We Filled Our Buckets Today!!!

Just a little back story before I dive into this post . . . we started school this week. Finally. Our initial goal of starting right after July 4th was put on the back burner when I got a great deal on baseball camp and signed Noah up for two more weeks. Then, during that time, we found ourselves unexpectedly hosting a student from Spain until early August, so we pushed back our start date yet again. Which brings us to this week.

My goal in taking off only the month of June was to avoid a repeat of last year, when we had a very challenging first week as we struggled to get back into our groove after three whole months of summer vacation. I now know that two whole months off is not a bit easier to recover from.This week has been a total roller coaster - a nice start on Monday, a total dive into a terrible Tuesday and back up to (so far, at least) the high point that was today.

Today was like the cover of "Perfect Homeschool" magazine . . . the picture I chose from the catalog when I ordered up this whole homeschooling adventure. At one point, the kids were both working happily and independently on handwriting, while I prepped for math with classical violin music playing in the background. Yes, really. They flew through their math assignments, and we actually had time to play card games and chess plus do an impromptu art project before heading out to music lessons. It was the kind of day that I should have videotaped to play back to myself on days like yesterday!

Our morning began with a thunderstorm, which meant that Ava's riding lesson was canceled. Selfishly, I was glad to have the extra time since the kids music lessons (normally on Mondays) had been moved to Wednesday this week. But instead of getting an early start, I let them play for a bit to get myself (and the classroom) a bit more organized.

When I was finally ready, I decided to mix up our schedule a bit. Rather than jumping into the heavy stuff first to "get it out of the way", we instead began with our new yoga/meditation routine - the one part of our week that's gone consistently well. (In case you missed it, I blogged about my new vision for incorporating these into our day a few weeks ago.)

We started by reading one of our favorite books, Have You Filled a Bucket Today, followed by a few minutes of yoga and a guided children's meditation. Afterwards, the kids wanted to talk a little about the meditation (the one we did today was about making friends with your emotions) and about the book. Their enthusiasm sparked the idea for a bucket-filling art project, which is pictured at the top of this post.

Spontaneity has never been one of my strong suits, but since our theme for this school year is "fun", it's a skill I need to develop and put into my repertoire. The kids loved both the spontaneous art project and the unplanned pillow fight that followed, and it really set the tone for a great day of learning!

A New Addition to Our School Day

Yesterday I posted on our sister blog, Growing Healthy Sprouts, about my plan to adapt my recent self-care routine into a daily practice I can share with the kids. Starting next week, we'll be reading one of our favorite inspirational books each day, followed by a brief meditation or yoga practice. I'm really excited about this new addition to our school day and eager to see how it affects our schooling and relationships. You can read the full post here, including a list of all the books that we'll be using for our daily reading.

What are your favorite inspirational children's books? I'm always looking for good ones with a special interest in being accountable for your own happiness and healthy ways to deal with emotions.

Fun Alphabet Activities

Okay, confession time. I've been cheating at this homeschooling thing for a while now. The reason, mainly, is that my son is a very independent learner. I don't know how he knows half of what he knows (although I'm certain I can't take credit for most of it). When people ask me what his learning style is, I usually answer "osmosis".

Honestly, I have no idea how he learned to read or write (he just did it) and I can only take a small amount of credit for his in-depth knowledge of human anatomy and his recent explosion of multiplication and division skills. In other words, I've been riding his coattails through this homeschooling venture.

Silly to say, but it took me a while to realize that not all kids were like that. But I finally realized that Ava has been sitting around waiting for me to teach her (and all the while, I've been sitting around waiting for her to spontaneously learn). So recently we've gone back to the basics and with a little guidance, she is blossoming with skills like letters and numbers that I took for granted she'd just automatically know.

While her recognition of letters and their sounds has led to some beginning reading, I recently noticed that her handwriting was not . . . well, it was just not. I remember buying Noah a Handwriting Without Tears kit at my first FPEA conference, but we never really used it since he just started writing on his own. Man, do I wish I'd kept all the pieces to that thing in one place; it would really come in handy right about now!

So in the HWT spirit, I've started working with Ava on fun ways to use long, short, straight and curved lines to make her letters. First, she used pieces of string to form the letters, then made the lines with pieces of cereal. Next, she traced the letter with her finger several times before finger painting it. Finally, she glued down some pom-poms to form the letter shape.

We tackled A and B last week, and the results were really cute. As an added bonus, she's writing her name all over the place now. And, of course, her bonus was eating the cereal when we were done!

Free Homeschooling

Well, I thought I was headed to bed at a relatively decent hour tonight. At least until I decided to check out the latest Facebook buzz amongst my homeschooling friends . . . Free Homeschooling 101. After, tooling around on the Facebook fan page, I found my way to the blog . . . wow, this is going to take a while!

