Virtual Homeschool Chaos - Reponse #1 Are we relaxed or structured in our homeschool?

This is in response to the Virtual Homeschool Coop!  You can find out more about the VHC and how to participate here: http://virtualhomeschoolcoop.com/

This response video is my part of the Virtual Homeschool Coop Channel Collaboration. You can find out more at www.virtualhomeschoolcoop.com The goal of the Virtual Homeschool Coop is to build the homeschool community of knowledge with collaborations to give voice to all experiences in homeschooling.

Rate your amount or lack of structure from “0” being no structure to “10” being high structure and why in 3 categories: curriculum, daily routine, and homeschool space

I am actually taking on more structure than ever before this year in our homeschooling.  After watching many youtube videos by Andrea Mills, I realized  I could have effective order in my day with A.C.E. curriculum.  I used the techniques that she shared.  So this year we are more structured than before and boy, oh boy, I am so much more relaxed.

Structure or Relaxed?

Curriculum?

So using A.C.E. naturally lends itself to be a very structured curriculum for homeschooling.  At the same time, it also provides a very relaxed day to our curriculum.  SO we have the basic subjects for each grade: Math, Reading, Spelling, English, Science, Social Studies, and Bible. 

 If you are not familiar with PACE books from A.C.E., the books take generally 3 weeks and is not divided into daily lessons.  The book is set up for the child to work through at their own pace.

So we are structured, but relaxed.  SO, I feel like we are right down the middle in my book.  And the ease of this, gives this mama much peace of mind. You can find them at www.aceministries.com

Daily Routine?

So, with us taking the plunge into using A.C.E., I also took to reading their parent's manual and seeing what to implement into our home.

We implemented our homeschool hours to be from 9am to 2pm. We also are doing 40 minutes of working and 10 minutes off.  My kids self regulate the timer.  We actually use this one that I got on amazon.

Out side of that, I do not actually set times on each subject.  They decide what they are working on first and when.  Their requirement is to finish and work during their assigned time.  

So again, structured, but relaxed.

Our Homeschool Space?

We are living in a 1,600 square foot home with the 8 of us.  We do not have a designated room to homeschool.  I did get each of the 4 that are homeschooling a desk that are placed in the house.  I have 2 in the dining room and 2 in the hallway.  I still end up with them at the dining room table.

I am able to keep all of my administrative stuff in a filing cabinet in our mud room. So we are very relaxed.

My VHC Response on Youtube.

Remember you can see everyone else's responses at www.virtualhomeschoolcoop.com

~trish

How is it for you?

Student School Planner - Review

This year for homeschooling, I have decided to give the older 3 kids (3rd, 5th, and 6th grade) their own planner.  In years past, I would keep a big mama planner.  This year, I plan to use this!

God's Word in Time Scripture Planner: Walk Worthy Elementary Student Edition (ESV Version; July 2016 - June 2017)

Hear and see everything I have to say about it here!

Do you use a planner for each kid?  I love that this can be used for either a homeschooler or a school kid.  I look forward to the teacher planner, I might add that to my list too.

Keeping it Simple, simple, simple

I am happy to report, we are still home schooling.  I am thankful to be just months away from completing an entire year of home school with out giving up! I am most definitely still in the freshman years of homeschooling and constantly trying to find our fit with curriculum.  I feel successful still, we had our 5th child on New Years Eve!

I am actually leaving this blog.  i love this blog, but i have a hard time feeling that I have to be perfect.  Every time I write a post, I feel as though I must meet some crazy expectation in my head.  Because of this, I am going back to my roots.  My first blog.  you will find all my adventures in one place, where I will happily write about what ever i feel the desire to write about.

www.midnightcrafters.blospot.com

I hope that you will join me there.

A Place to Learn

Our official start date is the week of labor day.  I plan to use that week just to celebrate school, do some fun little projects, introduce the books to the kids, and begin a couple of our books that have much needed introductions. I  honestly have a problem!

I have boycotted our cluttered dining room as a schoolroom.  I have demanded above demands for a shed to school in our backyard. Please look, couldn't you just imagine a learning sanctuary in one of these (with AC and electric, of course).


My demands were not given into though.  I have hit a truce with my dh that for this year, we will  convert a bedroom into a schoolroom. Well, I have been pining since June, with a completion date of September.  Although we are only a third of the way into August, the future homeschool room does not look as though it will be move in ready by September.

I do not know what to do.  I know I can make the dining room work in a pinch, but I cannot wrap my brain around it to get things ready.  I am so overwhelmed with the crowded conditions that I am afraid I will not be able to start on time.  I guess all I can do is pray!

I started this post about a month ago.  My dining room is a mess, but we are getting it done.  September is coming to an end, and that bedroom is not close to ready.  My husband made a comment that he has until December to finish the new room for us to even move out of the potential school room.  See "potential" is now sneaking into my vocabulary.  Seriously, He will then have the other room move in ready for school? What January?  Hmmm, I am having a baby in January.  There is no schoolroom set up in January, so what February?  So I am going to set up shop in a room that we can only use until June.  February to June, 5 months.

