First Week. Done!

I like Kindergarten. Honest. It’s fun! Our first week went better than I had expected. This isn’t to say that I was expecting a catastrophe or anything, of course. But negotiating lessons around a couple of little brothers can be full of excitement, and nature walks with an infant in tow have the potential for real thrills. We managed all of that pretty well, however. Outings happened right after breakfast, math before lunch during the baby’s nap, and language arts in the afternoon during Bubba’s nap.

Here is what we did:

Week of 9/5/11

Math: Reviewed one to one correlation, the concept of greater and lesser, and counting on. Explored our new math manipulatives. Buttercup: “Math is easy. Girls are great at math.”

Science: Read about lions and completed a narration page and animal information worksheet to help us remember. Also took a walk around the pond (so many great creatures!) and explored the downtown beach at sunrise which included finding a freshly dead pelican and several jellyfish. (Note to self: Next time we go to the beach that early, bring a breakfast offering for the homeless under the pier-thing who get woken up by my children running wild.)

Language Arts: Began memorizing “The Caterpillar”, a poem by Christina G. Rossetti. Explored the concept of common nouns applied to family relationships. Reviewed phonetical rules “si”, “ci”, and “ti” as /sh/ and “s” as /zh/. Zipped through the first thirty two pages of the spelling book so that we could get to the first lesson with a word she couldn’t spell off hand without having looked at it first. (She got stumped on “jar.”)

Twelve books made it onto our list of books we read (writing them down is going to be TOUGH to remember), plus we finished listening to an audiobook of Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White. At the library on Wednesday, Buttercup discovered the “Manga” section. I don’t know if these qualify as graphic novels or long comic books – I’ve never read them. Buttercup was fascinated, however, and we brought a Disney themed one home. She can hardly put it down.

Curriculum List: 2011-2012

Not everything educational comes as a curriculum or text book or teaching guide. The best part of homeschooling, for me, comes down to having the time available with my children to immerse ourselves in everyday learning, making the most of the ordinary pleasurable interaction with life and knowledge and the world around us. But there is a place, too, for organized lessons and for specific plans for stuffing little heads with important tools and bits of information. My favorite selected resources for those specific plans are listed at the bottom of this post.

Noticeably absent from this list are the categories of Bible and Science and History. These are all subjects that I plan to expose her to through a lot of reading and discussion and field trips throughout the year, rather than from a certain textbook. We will have an animal of the week that we read about and take notes on, and we will be taking nature walks once or twice a week in various area parks. We will continue talking about her Bible lessons from Sunday school, based on the student guides from her class. History will be touched on via her Geography class at weekly Co-op days – next year, however, we will add in a much more organized approach to the history of the world beginning with the Ancients. When I add that she will have weekly Co-op classes for P.E. and Spanish (which I plan to review throughout the week with her) and that Daddy has offered to start giving her piano lessons . . . well, suddenly her academic schedule feels awfully full for a five-almost-six year-old.

So far I have refrained from assigning any one subject a particular amount of time we need to spend on it, and the amount of material we cover each week will vary as we go along and figure out what pace works well. I have an idea, however, that if we find ourselves with more than an hour and a half of seat work per day, I will cut back some. At this age, I feel strongly that children need to be moving and exploring far more than slogging through worksheets. Even our seat work time needs to be oriented towards hands on activities, in my perfect school world. We’ll see how it all works out and learn as we go.

Here is what I have on the school-corner shelf:

The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, by Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington. I can’t recommend this book enough. We started with this book last year, and it was exactly the approach Buttercup needed to help her get started reading. The lessons are concise and free of busy work, giving her the tools she needs to sound out words – even those she’s never seen before. We completed the majority of it last year, but there came a point where she was having difficulty retaining new information, so we set it aside for the summer. I’m planning to start with a little review, and then we will pick back up where we left off - a lesson which includes words such as “physician” and “synagogue.” I expect we will finish up this text within two months at the most.

Considering how well this method worked with Buttercup’s learning style, I took the author’s suggestions for language and spelling materials.

First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind, by Jessie Wise. The author (who also wrote the above phonics book) has arranged a whole series of lessons designed to introduce the youngest students to Language through a combination of memorizing fun poetry, copying excellent prose, narrating from stories and artwork, and learning about basic grammar rules.

Spelling Workout A. Buttecup is constantly asking me how to spell words, so it’s definitely time to start a spelling program. The first spelling list: tub, bus, bat, see, sit, us.

Startwrite: This is a software for making handwriting worksheets. Very very cool. I get to choose the font, the line style, dashes, dots, directional arrows, et cetera, et cetera. So far I have made up every letter for review, plus pages copying the text of Animalia, by Graeme Base (complete with space for Buttercup’s own illustrations.) The plan is to make sheets as we go along for practicing spelling words, quotes from favorite books, dictation of her original stories, poetry, memory work, and so on – whatever strikes our fancy as good material for practicing her penmanship.

