Today's Table

I thought I'd do A Day in the Life based on this photo.

This is what my coffee table looked like today after our morning of school at home.  I swear that sucker was clean when we started.  However, it tells a pretty good story of what we did today.

When I came downstairs to begin with the kids I brought with me my tea (Green Tea Pomegranat), the book I'm reading, and the container of blueberries.   After I read Blueberries for Sal to S,  he had to estimate how many berries would fit inside the tablespoon you see there mixed in with the markers.  Then we estimated how many blueberries long a marker was, and counted how many would go around the perimeter of Sal.  Then we tested out how many we could balance on that wine cork -- he could do three. After that, he munched on the berries while he ripped and cut out his own construction paper rendition of Blueberry Hill complete with a Momma bear.  I also gave him four pictures from the story and had him sequence them and color them in for fun.  These last two ideas just came out of my head as we were going along.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic showed up next.  We're doing this fun read aloud to start the year and B is making the cardstock gameboard to go with the book (sneaking in some writing there).  The idea comes from Games With Books which you can see underneath the game board.  We've used Peggy Kaye's books over and over and over again.  I love her ideas.  (That's where some activities for Blueberries for Sal came from too.)

There's a Math Mosaics book there that got forgotten today because the game board took longer than we expected, but that's okay. While B was working on the game, S and I were on the floor with the Clifford math magnets .  He had fun with those.

On my clipboard are the pages of the Math placement test that B completed today.  Because I'm switching curriculum, I'm not sure if I should get him 3rd grade math or 4th grade.  He's good at math, but after this placement test I think he may need a pretty good 3rd grade refresher before we move on.  I knew I should have been doing math with him all summer. Underneath those papers is the Kindergarten readiness test I downloaded and completed with S today.  It just told me what skills to focus on and what he already knows. I can't remember where I found it, or I'd link to it.

Let's see, what else is there?  Oh, the stack of alphabet cards (the S is there on top of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle) were used when I found out that my Kindergartener really isn't sure what his last name is.  He does know it, he just doesn't know the first/last designation.  So we worked on spelling it out today and getting used to what it looks like.  We spelled it in capital letters but on the flip side are those very confusing lower case letters, so we spent some time on those.

On the floor up in the corner of the photo is the file folder game I had prepped for S last year.  But I pulled it out today just for fun.  I think he's beyond it now so it's time to make some more.  (Love that website!).  While he did that, B and I worked through You're Smarter Than You Think: A Kid's Guide to Multiple Intelligences  He took the quizzes for the first three intelligences and we settled on Picture Smart for him and found out what that looks like.  Tomorrow we'll read through some of the others and see if he discovers a couple more that fit him.  We're spending our first days on learning styles/ modalities/intelligences, et al. because I want my dyslexic son to know how he's smart and that "smart" looks different for everyone.

Here's how funny God is:
My child is an auditory/kinesthetic learner; I'm a visual learner.
My child is a concrete random processor;  I'm an abstract sequential processor.
My child is picture smart; I am word smart.
We are complete opposites.

Finally, there on the table intertwined among the colored pencils and markers is a homemade Indiana Jones whip.  Random.  But that's so commonplace.  At the end of every day there's several odd artifacts that have made their way into our learning space.  It's humorous.  And I love it.

The rest of our day consisted of lunch, grocery shopping, cleaning the fridge, LEGO building, and picking up J from school.  I dropped J at Taekwon Do, went to the gym, came home to the dinner dh had prepared and then had coffee tonight with a super fun new friend that I think I'll get the honor of spending more time with in the coming months.

Today was a really good day.
And, yes. The table is still a mess.

#300 and a Blog Hop

This is my 300th post. It's fitting that it's the first post of our 10th school year of schooling at home. Lots of round numbers there.

J:  My dramatic one. 

Here are our first day of school photos:

On Tuesday, my 12 yo began 8th grade at the charter school he attended last year. I had much less anxiety this year. I didn't feel like I was "sending him to the wolves" like I feared his first year. (You can read my thoughts about his first year in a brick and mortar school here.)  We both knew what to expect (same teachers for the same subjects) so it was easier.  I spent the night before reading to him selections from The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School because that's, truthfully, his demographic.  He may change the world one day, but he won't change middle school.

