Happy New Year!

Wow, I am SUCH a lazy blogger. Has it really been over a month since my last post? December always goes by in a blur, and this year was no exception.

My "baby boy" turned seven at the beginning of the month, which of course, seems just impossible. We spent the day at EPCOT, then celebrated with his friends that weekend. And once all the celebrating was complete, it was almost time to jump into our "12 Days of Christmas" which we do leading up to Christmas since that's when all the fun activities are planned around town. This year, we saw the Nutcracker and a holiday show at the Rep, learned about Holidays Around the World at EPCOT and enjoyed the "snow" falling at Celebration. We baked Christmas cookies together, took a drive to see holiday lights and enjoyed holiday movies at home - all fun activities, but my favorite part, since Jim and my mom were able to join us for many of these, was just all being together.

Though I never intend to take a long break from schooling in December, we just seem to fill our days in other ways. And for a few weeks, I'm feeling like that's okay. This week, we'll be easing back into school mode. A major classroom overhaul is first on our list, and our schedule is lightly filled with activities. The kids will be working on their props and costumes for Odyssey, I'll teach one of the final co-op lessons in our money unit and Noah will be attending a Lego playdate with the new homeschool group we recently joined.

Next week, we'll dive back into curriculum with a few specific goals for January. Rather than spending my holiday planning our spring schedule, I decided to extend our first semester through the end of January and take this month to play February - May. Noah will be wrapping up a language arts project and our cars unit, and Ava will be doing some work on numbers, reading and writing (which she began showing interest in recently).

We'll also be wrapping up our money unit this month, which means the full lapbook and lesson plan will be available for download here soon. I'm pacing myself with new units and plan to spread out the two I'd previously planned for spring. As of right now, I'll be working on an Animals Around the World unit for the spring which will incorporate science and geography. Since we have our Disney passes again, I'm envisioning trips to both EPCOT and Animal Kingdom being a big part of this one. I'd also wanted to put together a unit on Great Inventors, but I'm learning to pace myself and think that I'll be saving this one for the fall.

Right now, we are gearing up for the Odyssey of the Mind tournament in February. Once that is done, our co-op group will be working on a play on the history of Florida for the remainder of the school year. We may also be doing a follow up to our money unit by letting the kids start and run their own business if there is enough interest among the group, and Noah is going to be part of a new Lego league.

Since June is also a busy month for us, we're planning to wrap up by the end of May. In July, we'll be doing some art intensives with the co-op group and a mini-unit on European geography/history at home. It looks as though August will be taking us to Germany for a bike show (my husband's business) with potential travel to Switzerland, Austria, France and possibly England before or after. I'm certainly keeping my fingers crossed that it all pans out because the kids are already talking nonstop about seeing the Eiffel Tower and taking the "underwater train" to London.

And on that note, I'm going to go enjoy the last few hours of "vacation", get to bed early and hope I wake up energized to start a whole new year!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Playing Catch Up

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

I'm sure you're familiar with this scenario . . . the homeschool schedule looks PERFECT on paper. There's plenty of time to complete curriculum, work on special projects, read library books, make art projects, go on field trips and conduct science experiments. But when it's time to put the plan into action - HA!

So here we are, a month into our school year - feeling hopelessly behind. Curriculum is going great since that's what we tend to focus on first, but library books are piling up on the shelf, the classroom walls are devoid of new masterpieces and the kids are dismayed we haven't made anything explode yet. The fabulous projects we had planned are still mostly hypothetical, and our afternoon outdoor playtime . . . well, we're struggling to make sure we get the dog walked every day.

Over the weekend, I decided that we needed a catch up week - and that's exactly what we're doing. This week, we haven't done a bit of curriculum. Instead, we're catching up on our reading (which takes a while since Noah usually opts for very lengthy, non-fiction books), painting, doing some money-related science experiments, learning Photoshop (for Noah's cars photo book project) and making lapbooks.

Yesterday, we saw a production of Pippi Longstockings at the Orlando Rep and afterwards, the kids ran around Loch Haven Park. Today, we had lunch outside and read library books in the garden. It's been a nice week. So nice, in fact that I'm going to make "catching up" a monthly event around here!

