Walnut Hill Homeschool

Trail Guide to Learning Giveaway

2012-02-23T15:28:00.004-08:00

Hey, all! Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers is hosting a giveaway for the Trail Guide to Learning from Geography Matters. I have been very intrigued by Kris' posts about this curriculum and she just wrote a great review of it. Head over HERE to check it out.

Giveaway

2012-02-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

My new shop, Walnut Hill Handmade, is being featured today on Fabulous Friday Freebies. I'm giving away either a custom pillow or a custom doll. Click HERE to go to the post and register to win. Winners will be announced next Wednesday.

On the homeschool front, I'm planning to write some blog posts this weekend to tell you about what we've been up to with school. I'm finally ready to start posting again. Sorry for the long slump. It's been a bit of a rough year with my dad passing away. Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Popping in

2012-02-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

I promise to get back on here to write about homeschooling sometime. Really. I am just popping in to link to my sewing website where I've added some new photos of name pillows I've made recently. I'd love it if you'd stop over for a peek!! CLICK HERE.

I'm back......for now!

2012-01-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

Hello, all! If you have stuck around to keep reading this blog, thanks so much! I haven't had a lot of motivation to write for a while. Not sure why. I have started another little endeavor that I'd like to share here. First the backstory.........I have always loved making things. Until now, I just made things for myself and my family or to give as gifts. For a long time I've thought about opening a little "shop" to sell some of my handmade items. And I've been working like crazy for the past few weeks into the wee hours to get that started. Therefore, I'm pleased to announce Walnut Hill Handmade where I'll post items for sale and also do custom orders. I have that name reserved on Etsy, but for now I have not set up an Etsy shop. I would really prefer to make and sell locally, but time will tell if that is feasible. Therefore, to get more publicity for my little project, I wanted to share it over here. I'd be so thankful if you stopped by the new blog for a peek!! Let me know what you think!! CLICK HERE to check it out!

".........and then we're gonna dig him a nice hole!"

2011-11-17T10:35:00.001-08:00

These are the words just uttered by my 10-year-old, preceded by the words, "I'm gonna get some more water......". While speaking these words he hurried into the kitchen to get some water in a plastic dish. A few minutes prior I was informed that "the worm (what worm?) is under the water now." Good to know. Ummmm........what worm? And don't worms drown in water? I'm a creature-lover and was a bit concerned for said worm's welfare. However, my oldest assured me that he (the worm) was still moving and that worms can survive underwater, something he learned not from yours truly, but from watching Wild Kratts on TV. Ha!

Like any other homeschooling mama, I've had my nagging concerns about the "socialization" of my children when I chose to withdraw them from a public school setting. At the same time, I'm well aware that one of the many benefits of homeschooling is that it draws siblings closer together than they would be otherwise. I think this is certainly becoming the case in our family. I love seeing my guys interact and converse with one another in a relaxed, pressure-free setting. To me, this is a much more natural example of socialization than what often occurs in a setting where only same-age children are grouped together. (Think bullying........pressure to "fit in".........pack mentality.) So let the worm-habitat-building continue! What a fantastic way to spend "recess" on a beautiful fall day! I'm going to go photograph the worm so you can see for yourself why I love homeschooling!

Sidenote: All this industriousness has been accompanied by the tap-tap-tapping of a hammer........my youngest is busy opening walnuts he's gathered from the backyard. A squirrel's best friend in the making indeed.

Sadly, the photographer fears that the subject matter may be (ahem) deceased. Please be forewarned that the contents of the next two photos may not be suitable for young children.

The little purplish-pink spot in the center/left is the worm. Or perhaps I should say was the worm. My son told me the worm had been moving right before I came outside, so there may yet be hope.

Just keeping it real here...........documenting the muddy fingerprints all over the door from multiple trips inside for water using mud-covered hands to get in and out........

And let's not forget the mud-covered kitchen faucet. Homeschooling may not be for those who like to keep a pristine home at all times. My philosophy.........if you don't get a little dirty, was it really that much fun? (Inwardly I cringe a bit when I see mud-strewn around my living space BUT I try as much as possible to keep my mouth shut. In this case, I did throw out a couple of feeble, "Honey, don't touch anything with your mud-covered hands, okay?...........these words were mostly ignored. :-)

Slacking or supporting? You be the judge.

