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!
Monday, February 22, 2010
It's not pink; it's a cupcake.
Originally posted on October 6, 2009
I'm starting to wonder, already, if homeschooling Milly may not be more of a challenge than it is with Rachael. She's already exhibiting signs of being an abstract thinker, and I'm not sure my brain twists in her direction...
We were all sitting in the floor together this afternoon, when I decided that it was as good a time as any to start teaching Milly her colors. (Already later than I started with Rachael, but oh well...Second Child Syndrome (SCS) is unfortunately alive and well in our home.) The prevalent color in our home being PINK, that seemed the natural choice to begin with. And here is the conversation that ensued...
Me: Milly, what color is your nightgown? (Yes, she's still in her pajamas. Why get dressed when we're not going anywhere?)
Milly (looking down at the big picture of Dora on her belly): DORA!
Me (holding up her pink sneaker): It's PINK. What color is your shoe?
Milly: Mine!
Me (holding up a toy cupcake with pink icing): It's a PINK shoe! What color is the cupcake?
Milly: Yummmmmy!
Me (grabbing one of Rachael's dolls, dressed in a pink dress): Yes, yummy PINK cupcake. What color is the baby's dress?
Milly: Sissy's baby.
Me: Sissy's baby is wearing a PINK dress. PINK. See this? It's PINK!
Milly: PINK!
Me: Yes! Pink!
(Rachael retrieves a pink doll trunk from the toybox.) Rachael: What color is this, Milly?
Milly: A box.
Rachael: NO, it's a TRUNK.
Milly: PINK trunk!
(wild applause)
Me: Good job, Milly! It IS pink! (picks up cupcake again) Now, what color is this?
Milly: A cupcake.
*sigh*
I'm starting to wonder, already, if homeschooling Milly may not be more of a challenge than it is with Rachael. She's already exhibiting signs of being an abstract thinker, and I'm not sure my brain twists in her direction...
We were all sitting in the floor together this afternoon, when I decided that it was as good a time as any to start teaching Milly her colors. (Already later than I started with Rachael, but oh well...Second Child Syndrome (SCS) is unfortunately alive and well in our home.) The prevalent color in our home being PINK, that seemed the natural choice to begin with. And here is the conversation that ensued...
Me: Milly, what color is your nightgown? (Yes, she's still in her pajamas. Why get dressed when we're not going anywhere?)
Milly (looking down at the big picture of Dora on her belly): DORA!
Me (holding up her pink sneaker): It's PINK. What color is your shoe?
Milly: Mine!
Me (holding up a toy cupcake with pink icing): It's a PINK shoe! What color is the cupcake?
Milly: Yummmmmy!
Me (grabbing one of Rachael's dolls, dressed in a pink dress): Yes, yummy PINK cupcake. What color is the baby's dress?
Milly: Sissy's baby.
Me: Sissy's baby is wearing a PINK dress. PINK. See this? It's PINK!
Milly: PINK!
Me: Yes! Pink!
(Rachael retrieves a pink doll trunk from the toybox.) Rachael: What color is this, Milly?
Milly: A box.
Rachael: NO, it's a TRUNK.
Milly: PINK trunk!
(wild applause)
Me: Good job, Milly! It IS pink! (picks up cupcake again) Now, what color is this?
Milly: A cupcake.
*sigh*
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. :)
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. :)
Wow, week six already?!
Originally posted on September 22, 2009
I missed two weeks of updates - which included the one month mark of this school year. How did that happen?! Now we're into the sixth week - already! It seems like we just started! I'm taking this as a very, very good sign. If things weren't going well, I would most likely be slashing the days off of the calendar in red marker and keeping a running total in my head...only X more days until my goal is met! But no - we have our routine now and, even though Milly is still irritated sometimes that all the attention isn't focused solely on her, it's mostly a smooth process.
A few things that have happened since my last update...
"Homeschool is really cool. The funnest part about homeschool is that Mommy gets to teach me. I like the books that we read for English."
And now, being that it is Tuesday afternoon, we're off to the library for craft time and to re-stock on chapter books. We've begun reading about Kirsten, the pioneer American Girl that Rachael will be for Halloween. She's discovered Cam Jansen books and absolutely loves them, and she's always on the lookout for more, more, more things to read. I have to shove books out of the way to make room for her to sleep at night, but I'm not complaining. If genetics are to be blamed, it's all my fault anyway. :)
I missed two weeks of updates - which included the one month mark of this school year. How did that happen?! Now we're into the sixth week - already! It seems like we just started! I'm taking this as a very, very good sign. If things weren't going well, I would most likely be slashing the days off of the calendar in red marker and keeping a running total in my head...only X more days until my goal is met! But no - we have our routine now and, even though Milly is still irritated sometimes that all the attention isn't focused solely on her, it's mostly a smooth process.
