack lunch - juice box, cookie, banana, apple, and rice krispie treat. The drawings were not very recognizable except that I had labeled them so that's how we knew what they were supposed to be. I talked about how much better he can draw now and he decided to draw the same things on another piece of paper to compare. I would show the two pages here, but he chose to draw the items with a yellow marker and the photo just doesn't come out.

However, I will tell you that his drawings were all recognizable. The benefit to Samuel is that he is able to look and see just how far he has come in a year. He sometimes gets very frustrated when his drawings don't come out perfect. So this is good to show him that he is getting better if he practices.

He has also decided that he wants to do this exercise every year, so I'm going to have to make sure I keep these two drawings in a place I will remember and make a note so I will remember to do it again next year. Now that we came upon this exercise by accident, I can see it having benefits in other areas of learning, especially in writing and drawing.

Christmas has begun...

2008-11-19T19:04:00.005-05:00

Saturday was our first official Christmas activity. We went to a local nature conservatory to make 1844-style decorations to be used to decorate the homestead for their Christmas celebration which will be December 6. We made paper chains, homemade Christmas cards, an owl ornament out of walnut shells, a person ornament out of dried plants and sticks, a reindeer ornament out of walnut shells, and of course, we strung some popcorn on the popcorn garland.

It was a lot of fun. That was our first "official" activity. However, last week, Samuel and I got out the Christmas CDs and began singing Christmas carols. He has been practicing Christmas songs at school as well for his Christmas program and I hear him singing Christmas songs all the time. The music is one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season.

Friday or Saturday, we will be attending a Festival of the Trees held locally. Corporations and individuals sponsor a tree to decorate and they are judged. Some of them have very clever themes and some are just beautiful.

Next weekend will be for decorating and then we have some other traditions that begin December 1. Everything we do education-wise in December will most likely be centered around Christmas. I'm working on a written plan that I will share on this blog.

Our Nature Study and Science

2008-11-17T20:11:00.003-05:00

I know I listed my "curriculum" in a previous entry. However I wanted to take some time to describe this subject a little more fully.

Charlotte Mason via the Ambleside Online curriculum is probably my biggest influence in the area of science education, at least for now, the Primary Years. Add that to the face that my son LOVES all things animal and I had my direction. This is full of rabbit trails. For instance

One day while driving to the library we saw two vultures on the side of the road feeding on a skunk. At the library, we found a book by Sandra Markle to learn more about vultures. This happened to be one of a series of books on predators which were pictured on the back of the vulture book and Samuel wanted to read all of them in the series.
Samuel wanted to go see the armadillo at the zoo recently, which is a new exhibit, which led to 15 minutes of observation followed by checking out various books from the library to learn more. We're still doing this one, so I'm not sure where it will lead.

Still, for all that, I do have a semi-plan for Nature/Science:

We have a wonderful zoo in our city and a zoo membership which allows us to go see one specific animal or just visit one area of the zoo without having to spend all day there just because we paid the enormous entrance fee. We visit 2 or 3 times a month, maybe less in winter or more in summer. Along with this is visits to other zoos while we are on vacation. We have been to Atlanta, Palm Beach, Cincinnati, a private zoo in the Myrtle Beach area, as well as 3 aquariums (Gatlinburg, Myrtle Beach and Newport). If he doesn't decide on a new animal to learn more about from these visits, I use them to choose.
A few years ago, Samuel started what he calls a Zoo Book, but which I kind of designed based on Stanley's Great Big Book of Everything (for those who remember that Disney show). I started with a 3 ring binder and page protectors. I print out pictures of animals we take at the zoos we visit. Samuel picks the animal and we do a scrapbook style page with Samuel dictating the facts we journal. The first ones were very simple, but now he wants me to read aloud the wikipedia entry and then he picks the facts he thinks are most interesting. He still dictates the journalling, so he is learning a little bit of narration there.
Nature Walks - We live in condo coummunity, but we share a border (tree line) with a horse farm. We visit this regularly and try to notice new things and things that have changed. There is also a park a little farther away that we visit a few times a year with a scavenger hunt (like this one from Hearts and Trees) in hand. I may start a nature journal with Samuel soon as he is just now beginning to like to draw.
We own a bird field guide by Stan Tekiela. He has several field guides by state (The titles are "Birds of state name") and the best thing about this bird book is that it is organized by color. I only know a few birds by sight, so when I see a brown bird I don't know, I just go to the section of brown birds and look for a picture to match. It's awesome. I just typed his name in at amazon.com and he also has some other field guides and nature books that are probably worth checking out. If I had seen one for Wildflowers of Kentucky, I would have snapped it up in a minute. Anyway, Samuel is still having some issues with being still and quiet enough for bird-watching, but we try it sometimes.