2011-11-16T07:49:00.001-08:00

I sat down a bit ago to quickly check email and facebook and Google Reader and Pinterest before we started school (we usually start around 9:30). My plan was to start close to "on time" (which is a flexible concept in homeschooling). As I sat here at the computer, I could overhear my two sons in my oldest son's bedroom. They have a box from the recycling bin and from what I can tell are planning to add that box to a box my husband has told them they can have on Friday (?) to build something very cool. About 10 minutes ago I told them as they hurried past me, seriously discussing their "plans", that we would start school in about 10 minutes. They gave the obligatory "OK" as they rushed on to continue their scheming. Since they do not ALWAYS see eye to eye or get along, I am hesitant to break up their collaboration to start school. Even as I type these words at this moment, they have come out and my littlest is showing me a drawing of their plans which he has sketched with red marker on white paper. He is now asking me where we can buy springs. I am enthralled and captivated when they work together like this. Little guy is now out on the deck and I can hear him telling his brother, "It's good. We can go to the hardware store and buy springs for the launcher. It's really good......it will be so easy." Now he is calling to me "Hey, Mommy! Look how tall the Nile River is getting. The grass here is really fresh (he slides open the screen to tell me this)." Though I feel a teeny tiny bit like a slacker for not calling them together to being "school", the larger part of me feels grateful that I can support their interactions by allowing them to unfold naturally. I am fully aware that the natural unfolding may soon result in disagreement which may or may not take the form of angry words and/or punches. THEN............it will be time to start school.

First Grade Reading: We love Henry and Mudge

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've written about our first grade reader. I'm excited that he has finally progressed to the point that we are now able to check out library books as his guided reading material. I will still supplement with some printed books from Reading A-Z, but I think he is very happy to finally be reading primarily out of "real" books. My older son was extraordinary in that he could pretty much read anything from about age 4 on. So he didn't really go through the "beginning reading" stage. One series of beginner books that he always enjoyed, however, was the "Mr. Putter and Tabby" series by Cynthia Rylant. We own many copies of those books. I thought they were a BIT advanced for my first grader right now. He will probably be ready for them in a few months. I was excited to discover another great beginner series also by Cynthia Rylant, the "Henry and Mudge" books. Even better was my discovery of a whole bunch of "Henry and Mudge" printables from Homeschoolshare! Homeschoolshare doesn't have printables for EVERY book in the series (there are 28 books!), but they do have printables for many of them.

My son would really like to read all the books in this series so I printed out the list shown below from Homeschoolshare. He can mark off each book as he reads it. We have been trying to find the first book, but neither of the libraries we visit has that one!!

Below you can see the printables we did for Henry and Mudge in the Sparkle Days. There was one printable for each chapter of the book. Filling out a quick summary on the printable after reading the chapter was great writing practice for my first grader.

To help him with organizing his writing, I just used a black marker to draw some "writing" lines inside each printed shape. This little modification helps so much to keep his words in line.

Gratitude Journals and Thanksgiving Poetry

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

This weekend I found a link for some GORGEOUS free printable gratitude journal cards. I had wanted to do some type of gratitude writing with the boys this month and this fit the bill. I printed out a set of cards for each boy and have been having them write on one card each day. I was thrilled when on Tuesday the 8th my six-year-old asked if he could write on more than one card. He actually wanted to write on 8 cards since it was the 8th day of November. Of course I said YES! The only rule I have is that they can only write each idea on one card.........no repeats. I am looking forward to seeing what they will find to be thankful for later in the month after the usual ideas (family, toys, etc.) have been used. HERE is where you can go to print out your own set of gratitude cards.

Of course I was very excited to see my little boy write "mom" on his first thankfulness card. I am SO thankful to be a mommy to two awesome boys and wife to a great guy. I am truly blessed!

Another thing we are working on this week and for the next few weeks is learning a few "Thanksgiving" poems to recite to our family at Thanksgiving dinner. I have a REALLY old book of poetry for children (really old as in my maternal grandmother's sister who was a school teacher owned and used it and it was published in the late 1800s) and I actually remember reading and typing out my favorite poems from this book as a little girl. I read some of the poems from the "November" section out loud to the boys and they each picked a few to learn for Thanksgiving. We'll see how it goes. I've never had them do any recitation for an audience before, but I love the old "one-room-schoolhouse" idea of doing so. In the top photo you can see a glimpse of one of the poems my little guy is learning. I typed them up in a big font and slipped them into page protectors.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I have done quite a few Thanksgiving projects in the past and have written about them on some of my other blogs. I thought I'd link to them here in case you are interested.

I made some really cute TURKEY HANDPRINT TRIVETS last year that I LOVE and have on display this year. I will put these out every November forever. They are so precious!!

We also made some really cute TURKEY CANDLE HOLDERS as favors for our family last year. I saved one for us, but it's tissue tail got a little squished in storage.

Another favorite Thanksgiving keepsake I've made is this GIVE THANKS burlap pillow with turkey handprints.

