Sometimes...

...even princesses have to do some school work.

Snow Writing

December 3, 2012

 We're keeping it fresh around here! This week we added a new spelling tool to our toolbox. We've done salt trays before (just some salt dumped into a tray so that miss L can practice writing by drawing in the sand) but today we added some sparkly stuff to make a snow tray. Miss L loves writing in the stuff so she's been at it for a good afternoon.

Happy Spelling Everyone!

Homeschool Week 13

Things are going pretty well with homeschooling.

At this point miss L knows her sight words from the Dolch pre-primer list. She can read them easily. The problem is that we didn't work on writing them while we were working on reading them. Visualization seems to be something that is really hard for miss L to do and that seems to be a critical component of learning to spell. So... we are trying to practice our spelling in as many multi-sensory ways possible. This day we used do a dot markers to "write" the words. Miss L has always had trouble with strength in her hands. For instance, she has a hard time coloring large areas or an entire picture in a coloring book and writing can be very difficult for her too. In order to keep her from mutinying completely we try to work on spelling not just with writing, but in other ways too.

 

I find that a critical component of our homeschooling routine is my daily coffee. I'm not gonna lie folks, homeschooling can be downright hard. Sure, I have a teaching certificate but it definitely doesn't cover kindergarten reading. I desperately want to do right by miss L. I know everyone does, but I know that I've made a lot of choices *for* her and I don't want to screw this up. She's so precious and she deserves the best, so my daily cup of caffeine helps keep me on my toes.

 

When I have discussions about homeschooling with any of my homeschooling (and non-homeschooling!) friends the subject of planning seems to always come up. Here is what is working for me. I have an excel spreadsheet that I use for weekly plans. I downloaded the template from the microsoft office website. It has room for 8 subjects per day (or periods I suppose for middle or high school teachers) and room for materials, etc at the top (though I use it to keep track of our activities for the day). I often sit down on Sunday afternoons and plan out for the week, but when I'm able I do a month at a time and even though I have to go back through and change them (it just happens) it's so much easier! 

I keep the week's plans clipped to the front of a file box and I keep our books and materials for the week in that box. I have a file folder with the name of each day for any worksheet sorts of things we have and our other materials fit in there too. It's been really helpful!

 

We use tactile letters both to practice handwriting and to practice spelling. We love these letters!

 

We use scrabble letters a LOT. In this instance we were just spelling in this frame, but often I will print out words with lowercase letters and miss L with match the letters to them or I will draw boxes for the number of letters in a word and miss L figures them out. I never knew how great scrabble tiles were for practicing spelling before this!

 

We also practiced with stamp letters this week. It's just another way to get the words onto paper. Sometimes I give miss L all but one of the letters and she fills them in.

 

We also use yarn letters and magnetic letters for spelling. They say that the first year of homeschooling is about learning your child and I have to say that's true for us. I've learned that miss L hates to fail. She's a first born and she's adopted and as I understand it both of those things feed into the fear of failure thing. If miss L doesn't KNOW she can do something, she just flat out refuses to do it. We started out with me trying to really push her to spell words the way I felt like I was taught and that I felt like she should do it. The thing is, that isn't who she is. Miss L needs a way to spell that works for her and these are some of the ways we've found to do it. I hope it's working!!

The Polar Express

November 23, 2012

Okay, it wasn't the Polar Express. We've been a little obsessed with that movie over the past couple of years and so that's what we called this train. :o)

As part of our reading curriculum this year we are doing "Five in a Row," a curriculum that uses classic and modern children's books and has you read them every day for five days in a row. There are lots of possible activities for each book that cover social studies, science, math, art, etc. Early this fall we read, "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel" by Virginia Lee Burton. As part of that book we did some study on what a steam engine is and why we don't really see or use them anymore. With that in mind I was really really excited to be able to take everyone to ride on a real train with a real steam engine. It seemed fun AND educational. What could be BETTER?!

We arrived and walked up to the REAL train station. It was really exciting!

 

I hate to say that we read the sign AFTERWARDS that said, "Do not touch the car. Santa is watching." Ooops!

 

We boarded the train and started moving. The weather was really fantastic. It was a little chilly, but not cold and we were able to open the windows in the train.

 

Santa came around too. This was about as good as it got for pictures of everyone together.

 

When we got to the end of the line the engine drives to the other side of the train. The kids loved watching the engine pass by.