A few things that have happened since my last update...
- We finished Math-U-See Primer (kindergarten). Rachael was terribly excited that we wrapped it up on a Friday afternoon and that the next book in the series hadn't yet arrived. Just as she began rejoicing the fact that she wouldn't have any math to do on the following Monday...the UPS truck arrived with the Alpha book. Them's the breaks, kiddo! (I gave her Monday off from math anyway, just because.) The first few lessons in the new book have been review, but new material (word problems) will commence next week.
- Handwriting is going better - she doesn't mind doing the lessons any more - but we still butt heads on a pretty regular basis. She has apparently decided that she only cares for capital letters, and would be quite happy using nothing but. In what must be a half-hearted attempt to please me, she'll occasionally throw in a lowercase letter or two, so her English workbook is filled with lines such as "THe cAT rAN AWAy FrOM THe DOG." I'm sure most everyone has encountered the teenager who randomly capitalizes things that way online, and how annoying it is. I refuse to let Rachael become one of them! She gets pretty mad at me when I erase the whole thing and demand a re-do, but darnit, lowercase letters are our friends. (Incidentally, we seem to be going through an inordinate number of erasers.)
- Rachael has a spelling test, consisting of eight words, each Friday. She missed one word each on the first three tests, but hasn't missed any on the last two!
- We're still loving our Book of Virtues unit study, although the section on compassion that we just finished up was hard for my soft-hearted girly. It took a good half hour to stop the tears after reading The Little Match Girl. The Gift of the Magi was better received, although Rachael maintains that she's going to grow her hair all the way to the floor and will never cut it all off to buy a gift for any man. ;)
- Girl Scouts is back in full swing, with the first fundraiser of the 2009-2010 school year starting next week. Expect her to be hitting you up for orders of nuts, toffee popcorn and choclate-covered everything. Thankfully, it's not terribly expensive. We got to sample everything at this week's meeting too, and it's all really, really good.
- Gymnastics is still going well. Rachael flipped over the top bar on the uneven bars this week, without so much as a teacher standing there to spot her. I was so proud!
"Homeschool is really cool. The funnest part about homeschool is that Mommy gets to teach me. I like the books that we read for English."
And now, being that it is Tuesday afternoon, we're off to the library for craft time and to re-stock on chapter books. We've begun reading about Kirsten, the pioneer American Girl that Rachael will be for Halloween. She's discovered Cam Jansen books and absolutely loves them, and she's always on the lookout for more, more, more things to read. I have to shove books out of the way to make room for her to sleep at night, but I'm not complaining. If genetics are to be blamed, it's all my fault anyway. :)
Week three is over!
Originally posted on September 4, 2009
It's hard to believe that we're three weeks into first grade already. Things are almost going too well - I keep waiting for a big problem to pop up somewhere, and keep praying that it doesn't!
We didn't have co-op this week, since all of us have had colds, and one of the other mom/teachers wasn't feeling so hot either. Rachael missed it, but had a nice, restful day with not much in the way of schoolwork. She did go to gymnastics that evening - her first class of the new school year. It's a large class, being in the evening rather than midday, but she liked all of her new teachers, which is more than we can say for the last class. Plus, her best friend is in this class - so it's going to be a good year for her.
With the arrival of a bit of cooler weather, we're starting to look forward to fall and all the fun things that go along with it. Apple picking is high on my list this year, followed by learning to make apple crisp. Rachael received her very own set of purple measuring cups and spoons for "back to school", so she'll be helping me more and more in the kitchen. Her math curriculum hasn't gotten to fractions yet, but she'll be learning a little about them anyway by measuring out ingredients. Talk about a practical application for math! Yummy too. :)
As we wrap our school week, I'm thrilled to note (and report) that Rachael has mastered the art of telling time on an analog clock! I devoted the whole week's math lessons to it, and it paid off. Next step: replace batteries in her pink Cinderella clock so she can start (really) using it! We will be working on subtraction next week, and finishing up the Math-U-See Primer (kindergarten) book. I ordered Alpha (first grade) today and can't wait to see what she'll be learning for the rest of the year.
Have a great Labor Day weekend, everyone!
It's hard to believe that we're three weeks into first grade already. Things are almost going too well - I keep waiting for a big problem to pop up somewhere, and keep praying that it doesn't!
We didn't have co-op this week, since all of us have had colds, and one of the other mom/teachers wasn't feeling so hot either. Rachael missed it, but had a nice, restful day with not much in the way of schoolwork. She did go to gymnastics that evening - her first class of the new school year. It's a large class, being in the evening rather than midday, but she liked all of her new teachers, which is more than we can say for the last class. Plus, her best friend is in this class - so it's going to be a good year for her.