And finally, a project I will always treasure (especially this year) is a little Gratitude Journal I did in 2008 at Thanksgiving dinner. It was just our little family of four and my parents for dinner that year and right before heading to my parents' house I whipped up a quick ABC gratitude journal that we completed after our meal. I will treasure it so much because it has my Dad's writing in it............this year will be our first Thanksgiving without him. HERE is the link to that project if you're interested.

Expedition Earth: Russia

2011-11-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

I have been lax in posting about our Expedition Earth adventures. We are still trying to study a country a week to go along with the curriculum. We have missed a week here and there. I've tried to add a read-aloud story set in the country we are studying. That hasn't always worked out for each country, but luckily we had a copy of the book Another Celebrated Dancing Bear which is a FIAR book. We didn't actually read it five days in a row (we don't often fit in reading our FIAR books five days in a row!) and just read it once. It is a nice story, but not incredibly engaging (in my opinion). It did introduce some aspects of Russian culture that we later read about in some library books about Russia. I would love to say we always do a special project to go with each country, but we honestly don't fit projects in that often. I feel that I'm doing well if the boys complete their passports, color the flag of the country, fill out the info pages for the country, and can find it on the globe and name its capital. Anything else is icing on the cake. For Russia, I'd saved an idea in Pinterest that I wanted to use for an art project. This project can be found on Art Projects for Kids. I LOVE how our Russian cathedrals turned out. I enjoyed sitting and doing this project with the boys and am pleased with how much time they each spent on their drawings. In an effort to make a full disclosure, I will add that I did not think my youngest would actually complete this project as he was having a rough start to the day.........even to the point of going through two pieces of drawing paper and throwing a crayon across the room. Yeah. Loads of homeschool fun in THAT moment. After a brief (ahem) bit of time spent thinking about things on a chair, he came back to the project with a focus and intensity that both surprised and impressed me. My older son and I were done and had moved on to other things by the time my little guy got going. He had requested a larger sheet of paper and wanted to look at the photo of St. Basil's cathedral found in a link in the directions at Art Projects for Kids. He intently studied the photo and tried to include ALL the details in his drawing, even down to the statues in the foreground and the trees surrounding the building. Wowza!! You just never know............

Here are our finished drawings.........

First is mine.............so fun to take the time to sit and do this project. I don't claim to be an artist, but the process was really enjoyable.

Next up, my oldest son's drawing. I loved how he labeled the different details of his drawing with the name of the crayon color that he used (thus the "macaroni and cheese" steeples).

And here is my youngest son's drawing of St. Basil's. CLICK HERE to see the photo he used as a reference. His detail is really quite remarkable.

A new infatuation............

2011-10-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

While my dad was in the ICU for a week, my mom and I spent a LOT of time sitting in the ICU waiting room. Since Dad was never conscious the whole time he was in the hospital, we had a lot of time on our hands. For the first several days, I just sat or paced or drank a lot of the free coffee. On the evening of the fourth day, I asked my husband at about 8:30 p.m. if he had any cash on him. He handed me a $10. I thanked him and said I needed to run to the store real quick. He asked what for. I sheepishly admitted that I was going out to buy a pair of knitting needles and a skein of yarn. He looked a bit mystified as I left on my errand. I've been wanting to learn to knit for quite some time. In fact, Hubs had bought me a gift certificate to a knitting shop several years ago. I never used it and within the last 6 months the store closed. My mom taught me the very basics of knitting when I was in elementary school, so I knew a little bit. I packed my new ball of yarn and needles in my purse to take to the hospital the next morning. My mom laughed as she watched me knit a few rows, rip them out, and start over again. I did this MANY times. It kind of bothered her that I was ripping it out so much. (I'm a perfectionist.) I finally listened to her advice that the knitting gets easier once you have several rows on the needles. I kept going. My plan was to knit a little dishcloth. I used the basic garter stitch. What I wasn't expecting is that my boys were VERY interested in this new craft. They both pleaded with me to teach them! My little boy has helped me knit a row and my oldest now has his own pair of needles and ball of yarn and has been periodically picking them up and knitting with them. VERY COOL!

Since the boys were so into the knitting, they were having none of the "dishcloth" plans. The first dishcloth soon was appropriated as a blanket for my little boy's stuffed bunny. Of course I then had to knit a blanket for my big boy's giraffe. With the leftover bits of yarn I knit (or is it knitted? my knitting vocabulary is still weak!) matching pillows for each animal. The cool thing about these particular stuffies is that my boys got them in their "memory" bags for Grandpa. A wonderful nurse named Jean (she refers to herself as "Mean Jean", but I know better!) gave me the bags for when Dad passed. Each bag contained several resources for helping children deal with grief including two very helpful pamphlets. They also each had a stuffed animal for the boys to keep. I love it that they have these special reminders of Grandpa, and I also love seeing the little guys cuddled up under the "blankets" I made.