B: finally got that new watch he's been wanting.
S: my final Kindergartener!

My other two boys began school at home yesterday.  They were up before 7 waiting for the backpack fairy.   We got started at 8:45 and we were done at 12:00 on the dot.  How surprising and wonderful.  It'll likely never happen again.  Case in point:  it's now Day Two and at 9:00 they are both still sleeping.

We are doing a soft start for a few days.  Just getting in the habit again, playing learning games, doing some assessments to see where my 9yo should start in Math and Spelling, playing with letters with my Kindergartener and reading aloud.  After their grandma visits next week, we'll get going with our full unit study.

It's now 9:27 and I hear the other four feet in the house so I think we're ready to see what the day will hold.

Blog Hop & Mixing the Old and the New

I'm planning to start my 10th year homeschooling in a couple of weeks. We have always used the Weaver unit study curriculum from Alpha Omega.  I love that it gives me age appropriate learning standards from K - 6th grade so I'm cycling back through it again without having to repurchase it.  I've actually unglued myself from its directives over the years and just used it as a skeleton to help me know where to go next, but it's still a solid, thorough Bible-based curriculum that's great for you if you don't need a scripted curriculum. (It requires some prep.) I was going to set it aside this year because it's my 9th year using it, but in the end I decided that it was just too valuable for my kids and I didn't want to have to learn something new.

Because EVERYTHING else is new.

Here is what we are adding this year for my fourth grader:

        


I have just a couple weeks to figure everything out.  There's a huge manual for Spelling Power that takes about 12 hours to read.  Angling for Words was recommended for my dyslexic child so I have to read through that teacher's manual too.  I haven't even ordered our full math curriculum yet and there are other manuals for Right Start to read as well.

The YWAM biography will be a nice break mid year.  We have used their unit studies before so it's familiar to me.  DH and I are hoping to take a trip to India in the spring, so we'll make it a unit study.

I still haven't quite nailed down what my kindergartener's directives will be this year.  Here's a few resouces I'm going to work with though:

      

I've already taught two children to read and I've never even looked at Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons until now.  I have borrowed this from the library to look it over.  It might be a good fit for S.  I've used Games with Books for years for all my young kids and we're at least going to start the year with some of these activities.  The Nature Book just inspires me to get outside with my child and make things with our hands.  Finally, while I used Making Math Meaningful all the way through with my oldest son, I never did the Kindergarten level which is scripted and has very little writing work.  Perfect.  Other than that, he'll be doing the age appropriate learning activities along with his older brother out of Weaver.  We start with the themes of Royalty and Respect.

So, if you need me I'll be buried under all my instruction manuals.

"Reading Aloud to Boys" and Examining Your Core

I have a few things up at Heart of the Matter this week.

In the March Magazine issue My article on reading aloud to boys is on page 17. Reading aloud is an intentional time for us. It's not about educating them so much as it is about parenting and connecting with them.

There is also a collaborative article on "How We Teach Reading" I tossed my voice into it on page 30. You can see how different my two school-age boys really are.

Lastly, on the HOTM blog I have a post about keeping homeschooling OUT of the center of your life. There is absolutely zero strength to be found in homeschooling. (And the curriculum you use won't provide it either). The core of who we are must come from a much stronger source if we're really going to do this.

Have a great weekend!

Focus on Special Needs

Heart of the Matter's December online magazine is now out and it's all about special needs. I didn't submit anything for this one (though we're all about special needs here) because there have to be others who go about this task with a lot more wisdom and insight than I do. After reading a little of this issue, I'm finding that I was right.

Have a look at it here!

Heart of the Matter Summer Edition

The Heart of the Matter Magazine Summer Edition is out today. I'm on page 26, but there are a lot of other great things in there! If you're a home educator go check it out and leave your comments on the articles you read. The writers dig that kind of thing. :-)

Intentional Summer, Part 1

My post is up at Heart of the Matter today.