With the arrival of a bit of cooler weather, we're starting to look forward to fall and all the fun things that go along with it. Apple picking is high on my list this year, followed by learning to make apple crisp. Rachael received her very own set of purple measuring cups and spoons for "back to school", so she'll be helping me more and more in the kitchen. Her math curriculum hasn't gotten to fractions yet, but she'll be learning a little about them anyway by measuring out ingredients. Talk about a practical application for math! Yummy too. :)
As we wrap our school week, I'm thrilled to note (and report) that Rachael has mastered the art of telling time on an analog clock! I devoted the whole week's math lessons to it, and it paid off. Next step: replace batteries in her pink Cinderella clock so she can start (really) using it! We will be working on subtraction next week, and finishing up the Math-U-See Primer (kindergarten) book. I ordered Alpha (first grade) today and can't wait to see what she'll be learning for the rest of the year.
Have a great Labor Day weekend, everyone!
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 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...!
...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...!
What would have been...
Originally posted on August 19, 2009
Today was the first day of school in our county. This morning, I would have set an alarm to wake us all up early, gotten Rachael dressed and fed and driven her a couple of miles to the absurdly large elementary school - the same building where I attended middle school and my mom graduated from high school. I would have dropped her off at the door of a kindergarten classroom and (undoubtedly) cried like a big ol' baby all the way back to the van. Then I would have had a fun day playing one-on-one with Milly, who would probably have adored having the spotlight solely on herself. All day long, I would wonder...what is Rachael doing now? And eventually, I would cut Milly's nap short to jump back in the van and go retrieve my *sniffle* big kindergartener from her first day of school.
Instead, we all slept until about 8:00. We didn't rush through breakfast. We started school in our pajamas. We even went outside in them. We did our schoolwork at the kitchen table, drew pictures, played Math Bingo, and stopped for hugs and tickles as needed. She learned new things, and she had fun doing it. Rather than being her first day of kindergarten, it was her third day of first grade - because that is the level where she belongs, where is competent yet challenged. We had a great day of school together.
However, knowing what would have happened today has made me remember the discussion that first slung us haphazardly onto the road to homeschooling. Gene and I were sitting at the kitchen table one Sunday afternoon when Rachael was about a year - maybe a year and a half old, reading the newspaper. There was a feature story that week about an area homeschooling family, but I hadn't seen it yet. So I was caught completely off-guard when he told me, "I think you should homeschool Rachael." I was speechless. Homeschool? Homeschool?! But but but...homeschooling was for hippies and zealots and weirdos, and *gasp* what about socialization?! I told him that I would think about it.
And I did think about it. Every time I read about the merger of the county schools that was happening then, and wondered what the more crowded conditions would mean for my child, I thought about it. When I read about the below average test scores in our area schools, I thought about it. When I read about a little guy being caught in one of our schools with a knife in kindergarten - kindergarten! - oh yes, I thought about it.
Eventually I started thinking...I could do better than that. I could keep her safe, give her one-on-one attention, customize her curriculum to her needs, abilities and interests, and very likely provide better socialization than she would receive in a classroom anyway. I started thinking that, no matter what we taught her about God at home and at church, she wouldn't be hearing about Him at school. And as she got a little older, I realized what a bright little girl she was, and thought that just maybe, she would be bored to tears in elementary school the way that I was as a child.
While I was thinking and reading and researching, I was also praying. Was homeschooling really right for us? Was it consistent with God's plan for our family? I had always assumed that, once my children were in school, I would go back to work to help supplement the family income. Children are, after all, expensive little things. It didn't take long to find peace in the conclusion that one can't put a price on the well-being of her family. This time spent with my children is costing us a bundle in terms of lost income, but the benefits are priceless. The more I learned, the more I prayed, the more confident I became in the decision to educate my children at home.
In June 2007, we attended the Home Educators of Virginia (HEAV) conference in Richmond. I was amazed and inspired by the speakers at the workshops (especially Joy from Daughters 4 God - I want to be like her!) and could hardly wait to "do school" with my own daughter. We started exploring curriculums and quickly settled on a few things for preschool. We started that fall, when she was about 3 1/2, and preschool was lax at best - as it should be, I think, for such a little one. "School" was largely interrupted in December anyway, with the arrival of her baby sister, and then Christmas. Still, she read her first words on her own in January 2008, just before her fourth birthday. She progressed so well and loved learning so much that we made the decision to go ahead with a kindergarten curriculum in fall of 2008. And that is how we've come to be starting first grade at the same time that she would have been put into kindergarten in our county school system.