I think it's safe to say that I'm now kind of obsessed with knitting. I love it for its portability. I can sit and knit pretty much anywhere and don't need to drag out a lot of "gear". I am currently knitting a scarf for my youngest son (at his request) and have a skein ready to knit one for my big boy too. I also have a scarf for myself in the works. I have a list of "favorites" on Ravelry too............a great website with TONS of free knitting patterns.

If you are interested in knitting but are afraid to try...........I say, "GO FOR IT!" I knew a little bit, but everything else I know (which isn't much yet) I learned by watching knitting videos on You Tube. I had put off learning to knit because I thought I needed a live person to teach me, but I have truly found everything I need to know online. I do have one question though for any of you who are still reading this non-homeschool-related post and who are also knitters.............what's the deal with "knit 2 together"? I am trying to make myself a scarf with that stitch as part of the pattern. I know how to do it, but I am finding that it is SO hard to get my needles through two stitches at once...........the stitches are so tight!! I realize this is a tension problem, but I don't know how to fix it other than trying to avoid patterns with "K2tog"..............as a sidenote I am ridiculously impressed with myself that I know what K2tog means now. Knitting patterns used to look like a bunch of gibberish to me. And the more complex ones still do!! Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I'll search for a real live person to ask!! Following are some photos of what I've done so far..........

A great resource for reading instruction

2011-10-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to pass along a great resource I came across recently. It's so important for beginning readers to be appropriately matched to "just right" text. What I mean is that for optimal growth in reading, children should be able to successfully read 90-95% of the words in any given reading passage. If they struggle over more than 10% of the words, the text is too hard for them. If they read more than 95% with no errors, the text may be too easy for them. It's fine for them to read easier texts for fun, but for reading instruction and growth, they need to have some words that they must "solve" in order to become better readers. This is one reason that I like to use Reading A-Z leveled books because I can be sure that I'm matching my first grader to appropriate text. Now, however, my little guy is starting to read more fluently and I'm starting to explore using library books for his reading books. The website I'm sharing is awesome because it lists published books by level. I printed out the levels that represent the range my son is reading at and I have it in my purse so when we are at the library I have some specific titles to look for. HERE is the link to the website. At the top you will see a little table which tells the "letter" level and the corresponding grade level. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section. Hope you find this link useful.

First Grade Reading: Jellyfish Study

2011-10-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share some more about my first grader's reading program. A few weeks ago I printed off the book Gaggle, Herd and Murder from Reading A-Z for him to read. He really likes to learn about animals and I knew he would enjoy this book about the names for various groups of animals. After he read it a few times, I had him choose one of the animals from the book to research. He chose jellyfish. In the photo above you can see the printed book and the cover of the lapbook we made about jellyfish. In the photo below you can see a photo of the page from Gaggle, Herd and Murder that was about jellyfish.

The rest of the photos are of some of the various lapbook components. All the lapbook pieces are from Homeschoolshare. We checked out some books about jellyfish from the library and used that information to fill in the mini-books. This project took us about a week to complete with my little guy writing on 2-3 mini-books each day. This was a great way to incorporate reading, writing, and science all into one activity. I think more lapbooks are in our future for sure. He was proud to show his finished book off to his grandmas.

One of the best things about homeschooling............

2011-10-27T18:19:00.000-07:00

...............watching my oldest son reading fiction for pleasure. YAY!! I snapped a few quick and sneaky photos of him during his daily 30 minutes of independent reading. Once he was sitting outside on the deck on a beautiful day (something he couldn't do in public school) and the other time he was all cuddled up under a quilt on my bed (also something he couldn't do in public school). Reading while cuddled up in bed........a man after my own heart!!

Oh, my soul.............

2011-10-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many people are actually reading this blog, but I know there are a few! So I'm sure a few of you have noticed that I haven't posted in a while. On October 14th, my father was admitted to the ICU for severe pneumonia. He died on October 21st. His funeral was Monday. Our pastor blessed us with a beautiful service which honored the gentle, humble, self-less Christian man that my father was. We also had a perfect day on Monday to lay him to rest. Needless to say, the past week has been very tumultuous. I was at the hospital with my mom every day, Hubs was trying to hold down the fort (thankfully he was on fall break) at home, and our schedule was entirely disrupted. I am finding that grief comes in bursts. I will be totally fine, then something silly like a slight change in plans will bring a rush of tears. Part of the grieving process, I guess. I am also VERY tired all the time which is unlike me.