I think we are stuck at the dining room table eating around all these books. please tell me I am not the only one?
~trish

Our 2012-2013 School Year - Routine

I feel horrible for not being more interactive and at the same time, I have been extremely careful in controlling my personal distractions.  I just do not want to be a mom that homeschools only to have something to blog about or seem to get  it all. So I have taken to my speech to only air my advise with "in my humble opinion", because seriously, who am I to know.  I might have 4 kids, but I have only been parenting for 8 years.  I have not even completed the task of raising a single child.  So sure, in 10 years, maybe I can speak with a bit more real world experience and a glimpse of the whole picture.  really?  I am not really going to know how it all works out until I am probably 90 years old and seen how the accumulation of all of my efforts and decisions blossomed into reality. Besides, I feel like a dipstick in the pursuit of what works for us.

So we are 3 weeks into our school year and we are just now finding our groove. Our biggest accomplishment is our routine.  I am invoking a little bit of Fly Lady on them.  Each morning they are required to get dressed, make beds, and together sort and put away one basket of laundry, before breakfast.  Sadly as basic as this sounds, this folks is monumental!

The other thing we swapped was when we did our subjects. I tried starting right out in the morning with independent work first.  Well, 2 year old and 4 year old would invoke chaos! Then the 1st and 2nd grader would manage to spread this work out over the entire day, so history and science was a bust.  Now we do our science and history in the morning all together and then during quiet time for the littles, they somehow manage to swiftly get their independent work done.  Also, I am really only doing science and history 1 time a week and on the other days we do random cool, because we stay home kind of things.

Our Basic Weekly Routine
Monday - Well honestly, it is just a free-for-all on the our together homeschooling.  This could be unstructured bike ramp building with dads tools or a mud bath the went bad in the back ditch.  Seriously, it is more of my recovery time from dad junking up my routine all weekend.  Did I mention I am pregnant.

Tuesday - This is our no school day!  HaHA!  We start our morning with a homeschool gymnastics class and follow it up with picking up our books from the library, and then lunch, and on to my chiropractic appointment.  I had a huge sense of guilt over all this car time and no "school time" that I went to Sam's and got the  4 subject grade level workbook for each kid.  I just ask them to do one page of each subject for the day and my bad homeschool mommy guilt subsides.

I don't even check it, but I will say I have had to improve on my  mommy what is this word spelling  coming from the back seat.  Our how about describing in detail how to alphabetize with out sitting side by side with the paper in front of you.

Wednesday - Okay, a sense of get on this hits me first thing in the morning.  So we get our little fly routine done and we sit together and get our Science worked on with a bit of reading out loud, exploring library books, and some sort of something cool.  We might spend about 2 hours total.  We also have AWANAS at church that night too.

Thursday- Trying to keep ourselves moving along, we spend our mornings reading and doing our History lesson.  Usually this is where the mess comes in.  Last week, we learned about what history is and archaeology, then followed it up with making a timeline for each kids.  Plenty of photos and glue sticks.  What a great project to use up extra photos that did not make it into the scrapbook.

Friday - Alright, I am whipped and tired.  I did a Ladies Bible Study the night before.  We move our afternoon independent work to the morning.  Around noon, we should have some friends show up and we all chum around for a play date.  I am thankful to get through another week.  By late Friday night, a sense of guilt once more hits me and I realize I had better reserve the library books I need in 2 weeks or I will never have it in time.

Our afternoons run the same, typically. We eat lunch and then I send my 2 yr old to bed.  We clean up from lunch and get the books out.  The 4 yr old gets the big pre-k book out and at random works on several pages of her choice.  This is her 20 - 30 minutes of school, I give a her a 5 minute warning with this is your last page and then send her off to nap.  During that time the 1st and 2nd grader work independently on math and spelling. The grammar and writing we work on together. The 2nd grader reads alone and the 1st grader and I read together.

I will layout our curriculum next time.  I must continue to say that I am so content with Susan Wise Bauer's techniques and developed path. I probably would not consider myself a highly disciplined homeschool mom. And I am completely aware that I am very relaxed, but I have found that her method is fool proof.  I am astonished at the capacity they are learning and retaining, with minimal prep work on my part. MINIMAL!

Until we meet again.
I do have to share, I am still in the first trimester exhaustion phase, even though I am 6 months along. I look forward to the things I will have the energy to partake in their studies.
~trish

plans, plans, plans.

Making a plan is all well, but I have a hard time putting it to paper.  I need something simple and easy.  I came across a few things and found a great one that I love at http://www.mamajennblogs.com/2010/08/my-homeschool-planning-docs.html


I printed out a set and have a set of plans for each kid.  I have them in a 3 ring binder with a tab for each month (we are having a hard time fitting the pages in a 1/2" binder for 2 kids, by next year we will be in a 1").  I am trying to have plans ready to at least the end of December.  I am slowly making headway.  We will not actually be starting until September 11th.

I am thankful for our later than usual start date.  We will run from September to the end of June this year for a total of 36 weeks of actual curriculum.  Of course, everyday is filled with learning.  From now until September, I am finishing collecting our curriculum and organizing it.  Most of all, I hope to finally have a space with a door to designate to our homeschooling.  What a thought!

So we are slowly, preparing away.  I hope by September to be able to show you all of our amazing books and our curriculum choices for this year.

Phonics and the Alphabet

With every success, comes a sense knowing more than you really know.  With every failure, is the opportunity to actually know more.