"I have always held that summer is a great time for learning and while we stop our academics my kids continue in their social, physical and delight directed learning. But what about me? I have found that I become a bit of a taxi driver in the summer taking them from camp to playdate to lesson. At the end of the summer I look at my half-checked to-do list and think, “Where did my time go?” “What did I accomplish?” “Who did I become?”

This summer I’m..."

read the rest here.

Year Round or Summers Off?

Darcy at Heart of the Matter posted on the site today and I responded to it.

Her question was: I’d love to hear the decision making process you took to determine your schedule. Do you school or not during the summer? Why?

Here's my reply:
We don't do academics year round. We take summers off for a few reasons:

a. I need a mental break -- I tend to wear this homeschool mom hat too tightly and my world revolves around it. I need to be free of it completely so that I can enjoy other things, and my kids, without "we have to get school done" hanging over our heads.

b. I sign the kids up for everything that I can afford -- swimming, archery, VBS, sport camps, chess, etc. These things are offered in abundance during the summer and not so much during the school year so we take advantage of these other learning opportunities.

c. I don't want my kids to be unapproachable to traditionally schooled kids. If we school during the summer then they may not get the invites to lake days and campouts because people assume that they have to "do school." Likewise, we can't be salt and light to the world around us if our schedule won't allow us to interact with them.

d. Kids grow in every way during the summer. I am acutely aware of their growth and take it all into consideration as I plan our path for the next year, purchase curriculum, etc. Having an extended break gives me room for extra clarity in making these decisions.

e. I haven't experienced that my kids need much by way of review in the fall. I've actually seen them grow in their abilities. For instance, my reluctant reader needed to have all the pressure taken off and during the summer he found the desire to give reading a shot. My oldest has explored his own interests during the summer, writing his own newspaper and finding entrepreneurial pursuits. We participate in the library summer reading programs as well (as many as we can find!).

With all that said, I admire families (i.e. moms) that can school all year long. Homeschooling is definitely diverse and beautiful.

So what do you do? Comment here or go to Darcy's post and tell her!

On HOTM: Our Station Box

My post is up at Heart of the Matter. I put up a brief sketch of how our station box works.

If you homeschool you'll love Heart of the Matter. There's always something going on. Check it out!

On HOTM: Stopping Midstream

The lessons of life typically apply across the board. For instance, I learned this lesson in my creative writing classes in college: When you’re writing, don’t take a break at the end of a thought. Stop in the middle. Stop when you get your groove and you have a clue about where you’re headed. Then when you get back to it again you can slip right into the process and move ahead. ...

Read the rest of my post here.

Taking Attendance

Every morning I get out my roll sheet, hold it in front of my face, pencil at the ready, and call out the full names of each of my children. They wait expectantly to hear their name and respond with an exuberant, "HERE!" as I check them off and move down the list.

Yeah... no.

I have, however, always kept an attendance record for various reasons. The biggest reason is because I have this gnawing fear that someone will, at some point, check up on us. Secondarily, as the family memory keeper, I like knowing what we did as we look back at the year.

For most of my career as a home educator I have lived without a feeling of permanence. I knew we could move at any time to any place, so I took it upon myself to do some things that other states might require (such as keeping a portfolio and making detailed lesson plans) just in case I moved to one of them. Similarly, I have never lived in a state that required me to keep a record of attendance, but now I am moving to one so I am pretty pleased that I am already in this habit.

Here is a copy of our current record sheet for one of my sons. The first section is a monthly breakdown of our home activities. I add up all the weekdays and subtract any days we took off, listing them in the middle. Then I tally up all the days we were "on" and total it at the bottom of the chart.

The second section is a list of our field trips that count as a full day of school. They took place on days when we were "off" such as Saturdays or Spring Break (or during an interstate move...you can see I've planned a couple for the end of the month as we make our way to Denver).

These two sections total up our school year attendance. Home learning + field trips = total attendance.

The rest of this document is just FYI to jog our memory that we did indeed do more than just sit and tear our hair out over math every day. The Special Events section and the Extra Curricular section are small proofs to my kids in the years to come that they were more well rounded than the world wants them to believe. These do NOT reflect the only times we left the house and interacted with the world around us. We have done and will continue to do plenty of that.

For those of you who keep track of attendance, what does your record look like?