My wise cousin (who also homeschooled for many years) told me yesterday after the funeral luncheon that I should just take it easy and take the rest of the week off from school with the boys. I had planned to start up again in full force today. In some ways it is good for me to get back into a routine. When she sensed that I needed to start getting on with things, my cousin suggested that I ease into it and perhaps consider taking a nature walk today instead of diving right back into our academic routine. This turned out to be a perfect suggestion.

So today I took the boys on a hike at a state park about 25 minutes south of where we live. We have hiked here frequently, but not recently because the park was inaccessible most of the summer due to flooding in our area. My oldest son has really been asking to go, so I took them today as a surprise. It was a totally beautiful day and it was so good for my soul to be outdoors. I took many hikes with my dad when I was a little girl, so the day brought many fond memories of those times together. I felt close to him and it was like a balm for my soul. I took several photos to remember our outing. I'll share a few of those with you now..........I should be back to homeschool blogging soon.

Dreamgirl, whoopie pies, and why homeschooling rocks!!

2011-10-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

I just had to hop on here quickly and post about what's been on my mind recently. I have a TON of things that I should be doing right now, but I never claimed to prioritize well. ahem........

First of all, the boys and I had "life skills day" on Thursday and quickly whipped up a batch of homemade whoopie pies for Daddy right after he left for work. Then we rushed up to surprise him with them at work. His work is about a 25 minute drive from our home. I brought matches and candles and we sang "Happy Birthday" to him and had him blow out the candles. I know he was both surprised and touched. And we would never have been able to pull this off if the boys were in school.

During the time we were at Daddy's office (he's a college professor), my boys were visiting with Daddy's colleagues. At one point my six-year-old grabbed me, planted a kiss right on my lips and announced to everyone that I am his "dreamgirl". Words to warm a momma's heart. I know there will come a day when I'm no longer his "dreamgirl" and that role will be filled by someone who is a.) closer to his age and b.) not his MOM! And of course that should happen because it would just be weird for him to exhibit the same behavior and say those words as a sixteen-year-old!!! Still...........I am realizing more and more that homeschooling is allowing me to keep a close connection to my precious boys, one that would surely be challenged and perhaps even strained if they attended school all day. Inevitably, the influence of their peers would take greater precedence than the influence of their parents. And I definitely want to continue to nurture our relationship as long as possible. It's great to be a homeschooler...............especially if you're also a "dreamgirl." :-)

Story of the World: Chapter 2

2011-10-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

This week we finished Chapter 2 of SOTW. In this chapter we learned about the Egyptians and the Nile River. We learned why the Nile was so important to the Egyptians and how it flooded predictably at the same time each year which allowed the farmers to plan ahead and plant in the fertile soil once the floodwaters receded. We also learned about the battle between the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt and how the "White King" of Upper Egypt, King Narmer, finally defeated the "Red King" of lower Egypt. From that point on, the kind of Egypt's crown was red and white, representing the combined Upper and Lower kingdoms.

The boys completed the map activity from the SOTW Activity Guide. They traced the Nile in blue and also colored the Red and Mediterranean Seas blue. Then they colored a green border along the Nile which represents the fertile silt deposited by the flood waters. The remaining land was colored tan or yellow to show the desert. These maps were then glued into their history notebooks as shown below. I thought they did a great job!!

On our second day of history, we learned about the myth of Osiris and his brother, Set. A perfect example of an UNLOVING brotherly relationship!! Set tricked Osiris into getting into a coffin, closed the lid and threw him into the Nile River to drown. Osiris' widow, Isis, was so bereaved that she cried a river of tears. The Nile also mourned the loss of Osiris and ran dry, causing a drought. Isis wrapped Osiris' body in cloth, making the first mummy, but then Osiris came back to life. The river was so overjoyed with Osiris' return that it filled up and overflowed it's banks. And that is why the Nile river floods every year............according to Egyptian mythology. After reading about this, we made our own model of the Nile river using the directions in the Activity Guide. We flooded the river and set it outside on our deck. Hopefully grass will grow along its' banks soon. My little guy wondered a few hours later why it hadn't grown yet!! He also said we should throw "that guy" (Osiris) into the river like in the story. (We have an Egyptian TOOB of figures that has Osiris in it.) I was just glad to know he had listened to the story since he is pretty fidgety during our read alouds!!

First Grade Reading: Camping Week

2011-10-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

I explained my system of planning reading for my first grader in THIS POST. I thought I'd try to do a post each week sharing another week of our learning together in reading/language arts in case it helps someone else. Last week our main guided reading text was Our Camping Trip printed from Reading A-Z. In addition to reading that book, we did some of the worksheets from Reading A-Z which focused on long /i/ words and contractions, both of which were skills taken from the text. The worksheets are shown in the photos below. Note that I added the yellow highlighting on the right worksheet. Although he is very capable of doing so, I didn't think my son was paying close attention to keeping his letters between the lines, so I highlighted the space and told him to make his letters sit in the "yellow". This is a great way to help children visualize on papers with lots of lines.