Of course, if any other science topic arises that he is curious about, we would take a side trip to experiment or learn more about it. I can see adding in some astronomy and earth science in coming years, but for now, this is what we do.

Readers we are enjoying

2008-11-05T19:06:00.005-05:00

I don't have a plan for the books Samuel reads for his reading practice time (most days). I look at lists (Sonlight, Rainbow Resource, other blogs) and try to find them at the library, as well as just trying to find readers while visiting the library. We also have some books in our home library that he is free to pick from and read multiple times. Since I am always on the look-out for book ideas I thought I would share a list of some of the readers we have enjoyed this year (most are pre-level 1 or level 1 if they are a graded type reader):

"Go Away Dog" by Joan L. Nodset
"Berenstain Bears and the Baby Chipmunk"
"DK Wild Baby Animals" by Karen Wallace
"DK A Trip to the Zoo" by Karen Wallace
"DK Diving Dolphin" by karen Wallace
"Mr. Brown Can Moo" by Dr. Seuss
"Dr. Seuss' The Shape of Me and Other Stuff"
"First the Egg" by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
"Big Dog...Little Dog" by P. D. Eastman
"Here Comes Silent 'e'" by Anna Jane Hayes
"Tricky Monkey Up On Top" by Jane Belk Moncure
"Fox in Socks" by Dr. Seuss
"Big Pig and Little Pig" by David McPhail
"Fred and Ted Like to Fly" by Peter Eastman

Kindergarten Curriculum

2008-11-01T18:33:00.011-04:00

So, now on to Kindergarten. Since we are in the middle of this year, some of this may change (as indeed it already has just in the first two months). Most of the books were chosen using Sonlight, Tanglewood, and Home Learning Year by Year (Rebecca Rupp), and what is available in my town's library system. Other influences include Charlotte Mason, specifically the Ambleside Online curriculum.

** 12/1/08, 2/12/09, 7/15/09 - Edits reflect differences in plans and reality, sometimes due to library availability and sometimes because I just found some new books we liked. Green font are books added and red font are books we didn't read.

Bible Study
Memoria Press Copybook I
The Beginner’s Bible
Gotta Have God - A Fun Devotional for Boys
NIV Bible Readings

Civics
Volunteer - This includes reading for a preschool class, bringing meals to his grandfather while he was taking care of a sick grandmother, and working a food drive at church.

History/Geography
(U.S. History through Revolution, patriotism, continents, oceans, major countries and geographical terms)
Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, Tomie de Paola
Iktomi and the Boulder, Paul Goble
Iktomi and the Berries, Paul Goble
First Strawberries, Joseph Bruchac
Native American Legends series (Little Firefly) by Terri Cohlene
More than Moccasins, Laurie Carlson (pick a few activities)
Picture Book of Columbus, David Adler
In 1492, Jean Marzollo
Pocahontas, Peacemaker and Friend to the Colonists, Pamela Hill Nettleton
Pocahontas, D'Aulaire
If You Were At the First Thanksgiving, Anne Kamma
If You Sailed on The Mayflower in 1620, Ann McGovern
If You Lived in Williamsburg in Colonial Days, Barbara Brenner
Picture books on the colonies from The Library of the Thirteen Colonies and the Lost Colony, Brooke Coleman, Susan Whitehearst
Sam the Minuteman by Nathanial Benchley
If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution, Kay Moore
If I Were President, Catherine Stier
Story of the White House, Kate Waters
Meet Our Flag, Old Glory, April Jones Prince
The Star Spangled Banner, illustrated by Peter Spier
The Liberty Bell, Mary Firestone
Children Just Like Us, Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley
As the Crow Flies: A First Book of Maps, Gail Hartman
Picture Book Biography series by David Adler - George Washington, Paul Revere
Hero Tales, Jackson
Paddle to the Sea, Holling
Geography A to Z, Jack Knowles