Back to (Home)School - First Day Jitters

In these past few weeks, I've actually had some jitters about starting back to school. Mostly, I felt as though I'd underplanned - not that I wasn't ready for the first day (I was) but that I didn't have everything done for the entire year. Silly, I know, and probably not the smartest, considering the one thing I've learned about homeschool planning is that the only sure thing about my plan is that it will change.

Regardless, the first day came and went - and actually went quite well. Logging our activities in Homeschool Tracker last night, it seemed like we'd done an incredible amount (and I only log Noah's info for now). Today, on the other hand, has not been so hot. I feel like I've accomplished nothing and have been terribly cranky in the process. Sigh. Tomorrow will be better . . . right???

On the bright side, I did get that Roasted Red Pepper Cannellini Bean Dip made yesterday, and Ava loves it so much that she ate three helpings of raw carrots, broccoli, cucumbers and celery at lunch. Yay for the little victories!

Here's Noah's first drawing from his Draw Cars book.

 

 And here's Miss Ava working through the Handwriting Without Tears kit I was thrilled to find during our move.

Finding Flexibility

"Flexible" is not my middle name. I love my schedules and checklists - no matter how much I change them, I always feel better having a plan. But of course life isn't all about me any more, so I've been trying to work on being more flexible. After all, isn't homeschooling about what's best for the kids?

This afternoon, after a full morning of Odyssey of the Mind practice and a great SLC co-op, we came home for lunch. As I finished cleaning up, I tried to pry Noah away from his new Magic Tree House book to head into the classroom for our scheduled lessons . . . Singapore math, a math-related game and critical thinking.

"Just let me finish this page," he requested. Then "I'm almost done with this chapter" followed by "I really want to read the whole book."

My initial reaction, of course, was to steer him away from it and promise to get back to it later . . . until I realized how ridiculous that was. My child was begging to read an entire book in one sitting, and I was about to talk him out of it just because Mondays are for math!

So instead, we curled up under a puffy blanket and I listened for about an hour as he read until the end. We did squeeze in a little math afterwards, but even if we hadn't, it was one of my best homeschooling memories ever! I know I'll remember this day for years to come . . . I just hope I can remember (and apply) the lesson that came along with it.

The Things He Learned When I Wasn't Teaching

In case you haven’t noticed, school has been the last thing on my mind this month. My original school schedule had us taking the month of December off because I know how crazy it gets for me. However, as it drew closer, we were all enjoying our curriculum so much that I decided to keep going through the end of the year. Of course, that was before our whirlwind Thanksgiving trip.

After we got home, I had precisely two days until Noah’s birthday, then four days until his party. Once the birthday festivities wrapped up, we still had a full three weeks until Christmas, but somehow we never got back on track and I decided to just let it go. We finished our lapbook and continued to participate in our regular classes and meetings, but our classroom at home has been pretty much untouched. At least by me. The kids have been in to read, do crafts or play games, but I haven’t seen it aside from the week I locked it up and hid the Christmas gifts in it. Our formal curriculum, needless to say, went nowhere.

But on the way to nowhere, a funny thing happened . . . Noah began teaching himself. One day, he found a subtraction workbook in the back of the car and worked his way through it in two days worth of car rides. I had no idea what he was doing until he shouted from the back seat “What’s 76 minus 42?” Of course, I went with it and somehow explained double digit subtraction in the rear view mirror.

He also began – out of the blue – stating sentences in past, present and future tense and incorporating other bits of our language arts lessons into everyday conversation. He started devouring books – reading Ava’s books to her as well and diving into his new Magic Tree House chapter books.

I’m still not sure quite what to make of it all. Since I have at least some curiosity about unschooling, I wonder if he would always learn best on his own. Or is it the combination of structure and free time – the break from our everyday routine – that spurred his interest? And of course, even if less structure does work for him, will it work for Ava too?

Sometimes I wish there was an all-encompassing manual to homeschooling my particular children . . . but I guess in about 10 years, there will be.