As a writing activity, I had him brainstorm a list of things he would take on a camping trip and I made up a quick little paper for him in Word using clip-art and a table for organizing his list.

I also checked out the book Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping and read it to him one of the days. Then we talked about the story elements and he dictated them to me as I filled them in on a story map we had printed from Reading A-Z.

I am finding that I really like planning his reading this way. It's easy to find other literature and poems that correspond to the topics in the guided reading books and I feel this makes his reading experience more integrated and rich. Can't wait to share what we're up to with his reading this week.........but you'll have to wait until NEXT week to find out!!

Weekly Wrap-Up: Sept. 26-30

2011-09-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm linking up to Kris' Weekly Wrap-Up. I like the idea of summarizing our week here on the blog, but I haven't been able to pull it off very often. Our weeks feel very full and busy. I am now teaching 9 piano lessons a week and three Kindermusik classes. It is a great way to make extra money from home, but it does take up a lot of my "spare" (haha) time. I realize that I am not taking many photos of our day to day learning that is not "project" related. I guess that's okay. I'm including quite a few photos in my other posts throughout the week.

SC (the 4th grader) has just finished reading The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden. What a great story!! I can't tell you how many times he's asked me today if I think Chester the cricket will ever come back to New York to visit Tucker, Harry and the Bellini family. I love it that he's asking this, because it shows me that he really connected with the characters in this story. One of my biggest goals for him in reading this year was to get him to love reading fiction. I think we're getting there. I think it's a sure sign of a great book when the reader is left yearning to learn what happens next. SC is going to finish up a final project with this book and I'll be writing a post this weekend (hopefully) to detail our learning with this book. This week SC has also started doing some lessons in Easy Grammar. He does Handwriting Without Tears cursive twice a week as well. He is enjoying our history and science curricula so I'm glad we've made a switch there. In math, he's busy working with fractions and we are both loving the Right-Start materials and lessons. He and I will also go on a field trip tomorrow that's only for 4th graders and up. I'm looking forward to that special time with him.

LG (the 1st grader) has been following our new format for reading (I wrote about it HERE). He read a leveled reader about camping and we pulled out some skill work with that book including work with contractions. I read the book Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping to him and together we completed a story map. He's also worked on his sight words each day and does Handwriting Without Tears twice a week. He finished his Lego Mini-Figures book, so we'll start a new on-going writing project next week. In math LG has been working on reading and representing 4-digit numbers. LG has not been very into the new science curriculum and it's intended for 2nd through 5th grade, so he is a bit young for it. I purchased the Real Science Odyssey Life curriculum which is more for his age group and I may start doing that with him on his own a couple of times a week and just have him sit in on the Chemistry labs, but not complete the lab sheets.

As I posted earlier this week, we did the first chapter of The Story of the World this week. We learned about nomads and did some cave paintings. See THIS POST for the details.

Real Science Odyssey: Chemistry

2011-09-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote a few posts back about purchasing the RSO Chemistry ebook from Pandia Press for our science curriculum. Their ebooks are currently on sale through the end of September. I ended up buying the Level One Life Science curriculum too. I just love how their curriculum is set up and I am loving the ebook format. I can easily print off only what we need and multiple copies of the lab pages for both boys. For now we are doing science twice per week. I teach it on Wednesday mornings and my husband (the one with the PhD in science and who is a college science professor) teaches on Thursday mornings. While he is better qualified to answer questions than I am, I'm really excited that I get to teach part of this great curriculum to the boys.

On Wednesday we did a fun lab to discover how small atoms are. First I read the "for my notebook" pages to the boys. These are pages that explain the concepts in kid-friendly, attention-grabbing language. We learned that a 2 mm dash like this "__" contains 40 million atoms. Isn't that amazing? For the lab, we smelled some uninflated rubber balloons and examined them closely with a magnifying glass to be sure there were no holes. Then (with the boys in the other room), I put a small amount of water in one, some cinnamon in one, some almond extract in one, and some lemon extract in another. I then inflated the balloons and numbered them. They boys smelled the balloons to try and guess what each contained. The gist of the lesson is that atoms are so small that the "scent" atoms from the cinnamon and extracts were able to "squeeze" between the atoms of the balloon so we could smell them. Pretty amazing when you think about it. I just love how hands-on and fun the labs are. Hubs gets to do one on Thursday morning which explores how atoms move. I'll try to remember to get photos. Here's one photo of the balloon lab that I managed to take.