So far, I've seen some favorites (such as NeoK12 and IXL), but I've already stumbled upon many great, new, FREE homeschooling resources conveniently organized by subject - everything from history and language arts to astronomy and typing. Just wanted to pass along this great resource; can't wait to explore it more myself. In the morning, that is.

Fun, custom handwriting worksheets

So handwriting has never been something we've practiced just for the same of practicing it. I like that many of our curriculum books - including Singapore Math, Language Smarts and Dr. DooRiddles - require enough writing for Noah to get a good amount of practice each day.

However, since I never actually taught him how to write - it's one of those things that he just started doing on his own - I realized that he was having some issues with proper letter formation - especially with lower case letters. I jumped online looking for answers and was thrilled to find a free site that lets you create customized handwriting pages.

Simply enter a sentence, and it creates a printable worksheet. You can choose to have the sentence printed once at the top with practice lines beneath (as pictured) or for earlier writers, the sentence can be repeated on the entire page for tracing. Either way, the kids get a dot to remind them where each letter begins.

We've been doing one per day all week, and I've seen improvements already. I wasn't sure how Noah would like them (he gets bored easily with any type of repetition), but he loves writing the fun phrases about himself - Noah likes to ride bikes . . . Noah's dog is named Madison . . . Legos are fun . . . I've even been using them with Ava just by typing one letter several times with spaces in between and repeating it on the entire page (she is working on a letter a day).

Charting Our Progress

As part of our Early America co-op series this month, we've been collecting food items for The Sharing Center. During this week's class, we inventoried the food collected during our food drive and charted the donations on a bar graph.

Since it's been a while since we used this fun graphing site, we decided to take a look at how the same data would look in different graph forms. Here are our results:

Bar graph:



















Pie Chart:



















Line Graph:



















Area Graph:

Making Math Fun (and Tasty!)

So we've been using our Singapore Math curriculum for two months now, and it's going well. I like the way it is organized; it's been a nice review of skills we've already learned and a good introduction to a few new concepts.

That said, Noah highly prefers math on IXL. I know that he needs the pencil-to-paper practice that Singapore provides, but like me, he is usually bored with the repetition once he feels that he knows it already. And having been highly bored by repetition in school myself, I can completely understand.

We're almost done with our 1A books (which makes me think we'll be wrapping up the 1B set by February), so I feel like we have some time to back off the curriculum and play a little. Our newest addition has been chocolate chip math - which may need to alternate with pistachio math or Honey O (cereal) math now that we're into double-digit addition and subtraction.

The nice thing about this concept - aside from the overwhelming enthusiasm from the kids - is that it's a way to work on math with both of them at the same time. Noah's been learning the basic concepts of multiplication and division while Ava practices counting and very simple addition. Basically, I use the chips as manipulatives for math problems, and when they answer correctly . . . you can probably guess. Yum!

Last night, we added in place value problems (uses up less chips!) for Noah. The photo at the top shows two of our problems from last night - Noah's place value problem (left) of 641 and Ava's addition (2 + 1 + 3).

And if you're wondering why they're white chocolate chips, it's because they're not my favorite and I won't eat them all!!!

St. Augustine Scavenger Hunt

No, we didn't go back today (although I briefly considered it - in part just for another yummy lunch at the Present Moment Cafe). But we did orchestrate a scavenger hunt this morning using St. Augustine trivia questions as clues.

Noah bought a treasure chest yesterday at the museum gift shop and was making grand plans to hide it so he and Ava could have a scavenger hunt. I suggested that I hide it so he could really participate in the fun. So last night, I filled it with beads, fruit leather and a few of their favorite truffles and stashed it in my bread machine. Here's how they found it . . .

I wrote one clue on each of six note cards, sealed each one in an envelope and wrote a St. Augustine trivia question on the front of the envelope. When they answered the questions correctly, they opened the envelope to receive their next clue.

Here are the details if anyone wants to play along at home. Remember . . . trivia questions (TQ) go on the outside of the envelopes, clues (C) go inside the note card.

Card 1
TQ: True or False: St. Augustine is the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States. (Answer is "True".)
C: In Colonial St. Augustine, people wrote with quill pens and ink. You'll find your next clue in the spot you keep your writing tools. (Hide card 2 in a craft box or pencil jar.)

Card 2
TQ: St. Augustine is home to the country's oldest a) Dollhouse, b) Schoolhouse, c) Outhouse (Answer is "Schoolhouse".)
C: In Colonial St. Augustine, people had to go outside to use the bathroom. An outhouse was a small structure covering a hole in the ground. You'll find your next clue in what we use today instead. (Hide card 3 in bathroom.)

Card 3
TQ: True or False: Pedro Menendez founded the city of St. Augustine. (Answer is "True".)
C: In Colonial St. Augustine, people slept on mats on the floor. You'll find your next clue underneath the place where you sleep. (Hide card 4 under bed.)

