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!

Halfway through week three...

 Originally posted on September 1, 2009

...and things are going pretty well! Milly is getting used to the idea of doing something on her own for a few minutes here and there while Rachael and I do schoolwork, and that's a tremendous help. Rachael is learning so much - Bible verses, common and proper nouns, pronouns, syllables, alphabetizing, telling time on an analog clock (she finally got that pesky skip counting by fives thing down pat!), planets, gravity... It's a good thing she loves to learn!

The only thing she isn't enjoying so much is handwriting. She seems to have a generous amount of "don't want to" combined with a dash of "don't care", and that makes it a bit of a struggle some days. We've started the first grade Handwriting Without Tears book, and that's a little easier for her. She still has a tendency to make sloppy letters in an effort to rush through the lesson, continues to mix up her b's and d's, and makes several of her numbers (2, 3, 7 and 9) backward. What to do with her? Everything else is so easy for her - maybe this will just "click" one day as well.

It's been a while since my last update - would you like to see pictures of what we've been up to?

 

Well, we have school outside in our pajamas sometimes. Just another perk of living in the middle of nowhere! Rachael has a nature journal that she draws in every day - anything interesting that she finds outside. In this picture, she's sketching her beloved tomato plant. Going to need quite a few more of those next year, I think.

 

We still have our "pet" turtles in a makeshift pond outside, and Rachael and Milly love to go out and watch them every day. They're in charge of feeding them, and once in a while we get a good action shot of them fighting over their breakfast. In this picture, Ruby is snapping at Felicity. Ruby is quite a bit larger and tends to be a bit of a bully, but Felicity gets her licks in too. We've added one more turtle since this picture was snapped - as with the others, Gene rescued Lilly from the middle of the road. Rachael knows that, with fall approaching, we'll have to set the turtles free soon, and she isn't terribly thrilled at the idea.
 

We play a lot of games, and Math Bingo is one of her favorites. She uses the manipulative blocks from our Math-U-See curriculum to help her add the big numbers, but she's starting to remember a lot of the smaller sums now. The pink card is always, always hers.

Coloring (okay, scribbling) is one of Milly's favorite schooltime activities. Anything with Dora's face on it is a BIG hit with her right now.
 

We finally made the balloon model of the solar system today. They're lined up in order from the sun - the big orange balloon - and even though it was officially stripped of planet status, she wanted Pluto to be included. (That's the little purple speck behind Neptune.) I thought that it would be appropriate to hang her solar system over her WALL-E poster, and she agreed. However, I'm not very happy with the whole thing. Her astronomy book actually outlined this project, using the balloons, and the diameter of several of them were so small that you couldn't even put air into them. Not to mention that NONE of the planets are actually ROUND. It's odd...I feel styrofoam balls and paint in our future.

This little monkey likes to steal the teacher's chair every chance she gets - and if she can grab a pen and scribble in the lesson book, so much the better.
 

We've had two Thursday morning co-ops now, and both have gone well. Rachael loves going to learn with her friends - and play in between lessons, of course. So far, she's made her own personal timeline in history...

...sorted shoes to learn about taxonomy and classification (this was a drawing of the process afterward)...

...and done leaf rubbings while examining the symmetry of several leaves' veins.
 

Naturally, Milly also works very hard while Rachael is in class.
 

After history, science, Bible and art comes lunch - where Rachael can be found at the end of the table with her "boy best friend", Patrick...who she will marry and have a hundred little girls with someday (the first two being named Genevieve and Lacey), but for now, they're just friends. Daddy is only moderately displeased, having seen for himself that Patrick is a very polite young man. :)

Then comes P.E. before heading home. Needless to say, we don't do a lot of other schoolwork at home on co-op days - just reading and math.

So, there's our week three update! We had two weeks to get into a routine without worrying much about outside activities. This week, Girl Scout meetings and craft time at the library resumed, as will gymnastics on Thursday. Thankfully, those are all late afternoon and evening activities, so we can still knock out schoolwork (and Milly's nap - very important) before rushing off to those.

More to come soon...!
 

A recommitment to the blog...and a grandparent tutorial!

 Originally posted on July 23, 2009

Okay, you caught me - the blog isn't a new idea. I actually started it LAST fall, with the intention of updating throughout our kindergarten year. That didn't work out so well, as kindergarten was largely chaotic - especially when I had to hold Milly practically all day on top of everything else we were doing! This year will hopefully be easier. Milly is old enough now to sit at the table with us while we "do school", and will very likely be doing a bit of school herself this year - although she won't know it. Alphabet coloring pages, here we come!

Even though we're still in July, I'm already looking forward to beginning this school year. I haven't set an official "first day" yet, although I imagine it will be in mid-August. I still have a few textbooks to buy, plenty of planning to do, an overflowing bookshelf in the kitchen to organize (and figure out how to KEEP it that way!) Rachael is ready and would gladly "go back to school" just anytime now - so as soon as everything is in order, we'll get going.

Before I tell you what we'll be up to this year, a quick word to the grandparents (and anyone else unfamiliar with blogs) that I'll be inviting to read along with us... A blog is basically an online diary. Bookmark this website; you'll need to come back and check in to read our udpates. Assuming that you want to know, of course.  :)  The newest entry will always appear at the top of the screen - which means that, if this is your first visit, you'll need to scroll all the way to the bottom to read the first entry. When you come back, just scroll down to the last entry you read and work your way up. I'll attempt to update every day or so, at least - and also have every intention of making Rachael dictate a bit about what she's doing and learning. And of course, there will be pictures - especially when we do FUN things and field trips!