I started school last year with the affirmation that it would be a "year-to-year basis", that we would reassess at the end of each school year to see if it was working out well for all of us. By the end of kindergarten...well, I honestly don't recall pausing to reflect on whether or not it was working. I was already too busy deciding which curriculum to use for first grade. :)
With each passing year since that initial, shocking suggestion, I've learned more about homeschooling and become more comfortable with the idea - not just of homeschooling for the first few years, but indefinitely. Of course, if circumstances arose that would mean her learning better in a different environment...well, we won't muddle through just on principle. We'll do what's best for our children. Right now, homeschooling is undoubtedly what is best for them. I've also met more homeschooling families...and found that they're not hippies or zealots (or just plain weird) at all. What they are is dedicated and helpful. Their children are sociable, friendly, and smart. And I love being one of them.
Today was the first day of school in our county. This morning, I would have set an alarm to wake us all up early, gotten Rachael dressed and fed and driven her a couple of miles to the absurdly large elementary school - the same building where I attended middle school and my mom graduated from high school. I would have dropped her off at the door of a kindergarten classroom and (undoubtedly) cried like a big ol' baby all the way back to the van. Then I would have had a fun day playing one-on-one with Milly, who would probably have adored having the spotlight solely on herself. All day long, I would wonder...what is Rachael doing now? And eventually, I would cut Milly's nap short to jump back in the van and go retrieve my *sniffle* big kindergartener from her first day of school.
Instead, we all slept until about 8:00. We didn't rush through breakfast. We started school in our pajamas. We even went outside in them. We did our schoolwork at the kitchen table, drew pictures, played Math Bingo, and stopped for hugs and tickles as needed. She learned new things, and she had fun doing it. Rather than being her first day of kindergarten, it was her third day of first grade - because that is the level where she belongs, where is competent yet challenged. We had a great day of school together.
However, knowing what would have happened today has made me remember the discussion that first slung us haphazardly onto the road to homeschooling. Gene and I were sitting at the kitchen table one Sunday afternoon when Rachael was about a year - maybe a year and a half old, reading the newspaper. There was a feature story that week about an area homeschooling family, but I hadn't seen it yet. So I was caught completely off-guard when he told me, "I think you should homeschool Rachael." I was speechless. Homeschool? Homeschool?! But but but...homeschooling was for hippies and zealots and weirdos, and *gasp* what about socialization?! I told him that I would think about it.
And I did think about it. Every time I read about the merger of the county schools that was happening then, and wondered what the more crowded conditions would mean for my child, I thought about it. When I read about the below average test scores in our area schools, I thought about it. When I read about a little guy being caught in one of our schools with a knife in kindergarten - kindergarten! - oh yes, I thought about it.
Eventually I started thinking...I could do better than that. I could keep her safe, give her one-on-one attention, customize her curriculum to her needs, abilities and interests, and very likely provide better socialization than she would receive in a classroom anyway. I started thinking that, no matter what we taught her about God at home and at church, she wouldn't be hearing about Him at school. And as she got a little older, I realized what a bright little girl she was, and thought that just maybe, she would be bored to tears in elementary school the way that I was as a child.
While I was thinking and reading and researching, I was also praying. Was homeschooling really right for us? Was it consistent with God's plan for our family? I had always assumed that, once my children were in school, I would go back to work to help supplement the family income. Children are, after all, expensive little things. It didn't take long to find peace in the conclusion that one can't put a price on the well-being of her family. This time spent with my children is costing us a bundle in terms of lost income, but the benefits are priceless. The more I learned, the more I prayed, the more confident I became in the decision to educate my children at home.
In June 2007, we attended the Home Educators of Virginia (HEAV) conference in Richmond. I was amazed and inspired by the speakers at the workshops (especially Joy from Daughters 4 God - I want to be like her!) and could hardly wait to "do school" with my own daughter. We started exploring curriculums and quickly settled on a few things for preschool. We started that fall, when she was about 3 1/2, and preschool was lax at best - as it should be, I think, for such a little one. "School" was largely interrupted in December anyway, with the arrival of her baby sister, and then Christmas. Still, she read her first words on her own in January 2008, just before her fourth birthday. She progressed so well and loved learning so much that we made the decision to go ahead with a kindergarten curriculum in fall of 2008. And that is how we've come to be starting first grade at the same time that she would have been put into kindergarten in our county school system.
I started school last year with the affirmation that it would be a "year-to-year basis", that we would reassess at the end of each school year to see if it was working out well for all of us. By the end of kindergarten...well, I honestly don't recall pausing to reflect on whether or not it was working. I was already too busy deciding which curriculum to use for first grade. :)
With each passing year since that initial, shocking suggestion, I've learned more about homeschooling and become more comfortable with the idea - not just of homeschooling for the first few years, but indefinitely. Of course, if circumstances arose that would mean her learning better in a different environment...well, we won't muddle through just on principle. We'll do what's best for our children. Right now, homeschooling is undoubtedly what is best for them. I've also met more homeschooling families...and found that they're not hippies or zealots (or just plain weird) at all. What they are is dedicated and helpful. Their children are sociable, friendly, and smart. And I love being one of them.
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