Literature
Child’s Garden of Verses, Stevenson
When We Were Very Young/Now We are Six by A. A. Milne
The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner (and others in the series as desired)
Adventures of Brer Rabbit, Joel Chandler Harris
When I Was Young in the Mountains, Cynthia Rylant
James Herriot’s Treasury for Children
The Elves and the Shoemaker, retold by Jim LaMarche
Just So Stories, Kipling
The Cow-tail Switch and Other West Africa Stories, Harold Courlander and George Herzog
A Bear Called Paddington (audio CD)
The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Lofting
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Sidney
American Tall Tales, Mary Pope Osborne
Betsy-Tacy, Maud Hart Lovelace
The Apple and the Arrow, Buff
Charlotte's Web, EB White
The Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry
The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein
In Grandma’s Attic, Richardson - not available so we read More Stories From Grandma's Attic instead.
A Grain of Rice
Pagoo, Holling C. Holling
Li Lun, Lad of Courage, Carolyn Treffinger
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum
Twenty and Ten

Reading
Phonics rules as they come up in readers
Leveled Readers from personal and public library, too many to count, but if you look at my monthly reports you'll find some of the favorites.

Arithmetic
Rod and Staff Counting with Numbers
Addition through 7; subtraction through 5
Identifying and adding sums of like coins
Living math books and activities (from Living Math and others)

Science

Little Hands Nature Book by Nancy Castaldo
Nature Walks/Nature Journal
Keep a Caterpillar
Weather lapbook from Hearts and Trees 2007 Winter Kit
Nutrition lapbook (I bought this from Hands of a Child a couple years ago, but they no longer carry it) Basically we just decided lapbooks were not for us.
Living Books on animals as desired, including stories by Thorton Burgess
"Zoo Scrapbook"
By following opportunities and interests, studied birds and the solar system

Artist Study
Ten great artists and 10 great works of art (paintings only)
Van Gogh – The Starry Night
Cassatt – The Boating Party
DaVinci – The Last Supper
Degas – Race Horses
Botticelli – The Annunciation
Titian – Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit
Michelangelo – Creation of Man
Jan Van Eyck – The Arnolfini Marriage
Renoir – Girl with a Watering Can
Pieter Breugel the Elder – Tower of Babel

Music Study
Six great composers and 6 great compositions
Tchaikovsky – Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Rossini – William Tell Overture
Mozart – Eine Kleine Nacht Musik
Handel – Hallelujah Chorus
Beethoven - Fifth Symphony
Bach - Essential Bach CD
Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf
Hymns – Amazing Grace, In the Garden, Eye is on the Sparrow

Life Skills/Handiwork
Plastic Canvas bookmarks
Making simple items for gifts
Building (Lowe’s & Home Depot)
Cooking, making the bed, setting the table, clearing the table

Physical Fitness
Choose a physical activity each term (e.g. team sport, swimming lessons, gymnastics, tae kwon do, etc.)

Preschool Curriculum - Learning Opportunities

2008-10-25T17:34:00.003-04:00

The following items do not fall in a subject category, but are other ideas for important learning opportunities for the preschool-age child. I think exposure is the key for this age. You will find some things will be of real interest and understanding. Others, not so much...yet. But having seen or done something once, when the time comes that the child is ready to see or do again, it will be much more meaningful.