Now, about our school year... To begin with, if we were not homeschooling, Rachael would be starting kindergarten at Drewry Mason Elementary School this fall. I must admit to some degree of curiosity, being that I spent three years there during middle school - I'd love to see how they've revamped the place to accommodate even smaller children. Henry County's first day of school will be a little bittersweet, knowing that my baby would be gone all day to "real" school - I might even be tempted to drive her over there, just depending on what kind of day we have here.  ;)  But sending Rachael to kindergarten this fall would be a huge disservice to a child who is already reading books with several chapters and very few pictures. We can do better - and we will do better.

Here's what Rachael will be studying this year at Regalia Academy...

MATH
We will once again be using the Math-U-See curriculum, which relies heavily on manipulatives (ie, "little blocks") to help kids figure out number concepts. For instance, two "5" blocks laid end to end are the same length as the "10" block. 5 + 5 = 10. Makes perfect sense, right? We made good progress through the first book (Primer) last year, but got hung up with skip counting by fives. Need to figure out a way to make that click for her, then we'll be moving on - and probably into the next book (Alpha) before the school year is over.

LANGUAGE ARTS
I'm excited about this one! We'll be using a curriculum called Learning Language Arts Through Literature, which focuses on...well, learning language arts through literature. It's kind of an all-in-one phonics, spelling, reading, grammar and handwriting course. Thankfully, you can browse the curriculum pretty thoroughly online, which led me to buy (are you ready for this?) the second grade books for Rachael. Kindergarten and first grade were simply too easy, and even the second grade readers are no challenge for her - she picked one up, read a few pages, and fixed me with the "I AM NOT A BABY" glare that said she expected more difficult fare. *sigh*  However, she needs practice with her handwriting (we may also use a book called Handwriting Without Tears for extra practice) and skipping ahead any farther would also mean skipping over punctuation, parts of a sentence, nouns/pronouns/verbs/adverbs, etc. As it is, that ought to provide her with an adequate challenge this year, even if the included readers do not.

We'll also be learning spelling words from a book called The Natural Speller, and reading lots and lots and lots of things other than what's included with the curriculum. There are so many wonderful reading lists online, and I've snagged the public and private schools' first grade reading lists from the public library. We shouldn't have any trouble knocking those out! Rachael will very likely have an independent reading time each day as well as read-to-Mommy or listen-to-Mommy-read time. All three of them are pretty important to me and, as much as she loves her books, I don't expect any argument from her.

SCIENCE
We'll be using a book called Exploring Creation with Astronomy, published by Apologia. The Apologia series sounds wonderful - it's a Christian curriculum consisting of five books that teach about the world God created. The first year focuses on astronomy (because in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.) After that was done, God created vegetation - so the second year in this curriculm focuses on botany. The next three years cover the animals in the order that they were created - one year of winged creatures, one of aquatic creatures and finally, land animals. Pretty neat, huh? We're looking forward to digging into this one - Rachael loves looking at the stars, finding constellations, looking for planets - so this will be right up her alley. And of course, with the whole WALL-E fascination and his propensity for space travel...it'll be easy to throw him in there to get her attention as well!

HISTORY
 Her history text is called The Story of the World: Volume I - Ancient Times. This book covers the years 5000 BC - 400 AD. We've already read about the nomads and how they had to hunt and gather for their food. Rachael and her friends all thought that was pretty neat until they were turned outside with baskets and told to go find lunch! Now we're on to ancient Egypt - we've written in heiroglyphs and cuneiform, mummified an apple (that was interesting!) and will be building a pyramid out of sugar cubes when we resume studies. I'll be incorporating Bible lessons into her history - Moses and Pharoah's daughter, the plagues of Egypt, etc. My goal here is to take the "stories" - both from the history book and from the Bible - and help her to see that these were real people, real events. That's hard to understand sometimes when you just read the "story"!

Rachael is also VERY into the American Girl books right now. There are about a dozen girls, each one with eight or nine books, and each lived in a different area and time in history...so they're great story books, and great history lessons too. We've read all of the books about Samantha, a wealthy Victorian girl circa 1904. Now we're reading about Kit, who is weathering the Great Depression with her family in 1934. Next up, I think, is Kirsten, a little pioneer girl whose family immigrated from Sweden - and Rachael's tentative plan is to be Kirsten for Halloween this year! So we'll keep reading the American Girl books and learning about different eras in American history along the way.

BIBLE
Of course! We'll do a refresher course on her A-Z memory verses from last year (probably rusty by now). Daily devotions from the God's Little Princess Devotional Bible. Doctrine from the A Beka curriculum we didn't finish in kindergarten. And I'll be needing to make another trip to the Lifeway store in Danville. That can be a dangerous place - so many awesome books to choose from!

Those are the "big" subjects, but certainly not all of them. She'll be learning about health and hygiene, manners, social studies (gleaned from holidays, current events, etc.), art (seasonal crafts, projects to go along with her lessons) and hopefully some music. We'll start watching the Muzzy DVDs to expand on her French vocabulary (already pretty impressive, thanks to the Fancy Nancy books.) As for extracurricular activities, she will continue in gymnastics and in Girl Scouts. She's itching to play soccer too, but we'll have to see about that...don't want to stretch her (or us) too thin.

So, there's our current plan - now to get busy implementing it! YOUR assignment is to check in here regularly to see what's going on - and feel free to offer suggestions, ask questions, or just leave encouragement if you're so inclined. Although I'm comfortable in our plan for this school year, homeschooling for the long haul is still a bit of an overwhelming thought. And as always when working with children, there will be good days and bad days...here's hoping the 2009-10 school year consists of more good days!