One more thing before I forget.............I keep pretty close tabs on the stats for this blog. If you like what you're reading here and don't want to have to remember to keep checking, please consider signing up for an email subscription. You can do so using the link in the right sidebar. It's FREE and that way you'll get updates via email each time I post. Just a tip for those of you who don't use Google Reader to keep track of your blog reading.

Story of the World: Chapter 1

2011-09-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

This week we spent two days reading Chapter 1 of SOTW. We learned about nomads and what they ate (lizards, yuck!) and the boys completed a lapbook component with pictures of the various foods of nomads. I forgot to take a picture of it though!

On our second history day, we journeyed into a deep, dark cave (my husband's "mancave" in the basement........one of the only rooms in our house without windows) armed only with our torch (a small flashlight). We quickly built a fire (lit a candle) for warmth and for cooking.

Once in the cave we decided to do some cave paintings to let future generations know more about us. Below are the ones we did. I had to take these with the light on to show them, but we drew them by candlelight (and a little flashlight). This was a fun experience that I hope the boys will remember.

Great Graphic Organizers

2011-09-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

On Monday of this week I stumbled across a great website with lots of free printable graphic organizers. I am finding that I like using these a lot with my oldest son as we work on reading comprehension. When I found this website, I was doing a Google search to find a printable story map with the major literary elements. In addition to finding the story map I wanted, I found a wealth of other resources. I'll share a few of my favorites now, but I encourage you to visit the site to see what other goodies you can use. HERE IS THE LINK to the website itself.

Here are a few of the things I printed immediately. My excitement over this find greatly increase my son's writing workload on Monday, but (bless his heart!) he didn't complain a bit!!

Since the boys and I had gone to the play "Ferdinand the Bull" last week at a local children's theater, I had him fill out this "Play Response" form. I was planning to have him write about it anyway, but having this great form to write on was better than the blank notebook paper I was planning to have him use. (NOTE: All the forms shown here were completed by my fourth grader, not my first grader!)

I thought he did a great job on this. He really took it seriously and I love the illustration he added in lieu of an actual photo from the play.

The play was VERY different from the book and I'm sure I could find a great compare/contrast organizer on the website, but for now I'm really happy with how well he summarized the main details of the play. I also liked that there is a place to circle his "rating" of the play at the bottom. We are going on a field trip this Friday and I've already downloaded and printed a Field Trip Response form for him to complete next Monday.

I also found this Reading Log form that I like a whole lot. As you may remember, in addition to reading a piece of literature together (where we work on vocabulary, comprehension, literary elements, etc.), I'm having my fourth grader read an additional book (his choice) for 30 minutes each day just for fun. I'm not quizzing him on it or having him write about it or anything like that. The focus is just on reading for readings' sake. I'm so proud of him for reading three lengthy chapter books so far this year (and he's almost done with the fourth!). I have been having him just keep a log of the titles of the books, which I'll continue to do so we can keep track of what he's read. However, after finding this form, I've decided that from this point on I'll have him complete the form when he finishes each "just for fun" book. It's a quick form to complete and it allows him to categorize the book by genre, rate it, and write a brief summary. Below is his form for Because of Winn-Dixie, which he just finished last week.

The next photos show some bookmark printables that I found and loved! I haven't used these yet, but they are just what I needed although I didn't realize it until I saw them! When we were still doing A World of Adventure, my son and I had talked about the different types of conflict in literature. Even though we've put AWOA aside for now, I still wanted to continue to help him analyze conflict in future texts that we read. So.....I'm loving these bookmarks. I made several copies of the page you see below. My plan is to cut them out and have them available so he can easily grab them to mark places in the story where he has identified a particular type of conflict. When finished with a book, the bookmarks used can be stapled together in a group as documentation of our learning and thinking about that particular book.

In our AWOA curriculum, we also talked about the development of plot. Needless to say, I was thrilled to find a set of "plot" bookmarks. Again, I've printed up a bunch of these and I'll let him use these to mark where he finds the various stages of plot development in a story. I'm sure that initially he'll need a lot of assistance from me in how to use these tools, but I am hoping that over time he'll be able to use them himself.

These examples are only a few of the treasure trove of resources available at Cheryl Sigmon's website. Be sure to visit and check it out!!

