Long Time No See

No Write?

 

Whatevs.

 

Life has been busy for us this last few months.  We bought a house and moved into it this spring, and since then have been doing the usual post-move things: cleaning, arranging, organizing; as well as the usual getting-ready-for-school things.

So life has been moving right along and I never even finished out last school year on the blog.

It isn’t all that surprising, is it.  😛  😀

 

But now, to the real reason I’m writing this post:

 

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!  WOOHOO!!!!

 

Those are my feelings on the subject.  The kids didn’t feel that way, unfortunately – they are more like, ‘Oh, no, Mom, you are so evil and cruel and I can’t believe we have to do school work.  WOE!!!’

(You may think I’m exaggerating.  Not really.  That said, they always move right along with their schoolwork just fine and don’t procrastinate lol – they just like to try to give me a really hard time about it. 😉 )

 

So since this year I never got around to making my usual ‘What we’re using this year’ post, I figured that for this week I’ll just cover what is going on each day.  This will be pretty much the same for the course of the year, with the exceptions of the weeks we have co-op, which takes our Wednesdays, or when we have random homeschool days or field trips we are attending.  Then we generally just push the work that would have been that day to the next.

 

SO.  First Day of School: Monday, August 13, 2018!

 

(Which reminds me, I totally need to take first day of school pics of the kids.  Oops!)

 

I’ll start with Pink, who is in fourth grade this year.

She started the day with writing.  I’m following a little bit of Writing With Ease still this year, but adding a couple other things, too.  Today was just copying a sentence from the board.  As the year progresses, that will become dictation.

Other subjects today included:  ‘Bible’, for which we are using Christian Studies I,An ‘extra’ – a Kumon Geometry & Measurement book, Story of the World 4 for history (this year I included questions.  At first she was less than thrilled at the prospect of having to write out answers, but she’s a decent writer so I knew she could handle it once she got past the initial whaaaat? lol.  And today she only had 10 questions… stay tuned for the first time she gets 20!  😉  )This is a lineup of her books for today: MUS Delta for Math + the ‘extra’ Geometry & Measurement book; Christian Studies I; Latina Christiana; Christian Kids Explore Physics (both Latin and Physics were a little dull today, as they were those ‘first day intro’ type things); Story of the World 4 + supplemental reading for history.  This week her assigned books are ‘Who was Harriet Tubman?’ and ‘Who was Queen Victoria?’  … I may have gotten just a few too many ‘Who was?’ books at convention this year.  :hiding:

 

Then there is Astro, who started seventh:

This was his general face at me throughout the day.  But, as I said, he still just sits down and does the work, so I can’t complain too much.  He started off with Rod & Staff spelling, carried over from last year,

then moved on to Jump In for writing.  The first question it asked him was ‘Why is writing difficult?’ and he was like, ‘It’s not… I just don’t like it.’  Well, honesty, everyone!I would be remiss to not post a picture of Mittens – looking very fat here, which she isn’t as much as this looks like lol – who stays in whatever room Astro is in most of the time.  She likes that I moved this chair out of my way and into a wonderful perch for her to keep an eye on things outside.  Back to Astro – he’s continuing with the James Madison Critical Thinking Course this year.  It was all just reading today, which he found immensely boring.Then he did science.  Today he read some of The Geology Book by the Institute for Creation Research, then started on Science Fusion: The Dynamic Earth.  On the first page was an ‘experiment’ for him to do, so here he is doing it:and here are his ideas for it before hand, followed by how it went:After the fact, he was like, ‘I was supposed to do one to keep that from happening.’ Upon my asking him how he would’ve done that he shrugged.  Clearly we’ll have to work more on this ‘experiment on-your-own’ thing.  But whatever, today I gave them a fair bit of leeway while explaining how things should be done for the rest of the year.