Singapore Primary Math 1A: We used some of the Singapore materials last year and I really liked the clear emphasis on the concrete-pictoral-abstract approach, and the many recommended hands on activities.

Miquon Orange Lab Book: I’ve been affectionately calling this our “Hippie Math.” It’s very loosie-goosie in a let kids choose what they want to do and discover all the skills for themselves kind of way. Basically, the teacher introduces the children to math concepts and then turns them loose in a Math Lab environment where children get to experiment and manipulate. I’m expecting this to be a great complement to the Singapore series.

For Bubba, I’ve picked up a couple of Kumon “First” workbooks that Buttercup enjoyed when she was three. These are mainly so that I have something to offer him when he wants to “do school” at the table like his sister. He’s also going to have a “Letter of the Week” featured on his bulletin board to help us continue talking about the alphabet and letter sounds.

There are a few other odds and ends, plus a beginning writing program that I have waiting, but I will talk about those when I fold them into our plans later on in the year. For now, we’re just getting ramped up to begin in a couple days. Wish us luck!! 

See You In September

It’s time to get used to going against the grain.

Here it is, one week before the Carr family homeschool project kicks off in an official, marked-on-the-calendar call-the-girl-a-Kindergartener sort of way, and I’m worried about what people must be thinking of me for waiting until after Labor Day while everybody else started the school year weeks ago. Never mind that we’re not even registered at the school with an excellent rating where normal nice people send their kids. Never mind the fact that we’ll be saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the next door neighbor’s flag on a pole in the middle of the front yard every morning. Never mind the fact that a full third of my lesson planning involves going to the park.

Never mind all that. I’m worried about starting in September instead of August.

If I don’t toughen up my hide a little and resign myself to the fact that most of the people I know already think we’re weirdoes, I’m going to have a tough school year ahead. Even among other Homeschooling families, we’re a little bit different. For some strange reason I can’t find myself capable of taking an easy prepacked curriculum and just running with it. We’re picking up a little of this and a little of that, depending on what suits my fancy; the more work something appears to be for me, the more excited I seem to get about it. I’m kind of hoping I get over that particular tendency.

Soon I’ll be posting our curriculum choices and goals for this year, followed by subsequent posts with updates on what we are covering. This will mainly be for the benefit of those in our circle who are curious to know exactly how peculiar we really are when we get right down to it, and also to keep a record so I can look back later and see how far we’ve come along.

But getting started – that won’t be until September.

Spring Break, III

We went back to school this week.  For the third time this Spring.  Yes, indeedy.  Our happy little preschool table had already had three Spring Breaks this year, for a total of three and half weeks of time off.  Luckily, when you only spend about forty minutes a day, four times a week, at school, getting back in the habit isn’t too terrible.  And it wasn’t as though our Spring breaks involved imitating root vegetables on the sofa. 

First there was Grandma.  She blew into town in March – a la Mary Poppins - and she’s always good for field trips and playing outdoors.  We were right back to school after that, with a complete lesson plan ready and everything. 

Next Daddy was in bed for a week and we discovered that just having him in the house all day is enough to throw all of us completely off of our normal routine.  He wasn’t a bad patient at all, but the first two days when we tried to have school it was just a mess – like everything in the cosmos was actively working against us.  I think the kids were wound up knowing Daddy was in the general vicinity, even if they weren’t allowed to see much of him.  I gave up and scheduled two impromptu days off until he would be back at the office.  This turned into some spring cleaning days, and I spent the whole next week doing battle against clutter instead of teaching phonics.  I’ll confess, there probably was a bit of excess TV time for the kids while that was going on, but the monster pile of outgrown kids clothes in my bedroom has been defeated once and for all.  Going back to school after that was a bit more haphazard, pulling out a half completed lesson plan to massage back to life. 

Finally, we were swamped with cuteness last week when two adorable cousins arrived, with an auntie and grandpa in tow.  We jumped right back to it when they were gone, though, only to discover that the lesson planning I thought I’d done in advance actually hadn’t been even started – for those who don’t know, I have an exceptional imagination.  So we decided to wing it, which turned into making and erasing every day’s lesson plan all week, and just filling in what we actually did after the fact.  I’m starting next week’s lesson plan right this minute. 

I don’t think I’m allowed any more Spring Breaks this year. 

Today We Baked a Cake

Today we baked a cake.

Buttercup is a pro at breaking eggs. And I don’t mean throwing them on the floor or at the neighbor’s car.  She can snap those suckers open and slide those perfect yolks into the bowl with a pool of shell-free whites like nobody’s business.  She and Bubba participate in as much cooking as I can tolerate in the kitchen – they think it’s fun and I want them to learn to cook, so we’re talking about a serious win-win activity.  In fact, I was talking to Buttercup about this today as we mixed up the cake.  I told her all about how one day she will learn to cook so well that she can cook a whole dinner by herself for our family. 

