Friday, September 30, 2011

Week 2: Sept. 26 to 30

After a good start last week, I was somewhat reluctant to break up our week to visit a traveling Picasso exhibit, but since I had already RSVP'd, we went.

We added in a visit to a nearby Japanese Garden and picnicked in the park before entering the exhibit.

 I approached the exhibit lightheartedly and told the big kids to pick out a favorite picture in each room to look at. We didn't do more than just glance at any but the favorites, and for once, I appreciated the pictures I saw and wasn't begging to leave by the end. I think I'll use my new museum method when I go with adults in the future.
The girls loved the water and especially the water skater bugs at the Japanese Garden.
Monday, Thursday, and Friday were our only structured school days this week now that BSF is back in session, but we still got a lot done. J is cruising along in his Writing Road to Reading notebook.
Great writing, J, but it looks like we need to correct a sentence.
The challenges this week involved teaching A to read. I generally don't want to push early reading, but A would be a lot happier at church if she could read, so we're doing basic phonics for a few minutes twice a day. The challenge was involving her in J's WRTR lesson. At first she resisted, since in the past she was allowed to play outside during that time. By Friday, things were much improved. She listened in (phonetic awareness) and played with pattern blocks.
Making cinnamon raisin bagels.
M shook things up today during naptime by putting her own "sunblock" on. (It was really Daddy's shoe polish. Whoops.)
"I thought it was sunblock, Mommy!"



Thursday, September 29, 2011

Loving all the learning

We had finished math and spelling, the intensive parts of our day, and it was time to move onto narration. During narration, I read a passage aloud to J from Aesop's Fables and he tells me back, in his own words, what has happened.

There was only one problem: I couldn't find John. He wasn't in his block hideout or out in the (miniscule) yard. I found him on M's toddler bed, reading a book about animals in National Parks.

"J, time to shut the book! Narration time!"

"OK Mommy. Do you know about the rattlesnake? It has button-like shakers in the back that it moves around if it knows a person is close by. The sound scares people away." He went told me detail after detail about rattlesnakes. Couldn't we just move onto narration time?

Whoops! I almost missed out on one of the most enthusiastic narrations of the day because I was so excited about doing a "real" narration.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Week 1: September 21 to 24

We had two and a half days of school today after returning from our trip Tuesday and starting BSF on Wednesday.

It seems like the way to be a happy homeschooler (for me, at least), is to start small, with the basics, and add things on as we go, so that is what we did.

A has her own math to do now as it is going swimmingly. We play lots of games and do half of a lesson per day. I started her off in RightStart A, but soon found out she had learned too much from listening in to J's lessons for that to be a good fit. RightStart B works well as long as I don't drag out the lessons.

Additionally, A worked hard building some swooping patterns.

Her hard work paid off with a beautiful bridge pattern of her own design.


M set up her own working, sorting the colored pieces from a Montessori trinomial cube.


J had plenty to do as we quizzed the first sixty or so works from The Writing Road to Reading and continued in RightStart C. We finally started the geometric drawing portion, which was the part that convinced me not to switch to Singapore. As expected, he loves it.

Friday morning, as I started A's math lesson, I told J it was free play time.

"Can I please do the next math page? Please?" he begged. I gave in. Who can resist such a request?
We ended our week with the first day, for us, of German school, and we're geared up and excited about speaking more German at home again after a lot of laziness on my part over the summer.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Home from the Tetons, starting a new school year

We just got back from our family trip to Grand Tetons National Park.
Our reward for driving off at 8 am: a stunning Tetons view.




I've seen a lot of parks, but this was my first time there. We had a home base at Jackson Lake Lodge due to Dan's work but the kids and I were able to play everyday while Dan was at his conference. My favorite part of the week was seeing a moose for the first time in my life. We prayed to see one and were given one eating right next to the street! We started keeping Nature Journals during our trip and tried to draw bisons. Apparently, a "still" bison actually moves a lot, so we resorted to drawing flowers and grasses.

Now that we're back, and learning isn't getting in the way of homeschooling, we're getting back into gear with respect to homeschooling. We're going to give KONOS a month's trial since I really want to use a curriculum that facilitates my children learning together. We'll also read through the Mr. Q Science book as a science spine. Otherwise, our curriculum isn't much changed from last year, with The Writing Road to Reading replacing it's knock-off, Spell to Write and Read and Anna doing her own math this year.