His last thing of the day was math.  We are continuing with Zaccaro Challenge Math and Lial Pre-Algebra this year.  This week he’s just reviewing decimals in CM, a pretty easy task.  Doesn’t keep him from making this oh-so-attractive face, though.And here’s his lineup for today: James Madison Critical Thinking, The Geology Book, Who is God? for Bible (he’s on the upper end of the recommended age for this, and actually even a little above it, but that’s okay), Science Fusion Module E: The Dynamic Earth, Jump In, Rod & Staff Spelling (Yes, he’s finishing up the fourth grade book.  The beauty of homeschooling is, he can be great at one thing and be working below level in another and that’s ok!  So yeah, he’s not a great speller), Vocabulary from Classical Roots A (he just LOVED all the copying…. hahahahaha), and Challenge Math.  He also uses the National Geographic Almanac of World History (not pictured because I forgot to grab it!) + supplemental books for history.  His assigned book for this week is The Beggars’ Bible, because we discovered that he’d already read The Landing of the Pilgrims in 3rd grade.  

 

And lastly, our high school freshman (!) – Link.

This makes it look like he has fewer subjects and less work than the others, but that’s really not the case!

He started his day with science.  We’re using Apologia Biology + a bunch of supplemental stuff.  His science is pretty busy this year!

Then came history, using The History of the Ancient World and it’s teacher/study guide.  I have him doing almost all the sections in the SG, so yeah, again, a lot of writing.  His last Vocab book!  He’s on Vocabulary from Classical Roots E, which he will finish in the first semester, before moving on to a Poetry workbook from Rod & Staff.Like I said, it looks so small!  But I left out the Study Guide and the science notebook for this picture, too… overall, each of the kids has a pretty big step up in the work they are doing this year.  Usually they don’t all fall on the same year but this year I’m glad they did – it shows that all three of them are having to step it up, not just one, and I think there’s probably some comfort in that!

So Link’s stuff for today: Apologia Biology, Vocabulary from Classical Roots, Foerster’s Algebra I, The History of the Ancient World, plus (not pictured) Khan Academy to review his grammar and a Queen Bible Study for Bible.  We’re considering either a live class or online tutor for Japanese, and he’ll start his official writing class (Essay Basics) with Lantern English next month.  Oh, and his assigned reading for this week: Gilgamesh.

 

So that covers today!  I’ll be back again in the next couple days to keep it going.  🙂  Happy Monday!

How We Do: Language Arts

 

 

 

 

 

Hard to believe that we’re almost a month in already!

Occasionally, I get asked for more specifics on what we do.  So I’m going to be doing posts on each subject that go into a little more detail, while hopefully still not being too incredibly dull.

Language Arts

Link

Individually:

Language Arts for the Secondary Child (daily); Apples Daily Spelling Drills (daily)

Astro

Individually:

Language Lessons for the Elementary Child (daily); Zaner Bloser Handwriting (2-3x/week; this is an older edition – the linked is new)

Both Boys

Together:

 

 

Spelling Wisdom (1x/week); Writing With Ease (2x/week, doing levels 3 and 4 this year); Elementary Diagramming (1x/week)

Pink

 

The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading (daily); First Language Lessons (3x/week); Explode the Code (2x/week); Draw Write Now (2x/week)

Here she is doing some DWN.  She has actually done everything in Book 1 once already, but she loves that one because it’s all animals.  She’s less thrilled with Book 2.
Reading

Each kid has their own set of reading books.  For Pink, there are books that are specific to what she’ll be studying in Science as well as those specific to what she’ll be studying in History.  (The picture I got of the books for History turned out blurry, so I only have Science ones here)

She also has these two tubs of books – the ones in the tub on the right are all easy readers – she reads one to me each day.  The ones in the tub on the left are those that are just picture books/short story books, that she picks one from each day for me to read to her.

Astro

Astro’s books are mostly chosen from the Language Arts and History sections of The Well Trained Mind.  He’ll go through them in this order this year (he’s currently on the 4th one):

 

Also, I have these set aside for him to read when he has some free time – the ones in the stack above won’t take the whole school year, so I picked some that I thought he’d enjoy from the ones that are around or just below his reading level.  