Homeschool Tracker = Homeschool Record Keeping Made Easy

It's been a while since I posted anything for Teaching Tool Tuesday - mostly because I've been so engrossed in using everything that I've forgotten to write about them. But as I was putting some schoolwork into our binder this week, I realized that I've gotten really lax about recording daily notes into it - mostly because I've been inputting directly to Homeschool Tracker.

With this being our first year on record, I thought it might be time to move beyond recording our activities the old-fashioned way. But the first few software programs I tried left me discouraged. I'd actually started building an Excel spreadsheet when I reminded myself that one of my personal goals this year was to start finding and utilizing existing resources (rather than spending ridiculous amounts of time creating them myself just so I could have things exactly my way).

So, on round two of software trials, I stumbled upon Homeschool Tracker and downloaded the free version. Other than a few little quirks (with a "quirk" just being something that I would do differently), I've been really pleased with the program. Here are a few of the things that work for me:

- There are, of course, capabilities to create lesson plans for multiple children. Even though I'm only tracking Noah's school work at this time, I like knowing I'll be able to use it to plan for Ava in the future.

- When creating an "assignment", you can designate the subject, type of activity (classroom time, computer time, co-op, special class, field trip, etc.) and any resources used. Populating these categories initially takes a bit of work, but it makes inputting the day's assignments really easy! For example, when I create an assignment for Critical Thinking, my resource options include Mind Benders and Dr. DooRiddles, the two resources we've used this year to day (with the option to add a new resource any time).

- Once an assignment is set up, you can indicate the amount of time spent on it, mark it complete and make any additional notes.

- Reports! I'm a sucker for reports since I love to analyze information every which way. Most often, I look at the Time Spent report, which shows me by any selected time period how much time we're spending on each subject (as well as total time spent for that time period).

Of course, the software offers many more features, but these are the ones that are making it work for me - at least for now. To be honest, I haven't looked at the additional features that the Plus version includes because the free version is working well for us right now (and hey, it's free!) In any case, it's definitely been a great addition to our "classroom" and is helping me feel more efficient and organized!

Fall 2009 Curriculum is Planned

We are so excited to have our Fall 2009 curriculum planned. Even though we're a month from starting, I feel like I can really enjoy our "off" month knowing that everything is in place for starting first grade! We just received confirmation back from the school board on our letter of intent, so we are officially ready to go. Here's what's planned:

Math
- IXL (Noah & Ava)
- Singapore Math (Noah)
- Graphing, Venn diagram, place value and addition / subtraction games & activities

Language Arts
- Language Smarts (from the Critical Thinking Company) (Noah)
- Starfall (Ava)
- Lots of reading! (Noah & Ava)

Science
- Developing Critical Thinking Through Science (Noah)
- Field trips to OSC, MOAS and Innoventions at EPCOT (Noah & Ava)
- Working on our fall garden & a great 5-week plant/gardening unit study with SLC

Art
- Atelier curriculum (Noah)
- Field trips to OMA and My Art Studio (Noah & Ava)
- Young Person's Concert by the Orlando Philharmonic

Critical Thinking
- Mind Benders and Dr. DooRiddles books from Critical Thinking Company (Noah)
- Mind Benders and Memory Challenge software from Critical Thinking Company (Noah)

US History Unit Study
- US Literacy Library & US Resource Box from Lakeshore Learning (Noah)
- Declaration of Independence and Thanksgiving Project Packs from Hands of a Child (Noah)
- Field trip to US pavilion at EPCOT
- Field trip to Colonial Spanish Quarter Museum in St. Augustine (Noah & Ava)
- Field trip to Washington DC!!! (Noah & Ava)

Other Activities
Horseback Riding (Noah)
Gymnastics - maybe (Ava)

Not sure yet whether or not we'll get back to our French studies this semester. I could tell that Noah had lost interest, but when I asked him about it, he said it was because he couldn't get into the higher levels (I'd been having problems registering the software and it only let him into Levels 1-3). We'll see if his interest picks up once he can move on, but I do have a very lofty goal of using it myself.

Noah, in the meantime, tells me he wants to learn Chinese, Japanese and German. The kids have been watching a Chinese language DVD Ava got for her birthday and seem to really enjoy it. Ava said "thank you" to me in Chinese the other day, and it took me a minute to figure out what she was saying. Sad that my foreign language skills have already been surpassed by my three-year-old.