With that said, I know more today than I knew a year ago.  Reading is easy to teach, as long as you do not make it painful. I do believe with all my hope that Susan wise Bauer (www.welltrainedmind.com) is right, that a toddler learning to identify cat and milk, can just as easily identify A and B if taught to do so.  Just as they learn cats goes meow and cows goes moo, they can learn A goes aaaa.

The eye opening thoughts of this, make me eager to prepare the 4 year old and the 2 year old.  I regret not having this thought years earlier with the other two older kids.

I am now treating reading, not as a subject to learn through the years of schooling, but as a life skill.  Just like learning to feed animals, making beds, and learning to talk.  We will now approach reading as a daily skill building experience and no longer as school.

One thing I have fallen in love with is the direct guide of reading, skill by skill that is provided with Fantastic Phonics.



We just started using the program and it is a hit.  The stories are a hit with the kids.  Quick and easy to print. Each skill building printable book comes with a lesson guide with added activities to reinforce the skills.
I am using this to polish and finish my 2nd grader's phonic skills.  I am at the beginning to help my 1st grader reinforce his use of phonics versus whole word habit.  I also started my 4 year old on it, but anticipate a very slow progress over the next 4-8 months.  By the way, our Bob books fit in really well with this.

To aid in the knowledge of names and sounds of the letters, I printed out several flashcards that I am going to put on a ring to travel around with us.  I am hoping to fortify the 4 year old's comprehension and also be able to begin building my 2 year old's vocabulary.

There are so many wonderful free sites out there.  Here are a few of my favorite.



These are 2in by 2in cards at mr printables.  I also printed the lower case.




I couldn't help but adore these from mr Printables, also.

Then because we just love the letter factory by leapfrog, I had to make these!


Huge thanks to Jessica at one shoe to she!

We will not be kicking off our first day of school until after Labor Day.  By then, we will have of curriculum posted.
~trish

MFW - K resource

This is a post I did on my craft blog www.middnightcrafters.blogspot.com some years ago and I still get request for the resources I have used.  So I am sharing the the post and the resources.

The links for the lesson plans and the labels are here;

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pYZQxVFj8to5Azb9EvdKDQBTtJrLGuQQu43Ggzqq0Q4/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Auw85gsvynTxGjjX9YZtWXpwIwN8zGQrOc1zO9AGL2E/edit
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnqGTLlrhNmEdGpEaWthOV80YjQtMnZ1RHBnV2prTXc#gid=0

Organizing the MFW-K day

    






We are into our official homeschool year.  We started somewhere in May, right after #4 birth and took until the end of June to finish the first week.  Oh, I was feeling some fear that maybe I was in over my head.  My thought was that even though I have this great passion and desire to homeschool my children, what happens if I never get to it in our day.  well, we are getting better and of course, we still have no real set routine yet.  I hope by Christmas, we will find it or maybe Santa will bring me one.
As we are moving forth in the lessons, I am excited that I am coming together mentally with the planning and physically with keeping it together.  I will say, right now we are homeschooling either on the living room floor or at the coffee table.  I do not have some awesome cool, eat your heart out classroom.  I am going to make a makeshift display area over our tiny dinner table to help us review and gloat over our hard work.  I had hoped to use the bulletin board squares that you tape up, BUT the darn things keep falling down.  SO I am patiently waiting for my husband to make a board to put them on.
Here is our stuff!

Calendar. Part of our morning routine is to put the date on the calendar.  I originally bought a calendar set from the Dollar Tree and had it all together on a poster board.  Having only a few places to hang it and having guest knocking it down, I opted to get rid of it.  I found this little gem at Staples for $3.
A small hiccup it that #3 likes to erase the numbers when no one is looking.

I don’t actually mind, because now #1 is getting a lot of practice writing the numbers. Bad mommy?

I took the example by Melanie at www.treasuresunseen.blogspot.com and set up all my unit lessons like she did.

I love being part of the My Fathers World Kindergarten – Yahoo group.  Group members share files and ideas and help with keeping the mommy’s chin up.  In that group, there is a weekly summary of each unit study.  So I print mine and put the week we are working on attached to a clipboard.  I also clip the pages we will work on behind the summary.
  The generous mom who made this, created a somewhat standardized form that she added weekly details.  One thing to note about MFW-K is that it operates like a letter of a week program that is combined into a unit study and submerged into the bible.  For that, I am in bliss to teach my children this program.
Now I never meant to do this but my daily workbox just came to be and is working fine for now. In it I have:

• tactile numbers
• teacher manual
• bible
• box of crayons
• box with scissors, glue, pencils
• letter box (this is the envelope box, plan to make it pretty later)
• 3-hole punch
• paper items for the next craft project
• books from the library that go along with the study
• a game (cooties mini version from wal-mart) to celebrate the end of our lesson for the day. [I am finding that ending with a game helps motivate us to stay on task and helps me to remember to have fun]

Now I can not forget that I have to keep a portfolio of #1 work.  So here is a 3-ring binder from one of my college courses.