Link

He has a couple different reading lists: the one taken from the selections in the Language Arts and History sections in TWTM (he’s also currently on the 4th one from the top):

Some YWAM biographies I picked up this year; I decided to stick with India this time around. 😉

And then his official reading list for language arts this year (currently waiting on one book that is backordered – Oxford School Shakespeare Henry V, which will be at the bottom of the pile anyway).

So that pretty much sums it up!!  The boys are each assigned a book for a certain amount of time.  They are required to read daily, including weekends.

I did not include links for all of the books for reading, but if anyone is interested in any of them, I can edit and add those.  🙂

 

 

Have a great week!  September will be here soon – WHAT?!  🙂

It’s the planning time of year

You know how, at Christmas, ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year’ plays?

Well, I also feel like there needs to be a version that gets sung by people like me during the time of year that they beginning planning for the next school year.

Because it’s oh so fun.

So…Since it’s March, and March is when I post my plans, and when I’m beginning to order used curriculum and books I find cheap, that means it’s time for me to bore regale you with the wonderful tale of what we’ll be doing this coming year!

I know, you can hardly contain your excitement, right?!  RIGHT?!

Thought so.

Ok.  To start off I’ll say that we’re still following the Well Trained Mind philosophy and many of the suggestions listed in the book.  We have obviously tweaked here and there (where we absolutely didn’t like some things, or they didn’t work for one or more kids, etc), but for the most part, we’re pretty WTM-ish.

Link – 6th grade, Astro – 4th grade, Pink – 1st grade

Ok, first off, how in the world do I have a kid in sixth grade?  I mean seriously.  #Imold … That’s I’m old, not I mold.  I don’t mold.  I shower regularly.

Ahem.  There went a bird.  Anyway…

Logic – Next year Link will begin his first foray into the actual study of logic.  I was actually looking through the books – Critical Thinking, Books 1 and 2 – yesterday and I’m pretty stoked about logic!  It would be a great subject to teach to a class, as well, though I say that and then when I think about it realistically I have no desire to teach a class ever.  So there’s that.  But if you do, and are interested in Logic, take a look at those books.

Math – Link’s going to be doing math over the summer, at least until he finishes up MUS Epsilon, so he can get started with Zeta next year.  I’ve decided to switch up how we do our morning ‘Mental Math’ and stray from one workbook of daily problems.  This coming year we’ll be pulling from a few sources – Checkbook Math, Scratch Your Brain, Market Math, MUS online drills (to stay sharp on all the basic facts), and something for word problems – and do something different each day.

Astro will move forward with MUS Delta.  I’m interested to see how he does with long division – so far he has proven to be a little more math-brained, and it’s always interesting to see how he picks up on things differently.  For his morning math, he’ll be doing some graphing, MUS online drills, word problems, and math logic puzzles.  There’s one more day in the week and I’d like to find something else (different) for that day – if it comes down to it, we may just do some apps on the iPad for that.

Similarly, Pink will move into MUS Alpha.  She’s done really well with the Primer level of MUS, and I’m glad I decided to go ahead and get it this year.  We really like MUS for the foundations of math.

History – Link will be in 400-1600 AD this coming year.  We’re going to approach History the same way, using the encyclopedia, the timeline, and taking notes.  The Jackdaws we’re planning on getting for this coming year are Columbus and the Age of Explorers, The Conquest of Mexico, and The Vikings.  He will also have reading books (both assigned and not) that coincide with what he’s studying.

Astro will do Story of the World 4, along with some state history.  We don’t use the Activity Guide for SOTW at this stage – perhaps Pink will when she gets this age, but neither of the boys was really into it.  I’ll admit, as well, that our narration is limited.  In elementary, I do still ask some questions about what we read, but I’m just happy to get those things in their brain for the first time.

Pink will start with SOTW 1.  I do plan on getting out the Activity Guide and looking through it for some things to do with her next year, because I think she’ll enjoy them.