Visit the State Fair.
Take a gymnastics class (10 weeks).
Go to the library (once every week or so).
Practice Cutting Skills.
Build a bird feeder at a Lowe’s Clinic (I ended up doing most of this, so unless your preschool child already has experience with a hammer and nails, I’d wait on this).
Computer games – there are several free games on sites such as Noggin, Playhouse Disney, and PBS Sprout. We also bought 3 Reader Rabbit Preschool games and he got a Zoboomafoo game as a gift.
Learn to make scrambled eggs.
Collect shells on vacation.
Visit an art museum, a science museum, zoos, and a turtle rescue center.
Decorate Christmas cookies.
Attend various story times at local bookstores, including a cooking class storytime.
In March, I signed him up fro swim lessons and told him if he finished the session, I would take him to the pool at least once a week in the summer. He finished two sessions of 10 weeks each and became quite a little fish by the end of the summer, the second session was his idea alone.

Preschool Curriculum - Art and Music

2008-10-25T17:25:00.004-04:00

Art
We read the Katie books by James Mayhew (one example is Katie and the Impressionists)
Quiet Time with Cassat (a board book we found at the library)
Museum ABC (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Little blue and little yellow, Leo Lionni
Lots of coloring and painting with watercolors
Book-making – we made an ABC book, a color book, and a nutrition book (one page for each food group with magazine foods cut out and glued on the appropriate page)
From Hearts and Trees Fall Kit 2007 – worksheet on warm colors, study of Van Gogh’s The Mulberry Tree, made a leaf print necklace from clay, and did a watercolor trees painting
Project #1 in the Usborne First Skills Starting Needlework book (running stitch)
From Hearts and Trees Winter Kit 2007, we did the worksheet on cool colors

For the following artists and works of art, I had checked out a book of art (any would do) and asked Samuel to pick out his favorite each week and then I tried to find that picture or one by the same artist to use as our computer wallpaper.
William Glackens, Summer House, Bayshore

Albert Beirstadt, Oregon Trail

Stuart Davis, New York Waterfront

Frederick Edwin Church, Horseshoe and American Falls, Niagara

Henri Rousseau, Sleeping Gypsy and Exotic Landscape

Music
We listened to various styles of music, including disco, folk music, jazz, and classical.
Sang Christmas Carols at a Retirement Community
Listened to Vivaldi’s Winter and made up a winter story that the music told.
Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saens (our library had a video of this performed at a zoo and narrated by the man who played Radar on M*A*S*H with poems by Ogden Nash…this is when we checked out that book of poems to read)

Preschool Curriculum - History and Geography

2008-10-25T17:20:00.001-04:00

History
History as a formal subject is not typically recommended until first grade, and we were definitely not formal.

I checked out Story of the World, Volume 1 for my own research purposes. Samuel wanted to read it so we ended up reading the first 13 chapters. Then we went on to study Holidays and ended with The House on Maple Street which gives a fun perspective of the passing of time on one piece of land. Our main history this year was through reading the Beginner’s Bible.

This Is Thanksgiving, by Jack Prelutsky, plus various other Thanksgiving books
I did not write down all the Christmas books we read, but we own and checked out a total of 24 Christmas books. I gift-wrapped each book and let Samuel open one each night to read.
My First Passover Board Book
Easter by Gail Gibbons
The House on Maple Street by Bonnie Pryor

Geography
We have US and world wall maps and US and World placemats. We use these to find places we read about in books from the Literature and Science section.

We also looked for the smallest and largest countries on the world map. Geography is not formal, but I use the “map words” consistently (continents, countries, rivers, states, oceans, etc).

We read a book called Christmas Around the World, but I didn’t make a note of the author. However, I am sure there are several books like this out there.

Preschool Curriculum - Science

2008-10-25T15:26:00.004-04:00

Mostly we study science by noticing something and then trying to find out about it. We take Nature walks along the horse farm fence line near our house; we make note of changes and when we find something new, we usually try to find it on Wikipedia.

Amanda at Hearts and Trees sells seasonal nature study/art study kits. We purchased the Fall and Winter kits and did some of the activities. She also has free seasonal scavenger hunt nature walk forms. These are a lot of fun for a smaller child.

Her mother, Barb (aka Harmony Art Mom) of Handbook of Nature Study began an Outdoor Hour weekly challenge and we did 5 of them.