We are moving along.  And I am already amazed at what I am seeing.  #1 is very good at knowing the sounds of letters, so we should be moving into blends rather soon.  #2 is really pleasing me.  We are using this year as his Pre-k, so I plan for him to do a lot of just sitting in.  Well he is very determined to do things perfect.  He is more than happy to do what ever #1 is doing and I believe he would try to take over her work.  I think the most important task for him right now is to just sit back and listen and mimic her. I hope #1 gets just as excited.  She is doing it to please me, she is a pleaser.  But I also know given the chance, she would much rather be doing something else.  I hope as the routine gets more in place, she will come around.
~trish

To Approach The Approach

Sorry for the absence and that's all I have to say about that.

It is another homeschool year to begin.  I feel like an old hat at starting and still a inexperienced fool at finishing.  Sadly, of the 3 years we have begun homeschooling, we have finished in a public institution.  Mostly from the results of self doubt, frustration, and lack of support.  Always while preparing or what I like to call overloading my senses with way too much information, I come across a mission or purpose statement.

Why do this? To put it in writing, because I want to.  I have wanted to and knew I would since the day I was planning my wedding.  This is what my intention was, goal, the envision of my future, prodigy, etc.   I AM that mom.  At the end of each year, I would feel defeated, why am I not.  

I know why we stopped, but the frustrating part is within the public institution even within 2 weeks, there was no sense of satisfaction with their product.  It was just that at least I am not the one failing them, I will allow the institute to fail them, just as it failed me. Yes, they would read better and add better, but the missing part that was not being provided was thinking.

Where was I going wrong? I feel as though I have touched on every type of learning style and approach.  I have tried a few.  I have done workboxes twice now.  I have tried to keep it simple, kept it fun, and have stuck them on the computer.  I have child centered myself to a tizzy.  The reality is I have 4 children in a small house.  I must live and eat and let them play in this space that we school.  The least bit of chaos and disorder sends the world we know of into a tizzy of fret and despair. I have uncluttered and sorted and organized, to the point of enough.  For us this enough is just barely enough for us and way too much for the house.   What is a mom to do!

I can say that, as always, I excitedly started my kids back to school right after I picked them up from their last day.  Well, maybe the following Monday.  Mentally, I knew they needed to be deprogrammed, but in practice I just couldn't do it. Let's say, forethought and planning was at a maximum, Just enough!

I must be eclectic. As summer progressed, I would boast, oh, we are eclectic. The reality was we would do a collection of stuff on Monday and then maybe again 2 more times a week.  Combing the pins, I just knew if I could make a workbox system, everything would really flow together.  Cleverly, I used the milk crates and vinyl folders and cute labels.  Instead of doing school a few times a week, we now accomplished it just on Mondays.  I must not be doing something right!!!!!!!!

As I mentally torture myself through this whole administration aspect and planning portion of homeschooling, I actually got the blessing to overhear a conversation on several topics of reading and writing. The lasting statement I heard from another mom with older elementary children was  I wish I would have read this book before I ever would have taken them out of school. What is this book, I have to know! Invading myself into the conversation, I learned for the first time about Susan Wise Bauer and the well educated mind.  I was given just a name and I went home in a mission.  It was fine, I had plenty of time, I wasn't schooling as it was.

I got home and found http://www.welltrainedmind.com/ and was amazed with the information.  Now, we are expecting #5 at the first of the year and I am just tired on top of it all.  So I printed up a few articles, got a highlighter, and crawled into bed. Immediately, it was like my mind had been on a 2 year celery diet and I was just been given a steak dinner. I had to chew it, but it was remarkable.  It spoke to me, this is what I have been searching for.  I found it.

I have purpose! I homeschool my children through thick and thin, because I want to educate them to think and learn on their own.  I want them to be prepared for any university to continue to explore and discover, without the hurtles of being ill prepared for general education.  I refuse to allow my children to have the substandard education that was available to me and is still available to them.


Focus, now, focus. At first, let just say, the book is complete from birth to senior year on equipping  you with the knowledge of resources and very heavy.  As I read, I was jotting every bit of information down. After 3 days of reading, collecting, and organizing, I realized!  The method is actually very simple. My brain can stay focus.  Focused, because reading material is in lined with history.  Full pictures are being painted, not partial.  Best of all, the book provides listings of references, reading list, etc. to help you narrow your choices that will maintain the method.

By default, I started planning the year's schedule, the weekly layout, all the way to the daily expectation, a first!  For the first time ever, we will begin school at home the Monday after Labor day.  until then, I am preparing them to use their brain in a new way, so we a cutting TV down to 1 hour a week and we are filling them with audio books.  I want their minds to feed off language, not images.  I want them to create their own images.  These next weeks, will give us plenty of time to train in being responsible around the house.

I love you for visiting and commenting.  I look forward to sharing our adventures as always.
~trish

Phonic Word Wall Book

I bought Systematic Sequential Phonics about 2 years ago, but I found my then Pre-K, but almost 5 year old was not ready.  So it got shelved. 

As I am organizing our school supplies, I came across it and realized it would fit nicely into our first grade work.  I think it could work good for even kindergarten, but my boy is just not there yet.

So this book does a nice job telling mom what to do!  Oh, I like that.  So it has reproducible pages in the back, so you can make your own alphabet tiles and a word building worksheet.