You’ll notice that again, this is all 3 kids in a different cycle of history.  This past year we gave that a test run and it really worked well for us, so we’re sticking with it.  Some people think it’s completely insane and that it would make much more sense/be much easier to group them together, but that has just not proven true at our house.  So, we do what works!  And for us, that’s each kid in their own place as much as possible.

Geography – Link will be taking his first ever online class this fall – Geography with The Well-Trained Mind Academy!  

Grammar/Language Arts – We enjoyed Total Language Plus this past year, but Link has expressed that he’d rather do what Astro does for this portion of Language Arts, so he’ll be moving to Language Lessons for the Secondary Child, Volume 1.  Both boys will also continue doing Daily Grams for their respective grades, though I think I’ll give in and get the workbook this year – last year getting both boys’ Daily Grams copied every day was something I wasn’t awesome at keeping up with.  Oh, well.

Astro will continue on with Language Lessons for the Elementary Child, Volume 2.  We like these books – they’re straightforward, short and to the point.  I plan on starting Pink on them once she gets into 3rd grade.

For first grade, though, we love First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind Level 1.  So Pink will start with that next year.  Most likely she will do levels 1 and 2 – I wasn’t a big fan of level 3, hence the switching over to LLEC in 3rd. 🙂

Spelling – I’ve not decided on this 100% yet.  Link and Astro have done well this past year using SpellingCity, so it’s likely that we’ll still use that at least a little bit.  I plan on looking at various spelling programs at convention to decide for sure.  As of right now, there are many that have caught my eye as a possibility – Rod & Staff Spelling (though I can’t stand their LA program, and that may rub off onto spelling… Idk, I’ll have to see it in person to decide!), Phonetic Zoo, Soaring with Spelling (though, again, I’ve used Growing with Grammar and was unimpressed…), Spelling Power, Spelling You See, Building Spelling Skills, Apples Daily Spelling (this would be for Link only)… the one I think I like the best so far is Natural Speller.  But like I said, Idk, I’ll have to see to decide!

Pink will not be starting spelling next year, most likely.  I’m seeing increasing evidence that starting a child on spelling early doesn’t necessarily do anything more for them than starting them around 3rd grade, so as of right now that’s my plan – to wait and start her in spelling in 3rd.  I may change my mind next year, depending on how she’s reading and all that, but for 1st grade, at least, I’m not finding spelling to be necessary.

Writing – At the moment Link is still working through Writing With Ease with Astro.  Originally, Link was doing a different writing program this year, but overall I wasn’t impressed with it, so I ended up switching him over to WWE at the same time as Astro.  He’s breezing through it pretty easily, but I’m thinking we will stick with it through next year (at which point they will have finished all 4 years of WWE).  You know, CAP’s Writing & Rhetoric was so nice, and I wanted to love it… but I just didn’t.  Occasionally it comes up in a conversation and I am tempted by it again, but in the end, I have to remember that I wasn’t a fan.  Sigh…

I have WWE 1 written down for Pink for next year, but again, I’m just going to have to wait and see.  Instead, we may stick with some simple Draw Write Now and wait to do WWE with her until 2nd or 3rd.  Or, who knows, maybe I’ll have more motivation to go back and try W&R again with her… we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Astro is still also doing handwriting this coming year, with Zaner Bloser Handwriting 4.  Pink will do ZB Handwriting 1.

Reading – We do a lot of reading at our house – there is always assigned reading going on.  Next year, Link’s reading list will include various suggestions from both the History and Language Arts sections of TWTM, as well as some titles from the Great Books Academy 6th grade reading list.  His main reading list: Beowulf: A New Telling (Nye), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkein), The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), Inferno, Cantos I-V (Alighieri), Saint George and the Dragon (Spenser/Hodges), The Sword in the Stone (White), Shakespeare Stories (Garfield).  There will be several more, but those I generally decide on based on what I can find and what looks the most interesting or worthwhile.