Samuel is very interested in animals and we check out a lot of books on them, as well as visit the local zoo quite often. Some of the books we read are:
Backyard Birds, Jonathan Pike
All About Owls, Jim Arnosky
Our Animal Friends, Provenson
What’s Under the Sea (Usborne)
D’Aulaire’s Book of Animals
Buffalo Sunrise: The Story of a North American Giant, Diane Swanson
Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess (we also used Wikipedia to look up our favorite animal friends in these stories)
Crinkleroot’s Animal Habitats by Jim Arnoski
“The Great Kapok Tree”
Crinkleroot’s Guide to Walking in Wild Places (Arnosky)
I Love Our Earth, by Martin and Sampson
My Spring Robin by Anne Rockwell
Starting Life Ladybug by Claire Llewellyn

One day on the way to the library, we saw two vultures scavenging on a skunk. When we got to the library, Samuel wanted to find a book on vultures. I found one by Sandra Markle that was part of a series on scavengers. We started with Vultures, and moved on to Jackals, Wolverines, Hyenas, and Tasmanian Devils. They are good living books because she writes these books about one animal of the species following it through a season or two or life.

We started a subscription to Your Big Backyard magazine, which I highly recommend.

We got a set of free posters from International Paper and studied the Leaf, Bark, and Seeds/Nuts posters. I just checked the link and didn't see these posters anymore, but they did have something called Coins for Kids with some lesson plan links.

We performed the following experiments –
Duplicate what the crow did in the fable The Crow and the Pitcher (after we read that fable)
I made color ice cubes and then we observed what happened when they melted.

Preschool Curriculum - Math

2008-10-24T18:53:00.007-04:00

I actually purchased a curriculum from Making Math Meaningful, but we only did 7 lessons. I just felt like a more informal living book approach to learning math at this stage worked best for us.

I was a math major in college and I just think in "math", so I am always counting aloud (even when he was a baby I would count the steps as I carried him up and down them) and doing word problems (for example, "We have 4 cookies. How many would you have if I gave you one more?" or "There are 6 pieces of pizza and three of us. How many pieces does each person get?"). We cook together and I show him measuring. I talk about what time it is and show him the clock. We count down the days on the calendar to an anticipated event and I teach him the months and days of the week. I fold laundry and let him sort the socks and teach him sets and counting by twos. We also have a wonderful CD put out by Discovery Toys called Sounds Like Fun, which has many learning songs on it, including an addition song and a counting by tens song.

Living Books (no order to this – the whole idea was exposure to math concepts, and most of these we read multiple times)

Stuart J. Murphy books -
§ Sundae Scoop (combinations)
§ Polly’s Penpal (metric measurements)
§ All Aboard Animals
§ A House for Birdie
§ A Pair of Socks
§ One…Two…Three…Sassafras! (serial order)
§ Rabbit’s Pajama Party (serial order)
§ Every Buddy Counts (Counting)
§ Animals on Board (Addition)
§ Seaweed Soup (sets)
§ Earth-Day Hooray! (place value) – we really only checked this out for Earth Day, but Samuel loves it
§ Best Vacation Ever (collecting data)
Math Fables by Greg Tang
How Hungry Are You? Donna Jo Napoli
Me First by Helen Lester (serial order)
Mary Clare Likes to Share by Hulme (Fractions)
One Monkey Too Many by Lynn Munsinger (Addition)
One More Bunny by Paige Miglio (Addition)
Hetty’s One Hundred Hats
One Hundred Hungry Ants
Hello Math Readers (Monster Math, Monster Math Picnic, Monster Math School Time) Eggs And Legs by Michael Dahl (counting by 2’s)

Preschool Curriculum - Literature and Poetry

2008-10-24T16:40:00.004-04:00

I think books are one of the most important tools for early education and developing a love of learning. If you can foster a love of books, your children can learn almost anything they want to learn later in life when you are not there to teach and guide them. Very few days have gone by since Samuel was born that we did not read at least one book to him. Most days we read somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour.

We did begin chapter books during this year, quite by accident. I was surprised that he could hold his attention from day to day (and sometimes even skipping a day or two) on the same story. I would now recommend trying out chapter books, but not pushing it if your child isn't ready. There were several books I checked out and ended up not reading after a few chapters due to lack of response.

