Here's what RACHAEL has to look forward to!

Things are coming together for the 2010-11 school year and, as usual, I thought I'd share our curriculum choices...in case anyone is interested. :)

One of my favorite aspects of homeschooling is the ability to tailor our curriculum to Rachael's level, and it's all over the place this year! Here's what we'll be studying, in no particular order.

• Learning Language Arts Through Literature - this is a comprehensive language arts series that covers grammar, reading, spelling, vocabulary, writing mechanics, creative writing, thinking skills, etc. I love that it's laid out for me, day-by-day, and in the 3rd grade book that Rachael will be using this year, it's really geared toward independent work by the student with very little help from the teacher. I have a feeling she'll be working on this one while I'm working with Milly!

• Grammar, Usage & Mechanics - even though grammar is covered in LLATL, a little extra practice won't hurt anything. I've read wonderful reviews of the GUM series, and it's another subject that she'll be able to do independently. It's a smallish workbook, so it won't be an every day thing. I went with a 3rd grade level here too, so it should compliment her larger language arts course nicely.
  

• Spelling Workout - we used the Natural Speller last year, and I liked the word lists, but Rachael breezed right through it. She's very fortunate to (apparently) have gotten my knack for spelling. So again, I've read great things about Spelling Workout, and after looking at sample pages online, bought the 4th grade book for her. Maybe it'll challenge her a little! Again, this one is meant mostly for independent work. I'm loving that theme. Language arts is the area in which Rachael excels most, so I'm fine with her doing most of it on her own. I'll have to be much more involved in the other subjects.

• Math-U-See (Beta) - dreaded, dreaded math. Again with following in my footsteps, Rachael isn't a huge math fan. I'm not sure why this is, as she hasn't had any trouble understanding the concepts...she just doesn't like it. I was tempted to explore other curriculum choices because of that, but MUS just looks like more fun than the other, drier options. We actually started on the Beta (2nd grade) book back in the spring, so we'll be working through it this school year - multiple-digit addition and subtraction, etc. We're not going to be in a big hurry to get through it, but IF she finishes it before spring, we'll move on to Gamma (single and multiple digit multiplication, which I can't imagine her being ready for...but I've been wrong before.)

• The Story of the World I: Ancient Times - okay, we slacked off on history last year. We got about halfway through the book, so we'll be reviewing and then moving on. I'm really looking forward to SOTW II, which covers the Middle Ages. I'll be more in my element teaching from that one!

• Apologia - Exploring Creation Through Botany - so, I'll admit, I'm not terribly excited about this one. Maybe it's because I've never been terribly excited about science, maybe it's because we still have a couple of chapters of last year's Exploring Creation Through Astronomy to wrap up first. I'm sure it'll be more fun than I'm anticipating - classifying plants, making slides and checking them out under the microscope, making our own "light hut" and growing plants, etc. Rachael will love it, and I'll try to! At any rate, I'm a big fan of Apologia in general, so I'm sure it'll be a great book.

• Map Skills For Today, Grade 2 - throwing a little geography into the mix this year! She's already somewhat familiar with maps thanks to our history book, but this will give her a more thorough lesson in directions, symbols, etc. (I also bought a huge wall map of the world that I'm pretty excited about using this year!) This is another small-ish workbook that won't be an everyday activity.

• Horizons Health 2 - focusing on safety, hygiene, nutrition and fitness. We used Horizons last year too and found it a little dry, but it does cover the topics that need to be covered. Fellow homeschoolers, if you have any health curriculum suggestions for next year, I'd love to hear them!

• God and Me! Devotions for Girls 6-9 - I had to spend a while browsing in the Lifeway store for just the right book for our Bible study this year, and I'm really excited about this one! This is SUCH a cute book - full color, with a devotion for each day and an activity to go along with it (questions to answer, a picture to draw or a puzzle to work - things that I know Rachael will enjoy.) There are three God and Me! books for girls ages 6-9, and I'll probably be going back to pick those up before the end of the school year. This will definitely be an everyday activity - probably the first subject of the day, to get us off to a good start. This is going to be so much more fun (for us both) than the Bible studies we used last year!