I'd love to make a big deal about the first day of school this year (we'll call it Ava's first day of preschool, too). Anyone have ideas for me???

Happy Independence Day!

I'm feeling like I missed a major learning opportunity with the passing of the 4th of July holiday. My intention was to have my USA unit completed by late June, so we could dive in before the 4th. Instead, the month of June flew by, packed with birthdays, holidays, teaching and work, and here I sit on July 5th with my USA unit being no more than a good intention.

Since I'm trying to go easy on myself and go with the flow a little more these days, I'm trying to make this the only time I beat myself up about not getting this done. Instead, I'm planning to embrace summer, since that's what seems to be coming our way. We have a trip planned later this week (a long weekend in South Carolina for my brother-in-law's graduation party), and Noah is signed up for two weeks of camp when we get back. So despite that fact that I have another month of curriculum planned, I think I'm officially giving over to summer fun - and hey, one week IS a science camp!

So instead of kicking off a new unit study, this 4th of July kicked our summer, which I imagine will consist of lots of learning - just unscheduled and outside the classroom. It was a fun, full day, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer being the same.

The Homeschool Classroom

This is our classroom. It's absolutely wonderful, and I couldn't ask for anything more. That said, we haven't set foot into it all week. Sigh.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I'm a schedule girl and I derive great pleasure from checking things off my "to do" list. Now in my head, I know that the "to do" list will never (ever!) be complete. But yet I can't get rid of the urge to try.

I tell you this because in the beginning of this homeschool venture (yes, I know that was a mere eight months ago), I used to beat myself up about not checking off everything on our classroom "to do" list each day. And trust me, the thought is still in the back of my head. But, I think I'm making progress in integrating school into life. I've come to accept that the week that I'm teaching a co-op, celebrating two birthdays and preparing for Father's Day isn't going to be a week spent in the classroom. And I'm okay with that . . . almost.

I Forgot Friday

Well, I posted a bit about our Friday but forgot to include the final day of our first-week schedule. All in all, it went well. I've learned that getting out of the house is important, but staying out too long impacts our classroom time. Most of all, I need to be flexible with our schedule but am still overcoming my unconscious need to check off everything on the list each day:

Reading: M-O
Life Skills: Organize shoe rack
Global Awareness: Songs around the world
Geography: Mexico & Illinois
Game Time: Great States
Outdoor Time: Playing at Sylvan Lake Park
Other: Horseback riding

Looks great, right? Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that the horseback riding took up most of the day, and by the time we got home, my mom stopped by to visit. I had an errand to run, so she took the kids to the park to play. We did squeeze in our lesson on Mexico, but our reading and Illinois lesson were our "bedtime story" and we played Great States on Saturday morning.

So this will be my last post on schedules for a while. We'll be working with this one for summer and will re-evaluate after that. Stay tuned!

New Schedule - Day 4

Well, even though our plans for art class got canceled and we made a morning of running errands, being out and about seemed to be just what we needed. Today felt like a good balance of being out versus being home, and it was a good day for all of us. Here's how Day 4 of our new schedule panned out. And don't worry, I won't be posting the tedious details every day; just thought I'd share our progress throughout the first week!

Reading: Mission: Where's June, Starting Point Science
Life Skills: Gardening
Science Experiment: Turning salt water to fresh water
Grammar: Fun Brain parts of speech exercise (nouns & verbs)
French: Hmmm, does reinstalling my Rosetta Stone software count???
Project: Baking cookies
Game Time with Ava: Connect Four
Other: Math games on Fun Brain

This is my first session including science in our curriculum. In addition to our science co-ops, we're doing an experiment at home once a week and either a science or art project on our Wildcard Wednesday with friends. Science has never held much interest for me, and it never occurred to me that Noah would be into it already. We did a trial of Time 4 Learning last month, and he asked for all the science activities first. So . . . now we do science. :)

The Grass Is Always Greener

Today was one of those rare days with absolutely nothing planned; we literally never left the house. Now when I'm running like crazy all day, the idea of a day at home sounds amazing. But such an occasion arises, I find myself slightly bored. The problem inherently lies in "at home" part because my home is my office.