“Oh.”  She didn’t look impressed. 

Now, I am quite serious about this.  One of my official goals for my kids’ education (homeschooled or not) is that they will be moderately competent in the kitchen.  By the time they are teens, I expect each of them to be in charge of dinner for the whole family at least one night a month.  Should be interesting, right? 

So I went on explaining the sorts of things she will be able to cook and then I told her that she wasn’t the only one.  Bubba – who was busy sticking his fingers in the batter - was going to have to learn to cook, too. 

“One day Bubba be able to make a whole dinner all by himself,” I told her.  “Won’t that be great when he can cook dinner for us?”

Buttercup considered this.  She tipped her head a bit to the side.  Her eyes crinkled up.  Something intense was going on behind those fluffy black lashes. 

“Mommy?  Can I marry Bubba?”

“Umm, no.” 

“Why not?”

What followed was a very strange conversation about why girls can’t marry their brothers which eventually ended with me telling her that she just can’t, that’s all.  I think I told her that when you get married you add somebody new to the family and that brothers are already in the family, so they don’t qualify . . . or something along those lines.  Not exactly a question I was prepared for.  But even in my awkward-question-stupor I could recognize my girl’s brilliance.  She heard that Bubba will be able to cook, and wanted to marry him.  What woman doesn’t want a husband who can throw down a decent dinner all by himself now and then?

Maybe, about twelve years from now, when my boys complain about having to learn to cook, I’ll use this argument.  Bubba will be fourteen by then. 

“You want girls to like you?” I’ll ask.  “Then get your hiney in the kitchen, son.” 

Maybe it will work.  Maybe not.   Either way, it’s time Bubba learned how to break open some eggs himself.  Buttercup will be glad to teach him. 

The Secret Lives of Vowels

Today I learned that W is sometimes a vowel.  Did you know that?  I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of such a thing before.  But there it was in the primer for today’s lesson, in black and white, complete with a concise and very clear explanation.  I had known that Y is sometimes a vowel, but I had always assumed that it was just a way to excuse the naughty little words that didn’t have any real vowels in there.  Turns out there is a real reason for it, and rules for when it applies, and all that juicy stuff to learn around the school table. 

The biggest lesson that I have learned from our phonics lessons with Buttercup is that, as a student, I never learned to read phonetically.  I am not quite sure how I learned to read at all, in fact, except that I was read to a lot and that I went to school not really understanding why other kids didn’t know how to read already.  There is a vague memory from Kindergarten when my teacher would pull me and a couple of other kids out of naptime for a Dick and Jane session – but that comes more from my mother telling me that it happened than from actual remembering.  I do remember first grade, when I and a boy in my class had to walk across the kickball courts to a second grade classroom to join their reading lesson – but I don’t remember the lessons so much as the embarrassment of having to walk anywhere with a BOY. (Bless his heart.)

Speaking of walking, a few weeks ago I learned from a Netflix video that when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking.  I was intrigued.  The video was timed to coincide with our introduction to vowel pairs and, while the same concept was covered in our primer, they never used that catchy little rhyme.  As we’ve progressed through the lessons, I’ve discovered why.  There are so many exceptions to that “rule” that the authors of our little lesson book seem to think it’s better to just teach each vowel pair separately.  I think I agree.  When I tried to help Buttercup by reminding her of that walking and talking rhyme, we were immediately confused by all of the endless exceptions.  That’s what we get for stereotyping.  Just because some vowel couples like the first one to do all the talking, doesn’t mean they all have relationships like that, does it?  And if the W wants to moonlight as a vowel?  By all means, let him. 

It's a Cliffhanger.

An original short story, authored by Buttercup.  Written via dictation, with minor grammatical edits by Mommy.  Reviews welcome.  

The Leader That Shows the Policemen How to be a Policeman, by Buttercup

Once upon a time there were a lot of policemen.  One day they went to their car. 

“Come on,” said the leader.  “Come on in the car.  Let’s go.  Buckle up!”

They did the things that the leader said.  They picked a key.  They got in the car before they buckled.  Then they did go all the way to kill a bad guy.  They drove and drove. 

“It did take a long time,” said one of the policemen. 

Then they stopped at a house and they helped somebody.  They just used their instructions without paper.  They told them what to do.

Then they took a break until they were ready to kill a bad guy.  They killed ten bad guys.  Then a bad guy ran away and the policemen got them – the other ones who were helping.  Then they got in their car and went to work in their garden. 

CRASH!

“Here comes a big something but we don’t know what it is!”

The End