Things I like:

• Lessons are grouped by 5 with a focus for each week, systematically introducing letters a few at a time.
• It only takes about 10-15 minutes to do the lesson on a one on one basis.
• There is no prep work for the lesson besides photocopy of the word building worksheets (optional) and the prep work of making the letter tiles.
• I do not have to review the lesson before I teach it, I read it for the first time as do the lesson.
• Tract the words they learn.

I did find the book on Amazon for about $13-18.  I can tell you that it makes me sick, I bought mine a couple years ago for $26, yikes!  I have found the local teacher stores have a tendency to be more money.

So having just a little space, I have been trying to figure out how to make a home school word wall.  So with some work I did this.

I am using the 4 by 6 index cards.  I used some good card stock for the covers.  I printed out the letter tabs and the cover onto card stock and got my mommy tools out to do the job!

 To get my home made tabs strong, I folded them in half, added  some good glue and a clothespin.

Finally, with the use of a good hole punch and some ribbon to bind it. Of course, you could just get a binder and do it that way.  See thanks to pinterest, I was inspired by!

To make it easy for you, click here for the wood wall tabs.
Have a great day teaching!
~trish

Phonemes versus phonics

Alright, before this week I had no idea what a phoneme was.  Do you?  So there is this little known secret to the outside world that reading is made up of to very important functions that must work together, phonemes and phonics.  In homeschooling mommy terms, your ears must know what it is hearing in order for your mouth to read it. Hmm, could this have been my own personal delay in my comprehension, we could only wonder.

Sorry, I diverged. So a little catch up.  Yes, I am still stumbling my way through homeschooling my 1st and K kids ,while managing the destruction from a 1 and 3 year old.  I guess I am eclectic by nature in my educating method. Right up until last Monday night, I have felt very overwhelmed.  I then realized, I really need a scope and sequence.  I can teach my kids anything, I know it, I just need to know what and when.  In desperation, I called a friend who was a school teacher and said HELP!  I am so overwhelmed and when I read the state standards, I am humbly overwhelmed that I do not speak that language.

I was directed to several different county links that have provided a Plain English scope and sequence per grade and peace began to wash over me. So over the past week, I have re-organized, because some of my frustration was a geography thing in my home.  I have let go and began to move forth.  Patience, the details of my reorganizations will be shared at another time.

So back to my point, within the Language Arts discipline for both K and 1st is a section on Phonemic Awareness and Phonics.  Hmm, awareness and they miss spelled phonics (ha,ha higher education). I was a bit on the thought of, well isn’t that all r-e-a-d-i-n-g, but apparently not.  You see reading is comprised of understanding what you hear and then being able to reproduce it from written form.  As much as this can make sense, it is a lot like flour and water make glue, but add an egg and you got cake.  Actually, that is very appropriate.

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From: http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php

Phonemic Awareness (PA) is:

1. the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References).
2. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes. Without phonemic awareness, phonics makes little sense.
3. fundamental to mapping speech to print. If a child cannot hear that "man" and "moon" begin with the same sound or cannot blend the sounds /rrrrrruuuuuunnnnn/ into the word "run", he or she may have great difficulty connecting sounds with their written symbols or blending sounds to make a word.
4. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system.
5. a strong predictor of children who experience early reading success.

---

An important distinction:

• Phonemic awareness is NOT phonics.
• Phonemic awareness is AUDITORY and does not involve words in print.

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And this is what they have to say about teaching it!

Phonemic Awareness is a critical component of reading instruction but not an entire reading program. It absolutely needs to be taught, but should only be 10-15 minutes per day of your reading instruction.

Teachers increase effectiveness when the manipulation of letters is added to phonemic awareness tasks. Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill, but once children start to become familiar with the concept, teachers can introduce letter tiles or squares and manipulate them to form sounds and words.

Phonemic awareness needs to be taught explicitly. The instructional program must show children what they are expected to do. Teachers must model skills they want children to perform before the children are asked to demonstrate the skill.

If you focus on just a few types of phonemic awareness, you get better results. There are a lot of skills in phonemic awareness, but research has found that blending and segmentation are the 2 critical skills that must be taught. Instruction must focus on blending and segmenting words at the phoneme, or sound level. This is an auditory task.

Research has found that you get better results when teaching phonemic awareness to small groups of children rather than an entire class

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As you look further into Oregon’s Big Idea Lessons, they illustrate the best methods.  In Florida, there is a great website that has lots of PDFs to print about all aspects of Phonemics, but my internet keeps timing out, maybe you will have better luck. www.fcrr.org

There are tons of information that can help you practice these skills, see http://www.readingresource.net/phonemicawareness.html

And as wikipedia will tell us Phonics is then taking letters to form the Phonemics, so we can read, see.

phon·ics/ˈfäniks/

Noun:

A method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system.

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So where do we begin, well as a mom, make it fun. So we are going to play a game.  I am going to go to use a list of words, mostly cvc words. (cvc is consonant vowel consonant, like cow, mom, man, cat, dog)

With my list, I am going to say the word to my 1st grader and have her isolate the first, middle and final one syllable sound. To my K I am going to say the word the word 2 times and sometimes change one sound at the beginning, end or middle.  He will tell me same or not.

So it would go like this.

ME: Miss first grader, Please tell me the beginning sound of dog?

1ST: dog begins with /dddd/

ME: what is the middle sound for dog?

1ST: /ooooo/

ME: And the final sound?