 

I forget how much water they put in the tank of the trains, but it's a LOT. I guess it takes quite a bit of water to make enough steam to move a locomotive. :o)

 

There were all kinds of other activities too. These little carts worked with hand cranks. This is serious awesome work for a kid with SPD. I wonder how much these would be to put in my backyard?!

 

We watched the trains for awhile. The people were amazing there. There were carolers and brass players all wearing period clothing. I love this photo my dad caught of the conductor.

 

...and while Daddy and Pawpaw took the big kids to do even more train stuff, Mawmaw and sweet little man and I explored the shops and waited for them to finish.

 

After that we went to an Amish restaurant nearby. Holy crow I am still thinking about those rolls. And the shoefly pie. Oh my goodness... What a FABULOUS day!!

Mount Vernon

On November 2, 2012 we took a field trip to Mount Vernon. It was a commitment to travel but I think it was worth it. Miss L was so excited when we got there. They have guided maps for kids with questions concerning different parts of the property that give you letters to answer the question at the end. Miss L wasn't too interested in answering the questions but she was really excited that she had a map and practiced her map reading skills while we walked around.

She was really impressed with the size of this tree. (She should go to Monticello!)

 

She wanted to take a photo of me. :o)

 

We waited for a bit in line to get into the house for the tour, but we kept busy playing in the rock path.

 

Miss L was really interested in figuring out how people lived long ago. She loved looking in each room. When we were finished we walked around looking at all the buildings exploring the purpose of each one. They had live blacksmiths in the blacksmith shop. We talked about what a person might have to do if you couldn't go to the store to buy what you needed. It was really interesting for both of us.

 

Down by the eight sided barn they had a bunch of displays set up with lots of hands on activities that would have been happening during Washington's time. So... I'm white. I remember learning about slavery and finding it repulsive, but I didn't learn about slavery as a person who would have been a slave. Being white sheltered me from that reality. The people who taught me about slavery were also white. So, I have a lot of issues about teaching miss L about slavery. I want to be honest. I want her to know how horrific slavery really was and how we sort of present slaves at the homes of our country's founders as having an "okay" life and that we sort of revere them even though they did this bad thing, but everyone was doing it. I want her to know that's wrong. I want her to know that it's an awful thing that isn't okay just because "everyone else was doing it." I also want her to be proud that slaves pretty much built all of the amazing things that our state has to offer. I want her to know how strong they were to deal with what they had. I also want to tell her all of these things in the right time and when she's ready to hear them. On the way to Mount Vernon that day I tried to bring up the subject. I tried to tell her that some people treat other people differently because of the way they look. Some people treat people differently because they are bigger, for example. Also, some people treat people differently because of the color of their skin. She was interested in this. We talked a little about it. I told her that in today's world that most people know that it's wrong to treat a person differently because of the color of their skin. I told her that it's against the law to treat a person differently because of the color of their skin but that doesn't stop everyone. We talked about how a long time ago that it wasn't against the law to treat someone differently and in fact that places like Mount Vernon had people with brown skin like hers and kept them as slaves, meaning they didn't get paid. She was pretty quiet during this part and I'm not sure that she really understood so I just told her that was very very bad and that she should be proud that people with brown skin did so much to build and run Mount Vernon even though some very bad people had put them in that position and even though George Washington was great that it was very very bad that he owned slaves. At this point I know it was over her head. I hope that a little of it seeped in though and we'll talk about it again the next time it's relevant. 

So... it wasn't lost on me that almost all of the activities we participated in at Mount Vernon were things that would have been performed by slaves. I tried to add that in to her now and again but she didn't really want to talk about it and that's okay. 

They had candle makers.

 

They had a demonstration in the eight sided barn. The grain was put on the upper level and horses walked in circles on top of it separating the kernels from the stalks. The kernels would fall through the floor. The man who was in charge of the exhibit asked miss L lots of questions like, "why do you think the barn is shaped like a circle?" and miss L answered them all. Smart girl!

 

Miss L made butter.

 

She did a maze with her eyes shut (but would not hold the shoulders of a stranger in front of her).

 

She tried her hand at threshing flax. We learned that most of the clothing worn at Mount Vernon was linen (made of flax). Before the invention of the cotton gin, cotton had to be picked and seeded by hand which made it a really work intensive crop. The cotton grown at Mount Vernon was sold and exported rather than used because they could get such a good price for it. 

 

She worked on combing cotton and wool. 

 

She played games that kids would have played during the time that George Washington lived here.

 

...and she washed clothes with soap made on the estate. I think this was her favorite activity.

 

After that we explored the visitor's center a bit. Miss L got to dress up like a woman would have during that time. 