Those are all of the big/important/book-based curriculums we'll be using this year...although I have a few more things in mind as well.

• Muzzy French - a "sometimes" and "mostly for fun" thing, for now. Rachael is already a little fascinated with French vocabulary thanks to Fancy Nancy (who is currently the top contender for this year's Halloween costume, by the way.) I may even be able to help a little, having taken four years of French myself. Of course, that was a long time ago, and off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure I remember how to find a restroom, an airport, and some green beans. Maybe I'll just leave it all to Muzzy.

• Art - something else we're really excited about this year! Rachael will be taking an hour-long art class on Thursday afternoons at the Danville School of Arts and Science, a homeschool co-op. We just visited yesterday for their open house, and Rachael met her art teacher and got to check out some of the projects they'll be doing this year. They'll learn some art history and practice methods used by great artists, they'll sketch and sculpt and paint gourds that are grown by the teacher. They'll also get to help create backgrounds and props for the drama class's annual production - and they're hoping that it'll be Charlie & the Chocolate Factory this year. I can't wait to see what she creates! (THANKS to Gramma for Rachael's "scholarship" to DSAS!)

• Piano lessons - Rachael and I will both continue piano lessons with a wonderful friend-of-a-friend this fall. Rachael can already play a couple of simple tunes with her fingers on the correct keys, and she can't wait to learn more!

• Girl Scouts - my big girl completed her two years of Daisies and bridged up to Brownies in June! We're looking forward to a great first year of Brownies...we since I will be her new troop leader. :) I've completed a portion of my training already, with another session next week, and one more to go before our first meeting on September 13th. I have a wonderful co-leader who will be working with Daisies in the same troop, and I'm sure we're going to have a great bunch of girls this year too.

Now that all of that is out of the way...I just need to put together some "school" activities for Milly, and we'll be good to go. She insists that she wants to "do school" too, and I'm looking forward to it being much easier to keep her happy this year than it was last year. Homeschooling with a toddler under foot was, I'm sorry to say, just not much fun. This year will be different...details on her "curriculum" are coming soon!

Happy New Year!

Originally posted on January 4, 2010

As promised when I first began this blog, I have been spectacularly craptastic about keeping it updated. New year, new attempt at keeping it at least somewhat regularly updated...

The first quarter of our 2009 school year couldn't have been more perfect. We were met with a bit of a challenge in the second quarter, which led to us only covering the basics (reading, math and Bible) on most days. Fortunately, reading and math are the big ones that the county requires us to do every day, so we're still in good shape. As of December 22, we had completed 90 out of the required 180 days of instruction for the 2009-10 school year. Halfway there!

After a week and half off for Christmas and New Year's, we're back at the kitchen table for school this morning. Quite a bit of what we're doing today is review, especially in the subjects that have been somewhat neglected (science, history, health) in the past months.

We'll be starting all new things before long, as Rachael is just two lessons away from finishing her math book - the one that we only started in September! Granted, we didn't do all of the review pages - I let her work on each lesson until she was ready to take the test, and then let her go for it. (As long as she has a good grasp on each concept, I see no reason to make her repeat, repeat, repeat.) So, she made short work of Math-U-See Alpha, which covered more skip counting, telling time on an analog clock, addition, subtraction, solving for unknown, word problems, etc. I'm very impressed (and, I admit, a little surprised) at just how well she's done with this math book, especially since she claims that it's her least favorite subject. Oddly, she complains about adding but has no qualms whatsoever about subtracting. We'll be finishing this book on Friday and then working on review pages until the next book (Beta) arrives.

We'll also be starting a new Bible study at the end of January, when we finish reading through her God's Little Princess Devotional Bible. As sweet and meaningful as the devotionals are for a girl her age, I'm looking forward to beginning something more in-depth with her soon. Train Up A Child Publishing has a series of "Choosing..." books that have gotten excellent reviews - I'm leaning toward Choosing Obedience or Choosing Self-Control to begin with, which will hopefully help nip some behavioral issues before they escalate. Other titles include Choosing Kindness, Thankfulness, Humility, Responsibility...all geared at children in K-5. There are more titles for teens that I think will be interesting to study with her later on, assuming that the reviews are correct and we love this series just as much!