1ST: /gggggg/

ME: great job!  Here is a skittle.

ME: Mr. Kindergartener, are these two words the same or different, dog/log?

K: Different.

ME: Which word is different from these 3: dog/dog/log?

K: log

ME Great job, have a skittles!

So that is what I am doing this week, let’s see how it goes.  It seems such a simple task, but none the less, an important one.  Doing it together, I plan to only do it for about 10-15 minutes.  And then we move on.

So did you know about phonemic awareness?

~Trish

Handwriting Composition Books

 

I was really excited when I found these books.  We were using the regular spiral notebooks that we took all that time to recovered, but the lines were a bit confusing for them.  When I seen this notebook, I knew we would be better off.

So where did I find this little gem, you ask!  The Dollar Tree!  Can you believe it!  You never know what you are going to find.  This is working out nicely for handwriting.  We have 2 notebooks for the first grader, one for handwriting and another to write the date in every day.  I just picked another one up for the kindergartener. 

We are still having adjusting pains to figure out what we need to be doing.  I am really needing something that is effective and not overly time consuming for mommy or kids, because this momma does not want to constantly be after them. I hate to keep sharing our “new” plan. 

On my previous post, I shared the whole curriculum books from the warehouse store.  My only fear is the public school system has taken say fifth grade work and simplified it to be introduced in fourth and then more so to be shown in third and then so on until it is in first grade.  So it seems as though there is so much introduction for so many years that when it is time for it to be taught, it feels more like a review and the child is bored and never really got to the lesson.

My fear and as I read those books, is that they are introducing things a lot earlier than I really want.  I would hate to be introducing the structure of writing and hinder the love and desire to express themselves in writing.

I guess before I can really layout my curriculum, I really need to figure out the goals we have for first and kindergarten.  I read the new state guidelines and really for more over amount of education, you really have to go to decoding school on how to implement all that taught thinking they plan to do.

Any suggestions?

~trish

Grade School Workbooks from the Store

So it has been a few weeks since I have got back with you.  We are slowly moving back in line with our routine.  Trying out that new school really threw a monkey a wrench in sense of order.  Somehow after 3 weeks, we are finally looking some form of normal, well normal to us.

Of course, we are still finding what works for us.  The freedom that comes with being able to find what works best, also leads to a lot of time searching.  Daddy had a lot of issues of not “seeing” enough done, so I had to institute a worksheet attack on my kids.  Poor little things.  To provide a large amount of comfort, I picked up a complete curriculum from the big warehouse store for under $10.

I really like this workbook set.  I also have the one for Kindergarten.  Of course, I realize after writing in them it is 100%, A OKAY!  to reproduce. I like so many things about the book, except the reading comprehension.  I find that the writing within the reading comprehension section is weak, wordy, unfocused, and wandering.  I really like the way that the text is presented and it makes for a great work book.  Next issue, apparently it is now Out Of Print and there are not many copies available ANYWHERE. If I collect an entire elementary school set of them it would probably be well worth it and cost only $100.

Now here is my confession.  This is my opinion and is meant for only my own self reflection.  I feel like I am not being a “good” homeschool mom by using this as a core to my teaching.  They are great books and for the money, they are superb!  BUT!  I envision a homeschool mom knowing the special handshake, flashing an awesome homeschool club ID card to get into the most exclusive backroom curriculum stores in the figment of my imagination.  This is where they sell the hidden style of teaching and books to go with it, that really work.

Let’s face it, these kids are not going to teach themselves and we mommas have got to figure out what works for them, us, and the budget.  Expensive shine text books and programs do not make smarter kids. 

So currently, I am ripping pages out and sticking them under my kids noses to do.  Lots of writing and a bit more structured.  Now being almost 2 weeks into doing it, they are getting the hang of it.  And the daddy is getting compliant again, so it most be getting better.

Logistics – It really comes down to the logistics for me.  We are 2 months in, we haven’t really nailed ourselves down to a set curriculum yet.  (i.e., each week it is something new, it seems.)  How could this workbook work for us? 

• Well, the core of what we need to do with them is covered. It is keeping us progressing at level with minimal effort from me, so score! 
• It allows me to have a better view of what they really are understanding and not, so we can further work on it. 
• Although it takes up more of their time right now, it is freeing up my mental ability to work on more fun things for them.
• Plus, we still stay on track when the baby takes up my primary attention.

So it works for us at 1st grade and kindergarten.  I whole heartedly want to gobble up the other books and add them to my library, but part of me knows that it is questionable if I will finish up the year with them, much less use them again next year.

~trish

What is your take on these workbooks?

and that was enough of that..

I can tell you with much excitement, we entered the world of possibility and within two days, eagerly went back to what is right for us.  I really knew that it wasn’t our fit, the night before the first day. So with that, we are back to homeschooling.

The biggest problem that I ran into was that it was just about everything I was trying to do from home, except is wasn’t home.  See I want to be selfish.  And as a mom, this is my only time in life that I can.  Yes, they will grow up and leave one day, but I got 12 years before the first one does, so why make it any sooner.  Besides, in 10 years, I will never have these days again. 

So here are a few reasons why home is the best for us.