 

Mister W dressed like George Washington himself.

 

...and we explored the farm.

 

What a great day and a great learning experience!

Homeschool Week 6

(October 9 & 10, 2012) We are really in a routine now. We are still working on handwriting, phonics (sort of, more about this later), sight words and literature. We love our Five in a Row curriculum for reading. Each book in the series (classic and contemporary children's literature) is read once a day for five days with enrichment activities each day. Often there is a big social studies component (usually geography and culture, but there are others in there too) and often opportunities for learning about different art techniques. It's wonderful! This week's book is "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" by Marjorie Priceman. There's a lot of social studies to this one, and we love it. Some days miss L wants to read it twice a day!

 

Here miss L is playing a word family game and I cannot remember where I found it! It was online, and was part of a printable kit. If someone knows, please let me know and I will give credit where it is due! Anyhow, it's a fun game. There are words on the apples and you put them in the correct box. Here's the thing... We are STRUGGLING with phonics. Miss L knows all the letter sounds but when you put them together and ask her to sound them out, you can see the look in her eyes that she has no idea what you are talking about. I chose an online program, "Explode The Code" as our phonics/learning to read program at the beginning of the school year. Miss L has trouble with visual and auditory processing skills and this program requires her to work both of those areas. Eventually, she would complete the level that she was working on, not because she learned to sound out the words, but because she'd memorized the words on the screen. I don't know if I mentioned this in an earlier post (but I'm doing it now :o), but I hadn't even heard of sight words (learning high frequency words by memorization) before this school year. Yes, I embarked on homeschooling my child and I hadn't. heard. of. sight. words. It's fine now though, because I have heard of them! AND starting in the third or fourth week of school we started using both sight words (which miss L ROCKS) and phonics (which, well, you know). This week was the week we quit phonics altogether. Miss L was frustrated. I was frustrated. I sent panicked emails to my teacher friends telling them I was thinking of quitting and enrolling her in public school because I felt like a failure and she would never learn to read from me (lucky to have friends who don't mind me being an eensy bit dramatic when it comes to such high stakes stuff!). However, quitting phonics was the best thing we did. Miss L stopped being so frustrated. I stopped being so frustrated and in the end our school district doesn't teach phonics in kindergarten either. One of the awesome things about homeschool is that we can take our time and do what we're ready to do and learn at our own pace. In early October, miss L wasn't ready for phonics and definitely wasn't ready for that program (though people just rave about it, so it's great for some!). We've been so much happier since and we'll revisit phonics in the new year!

 

This week we purchased some cards for ball yoga. We love doing heavy work activities between school subjects (and sometimes as often as between words in handwriting if it's needed) and yoga, because we don't need a lot of extra stuff and we have these handy cards with positions, is our favorite. However, six weeks in we needed something fresh. Enter the yoga deck for kids on the ball. :o) We're loving it and loving something new to do!

 

Here's miss L reading a book lent to us by our favorite reading specialist. It's fantastic!

Homeschool Week Five

Those first couple of weeks of school were just plain hard. I had my moments, to be sure (and during which I frantically email my elementary school teacher friends and they talk me down :o). Now school is a welcome challenge for me. I love my second (third?) career as a teacher at home and though it still is hard (believe me) it's really fantastic too. I get to watch my baby develop these skills right before my eyes. It's just awesome and we're really hitting a groove and a routine.

I want to do this for every week of school, but it just hasn't happened yet. For this week though, here were some highlights.

We packed meals for the backpack meal program at our church. I'm LOVING the fact that I can teach my daughter whatever I want (which is true if she went to public school as well, but we have so much more time for it). We made a list, went to the store, added up the cost of the groceries, paid for them and then sorted and packed the bags. These bags will feed six kids who receive free or reduced lunches from community around our church. Good service and lots of lessons learned! Yay!

 

We continue to work hard on sight words. Miss L has declared that her favorite thing to do "at school" is to do yarn letters. It's just another way we can practice spelling without having to always be writing. Woop woop!

 

...and mister W just cannot be left out. On Sundays as I usually make my lesson plans I plan two or three things for him to do (and try to include him in our art projects too). He loves sitting and working and I love that he has something that makes him feel so big and proud.

We made trees using handprints as the stump and branches of the tree. Mister W is trying to make his hands fit the tree here.

 

Then we added leaves and colored them and then I put dots of glue and mister W glued pom pom "apples" on the trees for fine motor practice (and you can see we had apples on our minds and and our table!).