There is always "house work", "life work", "family work", "school work" and actual "work work" lurking around every corner. I'm always left feeling like I didn't accomplish much (because the "to do" list is always longer than what I've actually managed to do) yet at the same time had little quality time with the kids (because every five minutes I run into another piece of "work" that needs to be done). Kinda makes my whole day seem like a waste, and I don't like that. Solution? Anyone???

On the positive side, we did have plenty of time in the classroom so Day 3 of our new schedule went pretty smoothly:

Reading: Starting Point Science, Galactic Goodnight
Life Skills: Clean room, take out recycling
Wildcard Wednesday: Bread making
Critical Thinking: Dr. DooRiddles
Math: Subracting 0, 1, 2 & 3
Game Time: Uno
Outdoor Time: Gardening
Other: Starfall (Noah helping Ava), Fun Brain math games

So what's on the agenda for tomorrow? Anything that gets us out of the house!

Hmmm . . . Where Did All the Time Go?

Well, Day 2 of the new schedule went . . . well, it went. Quickly. We headed off to a one-hour art class this morning, and the next thing I knew, I was asking Jim to orchestrate game time while I made dinner.

The kids have a brilliant plan for putting off naptime, and it suckers me in every time. After lunch, they mysteriously disappear and play quietly together for what seems like hours. And even thought I know what's going on (and am all too familiar with the ramifications of a napless two-year-old), I can't seem to resist the temptation of seeing just how much I can get done in a quiet house with no one needing me. I mean, when else do the kids ever play quietly for hours? You just can't pass up an opportunity like that.

So this is my long-winded way of telling you that I blew a good part of my afternoon putting away groceries, unloading the dishwasher, updating my anti-virus and a few more of the never-ending activities that always fill up the "to do" list. Which means a late nap for Ava and some very rushed school time for Noah.

Maybe one of these days I will learn. In the meantime, this is what we got accomplished on the first Tuesday of our new schedule:

Reading: Little Black Goes to the Circus
Life Skills: Take out recycling; unload groceries
Art Project: Print-making at OMA
Reading Comprehension: Short story with sequencing and comprehension exercises
French: Rosetta Stone
Project Time: Learned/played new math games at Fun Brain
Game Time: Memory (Tuesdays & Thursdays we play Ava-appropriate games)
Other: Online Scrabble; update classroom calendar

The microphone that works with Rosetta Stone isn't working, so we didn't get too much done there. I need to uninstall/reinstall the software to see if that does the trick. Noah does really well with French but I noticed last session that his interest was waning. I'm hoping to make it more fun for him by asking him to help me learn. He always wants to be the teacher, and I never quite find time to do the lessons on my own, so I'm hoping that working together will help us both!

Our "project time" is for fun things that we don't seem to have time for otherwise - learning magic tricks, mastering material from his joke book, etc. He asked to work on magic today, but we couldn't find his magic kit and decided to check out some new online math games instead.

School is Back in Session

Well, we officially started our summer session today, although I think we were busier than ever during our April "break". This session, I'm trying to cram in less classroom time and instead build off our co-ops and field trips, explore unit studies and incorporate more games, art projects, science experiments and "hands on" learning. I've also added in some at-home activities just for Ava and a daily "life skills" lesson for Noah. He is taking out the recycling as I type! For the first week of our new schedule, I'm going to try for daily posts on our day's activities.

So without further ado . . . here is our Monday:

Reading: "Horses" (library book)
Life Skills: Take out recycling; water plants in garden
SLC Co-op: Horse lapbooks
Critical Thinking: Dr. DooRiddles
Math: 2 subtraction worksheets
Game time (math): Sum Swamp
Outdoor time: Walk Madison
Other: Online chess & Scrabble

My Amazon order came in over the weekend, and Noah has been itching to get into Sum Swamp. He absolutely loved it, and I did as well. I think it will be a wonderful learning tool and see many, many games on my future.

Aside from all the work for the lapbooking co-op (I led this one), it felt like a very nicely balanced day. Although the one thing I've learned about homeschooling thus far is that even the most perfect schedule is - at best - a very rough outline, I'm quite optimistic that this new schedule is a winner!