Astro’s reading list will be pulled from the fourth grade sections of TWTM and GBA; Pink’s from the first grade sections (you really needed that spelled out, right?) 😛

Pink will also continue with The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, supplemented with some Explode the Code workbooks (which technically shouldn’t be in the reading section here, but oh well).

Science – Ah, science.  Link did the WTM recommendations for 5th grade science this year and really enjoyed it.  However, next year, I’ve decided to go a little more traditional and do a curriculum/textbook.  At the moment, I’m liking Prentice Hall Science Explorer Earth Science for both Link and Astro next year (technically Astro should be on Physics, but I’ll talk more about him later).  With Link, I *think* I may want to start him on the upper level Apologia Science curriculum when it begins in 7th grade (I’m going to look at it a lot at convention and think on it further – I still have a year!) with General Science.  So this year I decided to try something different that could stand on its own, and I’m *hoping* that PHSE is what can do that.

Another thing I really am liking the look of for Science is Galore Park’s ‘So You Really Want to Learn Science?’  — this is a two book series, which looks like it will take about 2 years.  Can you guess where I’m going here?  I’m thinking PHSE for Astro with Link this coming year, followed by the two years of SYRWTLS, and then (if Apologia ends up being the way we want to go) moving him into the Apologia sciences in 7th.  Yes, I think that far ahead…

Pink will do TWTM recommendations for 1st grade science, with the animal encyclopedia, the human body encyclopedia, and Green Thumbs.  I will say that I 100% recommend TWTM Science for the grammar stage, from what we’ve done so far!  I know she’ll be doing them for 1st and 2nd grade, at the very least.  It’s laid back, fun, and allows for their interests to guide.

Japanese – Yes, Link is finally getting started with Japanese!  First off, we’ve started with some basic apps that are fun and educational (I’d be lying if I said I haven’t spent a fair amount of time on one of them!) and we’re getting Human Japanese.  Next year, Link will start Irasshai, which will probably take him a few years to complete.

Latin – Astro, on the other hand, will be doing his first (only, depending on how he likes it) year of Latin.  We’re going with Latina Christiana 1, despite my dislike for Prima Latina, because in the end Latin for Children was just very… busy.  And I think LC will be more suited to Astro’s personality and learning style.

Bible – Link will continue with The Most Important Thing You’ll Ever Study.  There are a total of 4 workbooks, so we’re aiming for one per year, which will take him through 8th grade.  In a similar line – more ‘ethics’ than ‘Bible’ – he’ll be reading through Tending the Heart of Virtue and the books that are discussed in there.  Again, this is something that we’ll be doing over time, from 6th through 8th grades.

Art – (all 3 kids) This past year we ended up being a part of a local art class, and I’m hoping to continue with something similar this coming year.  I’m not sure yet what that will look like, but hopefully we’ll have class out of the home, and honestly, for at home (in those months when we don’t have art, or for the off-weeks), I’m thinking about just taking the kids to Hobby Lobby and letting them each pick something to do every once in awhile.

For art appreciation, we’ll continue with the Picture Study Portfolios from Simply Charlotte Mason.  I LOVE THEM!!

Music – hoping, hoping, hoping for homeschool band next year for Link!  If not, possibly private lessons on an instrument that he could join the youth symphony with in the future.

We may try out the Music Study with the Masters (all 3 kids) from SCM this coming year, as well, for music appreciation – that’s another I’m looking forward to getting my hands on at convention this year!

Typing – Astro will do some Dance Mat typing next year online – it’s free and it’s a good introduction.  For Link, I’m not sure yet – he needs more practice typing on the keyboard, so starting in the next year or two he’ll be doing more on the computer.   I’m not sure that another ‘keyboarding/typing’ book is needed to get him there, though.

I think that pretty much sums it up, at least so far!  Is anyone else in full planning mode with me?  Any suggestions on any of my ‘undecideds’?

Have a great week!