• I can delay the length of time that my kids think their mom is cool and knows everything.  Face it, give a kid a teacher and for some reason the teacher knows everything and the parent knows nothing.  If I am both parent and teacher, I am golden!
• Keep the siblings together constantly, creates a sibling bond that is tight. (I really assume that this bond is unbendable, but I have no evidence. Yah, they bicker, but they play so much better when they are not subject to being surrounded by other children all day.)
• Like it or not, you are back in the rat race of life.  I am selfish, I am not sitting in the parent pickup line for my kid!   They are mine and I want them now!
• I hate schedules and school calendars.  If the weather is right, I want to take a trip, not wait for a school break.
• Most of all, my house was just too quiet without them.

So we lasted 2 days in the system and then we came back home. And that was enough of that.  Like every day in homeschooling, you have some rough patches.  I often remind myself as I play teacher, maid, nurse, chef, driver, and mom that it is a ton of work and stress, but I would rather be miserable and stressed than to miss the blessings from these days that I have with them.

So on we march.

~trish

Things just happen to go differently

This is our bible verse for this week’s spelling.  I find that I really need to turn it into a self centered verse to really hear what the Lord is telling me.  By the way, yes, I am using my fridge as a white board.

So changes are taking place.  By the grace of God, we were just introduced to a brand new charter school that is project centered and unschooling in style.  So we went and checked it out and loved the entire progressive/democratic education method.  I took the evening to think about it and weigh the pros and cons and decided.  It would be better to take the opportunity to try this for our family, than to regret not doing so when we had a chance and not be able to get it.  See when you have several kids and enrollment is a lottery system, you would have to be willing to let some go, while others can’t. Couldn’t do it.

So what makes this charter worth it:

• unschooling style
• project center learning
• students progress at their pace, not the standard
• teachers are mentors
• mixed grade classes, so mine will be together in the K-2
• close attention to national academic standards and the progression of the student
• agriculture and sustainable practice focus
• 4H
• family and community involvement in the school
• family participation is a requirement, so we will be there alot.

There are a bunch more reasons, but these meant the most to me.  I decided that it was worthy the giving up of my own schedule and my direct lead on their education, in order to take advantage of all the resources that will be available to them.  I will say that I will be there, and I am protective.  If I feel as though my children’s best interest are not be taken care of, we are back home, once again.

I look forward to all of the new experiences that we will get to enjoy.  Please do not consider this the end of homeschooling chaos.  I look forward to sharing their projects and other studies that we still do at home.  The focus we have had for the last few weeks has been a series of unit studies that all have to do with self-sustaining urban homesteading.  See why we are so excited about the school.  So I will soon be posting our worms farm and our bread making.

~trish

Unit Study-Crocodilians

So we did this study on the fly, thanks to Netflix.  Here is a small glimpse on how we exhausted our library system of most of its crocodilian books.  You can see, I have true books adult and juvenile, and some little story books.

We used Netflix, the library, field trips, and our kitchen to do our study.  I wish I could tell you we did some amazing crafts, but we never got around to it.  I thought we might do a lapbook to summarize what we learned, but interest from my little guys were fading too fast. 

Now we put together a great lapbook, but never added information.  I got all the lapbook stuff here, plus a lot more great information and resources.

Coloring book about: http://myfwc.com/media/310155/Alligator_AAA_booklet.pdf

Lap book Resources http://www.homeschoolshare.com/crocodilians_lapbook.php

Links http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/managed/alligator/education/

Printables: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/animals/reptiles/alligator.htm

Alligator pie: http://www.tenderflake.com/Forms/Recipe.aspx?ID=1023

 

We field tripped to the Shell Factory and the Gatorama, alligator farm.  We also ate alligator, yum. For the most part, we read a lot of books, and some more books.  We talked about the pictures and then read some more.  The reading showed through on the field trips, my children were able to repeat to me all that they had learned from the readings. 

So not a bad first unit study!  I plan to use www.currclick.com curriculum with future studies.  We might do a whale study next and I was able to get an age appropriate lapbook for $1 download.  It was a bit sporadic to try and figure a study plan on my own with everything else I need to do and it seemed like I was doing it on the fly.

~trish

Field Trippin’ - Gatorama

So we have finished off our Unit Study with Alligators.  The best place to finish it is at a gator farm, so thankfully we have Gatorama in Palmdale, FL about an hour away.  Can we say, INCREDIBLE!  We actually bought annual passes, because we plan to go back.

www.gatorama.com

There were tons of these big boys that you could throw bread to.

So mommy also learning a thing or two, gators look like they do, to conceal themselves to look like a tree.  The good Floridian mommy, thinking tree, really, I would have never thought a tree.  Well, do you see the gator in the next picture?  

Gatorama is small and the day we went, blazingly HOT!  Twice while we were there they took a baby gator out for the kids to hold, amazing pictures of that!  Then at almost noon, they got the chicken out and got those bad boys to jump out of the water!  AMAZING!

We left with a bag of frozen gator meat too. You know, had to finish the study right with gator in the tummy.  Great Place!  Worth the drive.  So if you are anywhere South of Orlando and Tampa, take a drive.  It is smack dab in the middle of the state.  And if you pass the intersection SR70 and US27 and there are peaches for sale on the side of the road, you better get some.  We already ate half a box in less than 5 days. (think 40 or more peaches and we are going back for more).