Card 4
TQ: Did people have cars and TVs at the time St. Augustine was founded? (Answer is "No".)
C: In Colonial St. Augustine, there was no electricity - no TV, radio, refrigerators, washing machines or blenders. You'll find your next clue in appliance that lets us keep our food frozen. (Hide card 5 in freezer.)

Card 5
TQ: Timacuan is a) a neighborhood in Lake Mary, b) a Native American Indian tribe that lived in St. Augustine or c) both. (Answer is "Both".) * This one might not work if you don't live in the area, but I used it as a chance to explain how many places in our area are named for American Indian tribes. *
C: In Colonial St. Augustine, homes had windows to let light in but no glass windowpanes to keep dirt and insects out. You'll find your final clue by one of our windows. (Hide card 6 on windowsill.)

Card 6
TQ: Explorers from this country were the earliest settler of St. Augustine. (Answer is "Spain".)
C: In Colonial St. Augustine, making bread was quite a task. You had to grow, harvest and grind the wheat, knead the ingredients by hand, start a fire in the oven and bake it. You'll find your treasure in a tool that makes bread making much easier today. (Hide treasure box in mixer, bread machine or oven - or revise final clue if you don't bake your own bread.)

Note: I forgot to mention that before completing the scavenger hunt, we read info from the St. Augustine for Kids website so they'd know the answers to the questions. They also have some great curriculum available to download for free!

Why Homeschool?

Recently, I reconnected with a childhood friend (gotta love Facebook!) who is considering homeschooling her daughter. She asked why we had decided to homeschool, and once again, it really made me think about how to put my answer into (less than 10,000) words. I told her that I always wished that I had a simple one-sentence answer. But, our decision was based on so many factors that it's hard to express it that concisely. Here's the best I could do to streamline it:

- I was an independent, expectionally fast learner, so the classroom setting didn't work well for me. I was always really bored in school and at some point, I stopped enjoying learning. I want my kids to be able to learn about subjects that interest them (and things that are important to me) in the way (and pace) that best suits their learning style.

- I think it's hard for kids to learn to interact (properly) without a high ratio of adult supervision. I know that kids are testing out different ways they can act and, as a result, often end up "learning" on each other. However, with homeschooling, there's always a parent nearby to step in and correct the problem. I know its inevitable that my kids will see other kids acting in ways I don't approve of; I just think it's really important for them also to see a parent (or other adult) correcting the behavior - and I don't think it's possible this would happen every time in a classroom of full of kids.

- I think it's important for children to interact with kids of all ages and with adults on a regular basis, instead of solely with their peers. The kids in our homeschool group play very inclusively (even with the really little ones) and actively converse with the parents at least as much as with the other kids (just ask my friend Missy, who was once cornered by my son for a 20 minute conversation we had to drag him out of!)

- It seems like there's a certain amount of conformity required for a traditional school. Sometimes having two kids talking at the same time drives me crazy, so I know that a teacher with a full classroom needs to keep the kids quiet. But, I think that the rules required to make a classroom work go a long way towards squelching creativity, an inquisitive nature and independent thinking/decision making - all things we want to encourage in our children.

- The thought of having them in an unknown situation all day long scares me. I'm not willing to give up control of what they're being exposed to (control issues, I know - LOL!)

- I can't imagine missing out on seeing them learn.

So there it is in a nutshell - or at least six paragraphs!

Happy Birthday, Grandma

Today was my mom's birthday, and even though we're having a celebration on Sunday, we wanted to make sure we got to see her on her big day. So, we met for lunch after our hula hooping workshop to give her a gift and the cards the kids had made.

We're big card "makers" (as opposed to card "buyers"), and I've learned a fun little trick for this. Both kids love to create lots of wonderful art - and they can't bear to part with any of it. So, I've started pulling our their completed projects to make our cards - fold it in half, write a message inside and you're done!

The card-making process has definitely been simplified, and I know the kids' masterpieces will definitely be enjoyed so much more this way than they will at the bottom of the artwork stack. This also keeps "the stack" much smaller, which is always an added bonus!

You've got questions? I've (eventually) got answers.

I've been meaning to do it for months now, but it's never made it to the top of the "to do" list - until now. As of today, we officially have a question box. "Which is?" you ask. Well, I'm hoping it will be the solution to the inadequacy I often feel over not being able to answer (or find answers to) any question my kids ask right at the moment they ask it. I love that they ask; I just don't always love when they ask when I'm working . . . or cooking dinner . . . or at any other point when my compulsion to get tasks done overtakes my desire to foster my kids' inquisitive nature.

So, when they have a question and I have no answer, we write it down and put it in the question box. Then, on days when we have extra time, we start pulling questions from the box and looking up the answers. Of course, right now, the "days when we have extra time" exist only in my wildest dreams. But hey, it's good to have a goal.