Rachael still isn't a big fan of handwriting, although she doesn't fight me on it as much these days. She only takes offense when I erase a word for having capital letters randomly inserted in the middle...

She's still taking gymnastics lessons, and doing well with them. I love watching her flip over the uneven bars! She's also beginning her last year (sniffle) as a Daisy Girl Scout. I can't believe she'll be a Brownie this fall! The first meeting of the new year is tonight, and we'll be kicking off the COOKIE DRIVE! (No, I'm not at all excited about that!)

So, there's our new year update - hopefully it won't take me three months to post another one. :)  It's my intent to ease into a more classical method of education over the next few months, which focuses very highly on history (as well as math and language arts, of course.) If you're a homeschooling parent and have never read The Well-Trained Mind, I would highly recommend it. Lots of wonderful food for thought!

Happy 2010, everyone! I'm very much looking forward to making some changes in our home this year, and to a fun and insightful school year!

It's BRAG TIME!

Originally posted on October 5, 2009

Here we go on week #8...it's amazing how quickly the time is flying by. In filling in my lesson plan book last night, I marked off two days for Thanksgiving already. Yes, only two days...but you know that the rest of that week is going to mostly be Pilgrim stories and fall crafts, right?  :)

Rachael is still doing great with her schoolwork. I've had to let go of a few of my OCD tendencies where math was concerned. Each lesson in the Math-U-See Alpha consists of six pages - three that focus on that lesson and three more that review previous concepts - plus a test booklet with a test for each lesson. I was dividing each lesson into two days in order to do all of the pages...and it was taking forever. Did she really need six pages of practicing writing numbers up to 100? I think not. So, my new easier/faster rule is that she does the first page of the lesson and decides for herself if she needs more practice before taking the test. If she's struggling, of course I recommend that she does one more page. But if not...it's test time, and help is unavailable during the test. Once she finishes, we'll discuss any answers she might have gotten wrong - but those are pretty few and far between. She has much less issue with math now that it doesn't take soooo long! This book, so far, has focused on addition and subtraction of single digits, and solving for unknown. (Algebra at age five!)

We nixed our Book of Virtues unit study last week in favor of reading a chapter of her new Girl Scouts handbook each day. We finished it up on Friday, and that earns her one more patch for her uniform!

And now, on to today's brag... I pull her spelling words each week from a book called Natural Speller. There are several pages of words for "Grades 1-2", broken into columns of 7 or 8. To begin with, I was going in order and giving her one column each week. In week seven, her spelling words included such perplexities as in, if, it and sit. What utter nonsense! She could spell in she was two. So I devised a brilliant new plan. Rather than giving her spelling words on Monday, having her copy them all week, and then testing her on them on Friday...I would give her a test on Monday. That's right - I'd just start reading through the words and having her do her best to sound them out - and when she got up to eight that she had spelled incorrectly, I'd stop and those would be her eight spelling words for the week. That way, she would be working on eight words that actually presented a little bit of a challenge.

Well. We sat down today and I started reading through the words. She wrote...and wrote...and wrote...and finally started complaining, asking why she was having to write ALL of these spelling words? The child wrote 56 words and only missed FIVE. So much for my goal of eight! The words she missed were: block (bloke), start (sart), third (thrid), stir (str) and shirt (sirt). I chalk the last four up to the fact that they were so near the end, and she was sick of writing by then! So, those are our spelling words for the week. All five of them.

In case anyone is interested, here are the words she didn't miss: got, hop, drop, shop, top, not, hot, on, dog, fog, box, stop, mop, sun, cut, us, fun, run, up, but, such, club, much, cup, rub, jump, running, arm, farm, car, far, hard, harm, are, card, cart, star, dark, part, apart, bird, first, girl, birth, born, more, for, or, fort, corn and horn.

Yep! Still proud of her. :)