 

Of Course, you can’t field trip with out a lunch, so this is what we packed!

It was too hot at the farm to eat there, so we went a mile north to Fisheating Creek FWC Outpost and spent a little money to eat under the shade of some old oaks at the edge of a dug lake.  It was great and since it was the areas official swimming hole, the kids got to cool off a bit, unfortunately for their mother! (No change of clothes.)

http://fisheatingcreekoutpost.com/

We did this trip with Katy-bunz, so head over to get a more personal view of our trip!

http://craftymomma2.blogspot.com/2011/07/gatorama-adventure.html

~trish

Book it! K-6 enrollment!

Book it! is a reading incentive program through Pizza Hut.  It has been around forever, I even did it as a kid.  As a homeschooler, you can enroll your kids in the Book It! program too. 
Things to know, you need to do it by September 1st!  http://www.bookitprogram.com/Enrollment/homeschool.asp
So do it now!
~trish

Our homeschool Space

      

In some ways, I would probably would never post about our homeschool space, mostly because we barely have one.  We have our homeschool space a little here and there. And of course, we have changed it around.

We first began with this shelf. It sits in a corner of a side room that my husband and I have our desk in.  So really we currently use the room as a den. The thing is this room has the only backdoor, so you have to go through it all the time. 

Well, he managed to pick up a wire basket thing! So we moved the shelf to where our front door is.  I say this reluctantly, because we really have to use every inch of the house.

It must be a God thing, because this bookshelf is the only thing that fits into closet of an entryway that I have.

What truly counts as our schooling space is this awesome table and chairs.  I picked them up at our school surplus store for under $50.  I only have 3 chairs, so I keep checking for a fourth.  I found the wooden thing at goodwill and I use it to hold our markers, scissors, gluesticks, pencils, dry erase markers, and colored pencils.

 

Call it what you want, den, disaster, free for all, the beginning of hoarding, but this is our space where most of it lives and then some.  You are missing the view of my husbands desk as I am standing at the back door.

The wire shelf holds baskets.  I have a basket for each kid, to store their curriculum.  This way I can pull out what I need.  I have basket for supplies, math games, crafts and so on.  The other table is my desk and my computer sits on a tv tray. I sew and coupon mostly on my desk.  And trust me it is always a mess.

In fact there is never one time that the entire house is straight.  I have someone always willing to make a mess!

As for decorating our school space.  NOPE.  Mostly because I can’t.  My entire house is the lived in look.  I would love to decorate it, but I am somehow missing that touch.  Then I really want to do some renovations and it seems like a waste to decorate then destroy.  At the same time, I have been waiting years to renovate.  So maybe it is just not in our time line, yet.

For those of you that live small, I hope this lets you know, you are in good company.

~trish

Adding to First Grade

Oh wow, imagine that, slightly changed my curriculum.  Hmm, again?  That is sometimes how I am feeling.  I have added for a couple of reasons, convenience, fell into our lap, and needing something more.

The need of convenience, HANDWRITTING!

Writing things out was getting a bit much for me and then to figure out what to write was another brain storm session everyday.  I found a digital copybook file and printed it off, can a mommy say, “ahhhh.”  At the moment I have Winnie the Pooh classics for her to copy.  All were free.  Because, my new favorite curriculum store is www.currclick.com! Thousands or more digital PDF curriculums to pick from.  You have got to check it out!  It is not a lot of money and they have just about anything you can think of.  I also bought files for our next unit study.  The best part its all electronic so it is reproducible and I do not have to find room on a shelf.  YEAH!

Needing something more, MATH!

Our math just wasn’t making the mark with Spectrum.  It is pretty, but not drilling enough for her.  I some how came across Math Mammoth and YEAH!  Again all digital.  It is a bit self led, so all I need is to answer questions and has a systematic approach.  Again I can re-use it for each kid.  I think the entire math curriculum for First is $35, I bought just the part A at $17 and I will get part B when we need it (just in case we change it up again).  It is working like a charm. www.mathmammoth.com

Fell into our laps, SPELLING!

Well ,I have a spelling program, A Reason for Spelling, but I was given this by another homeschool mom.  THE COMPLETE PROGRAM – LEVEL ONE!  SO I checked it out.  Well, I quickly realized it would be a great addition to our day.  The nice part is, it is all about the rules of the English language for spelling.  So now, poor #1 is doing both.  Thankfully, it is all hands on; so it goes almost undetected.  Bonus, since it is a lot of flash cards #2 is joining in.

Sometimes I get a bit worrisome that I feel like I cannot stick with one thing.  But I remind myself, it is better to spend a year finding what works (while of course teaching along the way), than it is to build frustration for me and my children with something that does not work.

 

By the way, I am working on restructuring how I deliver the work to them.  I had really wanted to do a workbox style, but space and time, just are not permitting it.  I tried a big 3 ring binder, but they are getting confused on what to work on.  Frankly, I need them to be a bit more independent on their work (this is how you think when you have several littles).  Mostly, I need to be able to give them direction and then NOT have to stand over them. 

The best thing I can think of is to put each topic in its own prong folder.  This way I can only pull out the folder they are working on for the day, laid open to the page they need to work on.  Kind of my own workbook style.  Now I am just piling the folders in front of them. 

Lets see how this works out!

~trish