Here are the books we read during Samuel's preschool year that I would consider the "good" books (or non-twaddle in Charlotte Mason-speak...we probably read double or triple the number of books on this list, including "twaddle", or as I like to call it "just for fun"). There is no order to this list, other than this is the order we read them in, mostly because of which books I became aware of during the year and when the library had them. Whenever I would see a list like this on someone else's blog, I would request as many as I could from our library. The *'s are Samuel's favorites.

*The Littles by John Peterson (we also went on to read other books in this series)
Steig books (Pete’s a Pizza, Toy Brother)
*Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter
Five Chinese Brothers, Bishop
Musicians of Bremen (Grimm)
*Always Room for One More, Sorche Nic Leodhas
The Ant and the Grasshopper (Aesop)
Goose that Laid the Golden Egg
Ramona the Pest, Beverly Cleary
*A Color of His Own, Lionni
The Elves and the Shoemaker (Grimm)
Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky
Frogs Wear Red Suspenders CD, Prelutsky
*Animal Tales CD, read by Jim Weiss
Iron John (Grimm – Kimmel version)
*Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams
*Officer Buckle & Gloria, Peggy Rathman
Nanny Goat & Seven Kids, Kimmel
*Fables by Arnold Lobel
Little Lions by Jim Arnosky
Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons by Amy Rosenthal
*Strega Nona, DePaola
The Art lesson, DePaola
Horton Hatches the Egg, Seuss
Four Friends in Autumn, dePaola
*Strega Nona’s Magic Lessons, dePaola
*Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Richard Atwater Strega Nona Takes a Vacation, dePaola
*Big Anthony, dePaola
A Twist in the Tail (Animal Stories From Around the World), Mary Hoffman
*Sam and the Firefly, PD Eastman
The Bee Tree, Patricia Polacco
Rumpelstiltskin, Paul Galdone
The Secret Staircase, Jill Barklem
Three Aesop Fox Fables, Paul Galdone
The Little Engine That Could, Watty Piper
The Owl and the Pussycat, Edward Lear
Once a Mouse, Marcia Brown
*A Three Hat Day, Laura Geringer
*A Necklace of Raindrops, Joan Aiken
*Capyboppy, Bill Peet
The Amazing Pig, Paul Galdone
Stone Soup, Marcia Brown
Inch by Inch, Leo Lionni
The Story of Ferdinand, Munro Leaf
*The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, Beatrix Potter
*The Tale of Two Bad Mice, Beatrix Potter
Tale of Peter Rabbit, Potter
Classic Illustrated Aesop’s Fables
*Winnie the Pooh, A.A Milne
The Tailor of Gloucester, Potter
Holly and Ivy, by Rumer Godden
Mystery in the Stable, by Flinn and Younger
*Night Before Christmas, illustrated by Mary Englebreit
One Splendid Tree by Marilyn Helmer
Here’s a Little Poem Collected by Jane Yolen
*It’s Snowing! It’s Snowing! Winter Poems by Jack Prelutsky
*Maurice Sendak – “Where the Wild Things Are”, “Chicken Soup with Rice”, “Alligator Alphabet”
Ezra Jack Keats – “Snowy Day”, “Pet Show”, “Louie”
*Pocket Poems (published by Dutton Children's Books, c2004)
*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Stuart Little by E. B. White
The New Oxford Treasury of Children’s Poems – Catch a Little Rhyme by Eve Merriam; The Piper and the Echoing Green by William Blake;
*Billy and Blaze by G.W. Anderson (we also went on to read 3 more from this series)
*Lighthouse Family: The Storm by Cynthia Rylant (read the rest of the books in this series)
*Ogden Nash’s Zoo (this in conjunction with listening to Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens)
Something BIG has Been Here, poems by Jack Prelutsky
*Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald (also read other books in this series)
Eric Carle Treasury of Classic Stories for Children

Preschool Curriculum - Bible and Phonics

2008-10-23T17:51:00.005-04:00

Samuel's birthday in at the end of July, and this curriculum started just after he turned 4. He said he wanted to learn to read. We had been playing around with a magnetic letter tile set I bought at a Learning Store, although I wasn't really trying to teach him to read. I told him most boys don't learn to read until they are 5 or 6, but he said he wanted to so I added phonics to this year, although I still believe most kids would be better off waiting until at least 5 for anything other than letter recognition and letter sounds.

Bible – We read through the entire Beginner’s Bible (Zonderkidz). I plan to use this again as a reader when he is at that level (as of now, I'm thinking age 6). In December and January, we took a break from this bible to read the Christmas stories and the book of Matthew from my NIV bible. For memory, he joined a local Awana club. It turns out he has a gift for memorizing verses.

Phonics – After checking out both Phonics Pathways and Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading from the library and trying a few lessons in each, I found Progressive Phonics. By Christmas, he had made it through all five short vowel readers and when we started the first intermediate reader (with beginning blends, like “fr” in frog), he was getting bored. So, from January on, we read through Sonlight’s Fun Tales books and I checked out different Level 1 readers from the library and asked him to read me a few pages every couple of nights at bedtime.

The Preschool Years

2008-10-23T17:46:00.001-04:00

The first formal type of curriculum I tried was when Samuel was 2 ½. I really like the idea of using living books since that’s kind of what I had already been doing, and I discovered Sonlight. I bought most of the books for the Sonlight Preschool curriculum (even though it wasn’t recommended till age 4 or 5), later called Core B, book list. I joined the yahoo group for SL PreK and downloaded “Amy’s Schedule”. Using some of the SL books and some from the library, we did a unit on nutrition from Amy over a few weeks, and then a unit on India of my own design. I found that a structured daily schedule didn’t really work for us, and then we went a few months with nothing official, but I would read some of the books and stories on the SL list for our bedtime reading. I kept doing this pretty much through to his 4th birthday, adding in books I found from other preschool lists and from various preschool yahoo groups.

Cutting and pasting from various lists and curriculums, I made up my own curriculum for what I called K4 and scheduled it by weeks. I felt that learning should just happen naturally, but I wanted ideas for activities and books to read. By the end of the K4, I gave up the idea of even trying to schedule things by weeks. Instead for K5 (“official” Kindergarten), I instead made a master list by subject that I will share on the next post, along with how we are doing.

I’m going to share my preschool curriculum with you, but as I started typing it from my weekly record, it was too long for one post. I’ll post it by subject in future posts.

Introduction

2008-10-22T16:33:00.002-04:00

There's me, Hubby of 7 years, and our beautiful Samuel who was born the day before our 2 year wedding anniversary (for the math-impaired, that makes him 5 as of this post).

When I was in college I took some education courses, thinking I would teach high school math, and while researching for a paper on math anxiety in girls, I found one lonely book on homeschooling in the stacks. Being the procrastinator I am, I read it instead of the books for my paper, and became an instant homeschooling advocate.

When I was in college, before I found out life doesn't always happen as planned, I had these plans -

Graduate and teach high school

Marry my high school sweetheart

Have my first child by 25, preferable twins

Homeschool my 2 children

Live happily ever after

Ahh, the dreams of youth...notice I didn't even make it past 30 in this plan! Well, I graduated from college, married Hubby at 32, had Samuel at 34, and here I am at 40 (again, for the math-impaired, plus I tricked you because I just had a birthday) still working on the happily ever-after.

Since one of my basic philosophies as a parent is that parents are the most important teachers, I believe I have been homeschooling Samuel since infancy. But please know that this isn't the flashcard/teach-your-baby-to-read kind of education. Mostly it has come from reading extensively, singing songs, and playing games. I did send him to a preschool - first, two-day two's, then 3-day three's, then 4-day fours (the "days" being mornings only). He learned some things I hadn't thought to teach him yet, like his last name when he was 2 and the pledge of allegiance when he was 4, but for the most part, I felt like his primary teacher. He learned to read and knew some basic math. I had a curriculum, kind of, but mostly it was lists of books which I checked out of the library. When I learn more about blogger, I may post my "preschool" curriculum.

And that pretty much brings us up to date, with Samuel starting Kindergarten in September and us beginning our first year of "after-schooling".