How I plan for my first grader's reading block

2011-09-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write a post to explain how I've been planning reading for my first grader in case it might help some of you out there. As a former special education teacher who worked with struggling readers, I have pretty firm beliefs about what components should be included daily for beginning readers to build a solid foundation of reading and writing skills. Therefore, our reading/language arts (R/LA) block each day has the same general components or activities which include: writing, guided reading, re-reading, working with words, and independent reading. During our R/LA block I work directly with my little guy for the most part. We can usually complete everything in about 45 minutes give or take, and I don't usually time it, so that's an estimate. During the time I work with my first grader, my fourth grader is doing his own 30 minutes of independent reading from a self-selected text as well as reading the next chapter of our focus literature text.

We usually start with writing, but not for any particular reason. I am using my son's interest in Legos to encourage his writing. To start the school year I had him create a scene with his Legos. Then I had him act out the scene. I took "action" photos as he moved the pieces and narrated the story. Then I printed all the photos out on printer paper, one per page, and he wrote his own book using his ideas and his own Lego creation as a basis for the story. He wrote one page per day until this book was finished. Below you can see the first page of the book. He never complained once about writing!! He finished his fire truck story and is now working on writing a page each day in a Lego Mini-Figure book I made for him. He writes two sentences in this book each day. I'll try to remember to post photos of that book sometime soon.

Guided reading is a "teacher" term that simply means reading with some adult support. I use printed books from Reading A-Z as the basis for my first grader's guided reading texts right now because most readers that are commercially available for young readers are either a.) too phonetic or b.) too hard. Reading A-Z offers a range of printable books with lesson plans (which I don't use, but they're very well-done) for the most beginning readers (one or two words per page) through about the fifth grade reading level. For my example in this post, I'm showing the book Scaredy Crow, which I chose as our focus text last week. Once I selected that core text, we pulled skills from it throughout the week which I'll show in a minute. The first day, my son and I looked through the book at the pictures and talked about the story. I pointed out a few words I knew he wouldn't know and also told him and pointed out the names of the main characters. We also talked about some features of the text such as quotation marks around the words the characters spoke. Then I had him do his "first reading" of the book. The next day and one other day during the week he re-read it to me. More about that below. In the photo you can see the book along with a cut and paste worksheet I found with -ow words. Since the book made reference to "scarecrows" and "crows", we used -ow words for some of our word work this week.

Re-reading previously read texts is very important for emerging readers and may be something you haven't thought to have your students do. Here's why it's so important. The first time a child reads a new text, they are focusing so much on pulling the words off the page that their fluency (how smoothly they read) does not have a chance to develop. Additionally, they are working so hard to solve unknown words that their comprehension may be somewhat affected as well. So.......be sure to have them go back and re-read at least short bits of text they've previously read. I always have my little guy re-read a new book at least one time. Poems are also a great type of text to re-read several times because their rhythmic nature can really facilitate reading fluency. This week I found two poems about crows and scarecrows online. I printed them out and read them to my first grader on Day 2 of our week. I had him select the one he wanted to learn, then we read it together a few times. He continued to practice this poem throughout the week and read it to his grandmas on the weekend. And boy did his fluency improve!!! I had him illustrate the poem and we'll put it into a poetry binder along with other poems we use and learn in this way.

Our "word work" time each day always consists of working with both sight words and decodable words in some way. I wrote some about our sight words and word wall in this post. Each day we review the sight words on his "word ring" and practice spelling them in some way (i.e. writing on marker board, writing with gel pens on black paper, spelling with magnet letters, stamping with letter stamps). Additionally, we do more word work either with a lesson from All About Spelling (3 times per week) and/or with a skill I've pulled from our focus text. This week as I said above, we worked on words with -ow (long o sound) since it tied into our story and poem for the week. One day I spelled the word scarecrow with our magnet letter tiles (on a burner cover........these are great, cheap magnet boards!) and had him rearrange the letters to make new words, then he wrote those words in his spelling notebook.

One final extension we did this week was making a "scarecrow" book. I found a simple graphic in Microsoft Word and printed three pages with the text "My scarecrow can scare away _________" and my first grader filled in an animal name and drew it next to the scarecrow. The last page said, "But he doesn't scare me!!" You can see one of his pages below.

So that's how I plan a well-rounded, interest-driven reading program for my little guy. I'm really happy so far with how it's going.

OOPS! I almost forgot! I also have him read for about 15-20 minutes to himself each day. He can choose any of the books we've done with guided reading, but he usually chooses from a box of Scholastic Lego Readers that we have. One funny thing........he loves to go into his little "reading cave" to do this. He uses a laundry basket with blankets draped over the top and sits inside to do his reading. Luckily, I can hear him reading inside the cave so I know he's not just chilling out in there!! The photo below shows his little reading cave. In this photo he's sitting on a chair in our schoolroom, but now he usually sets it all up on the end of the couch. His little stuffed kitties go inside the cave with him and he lines it with pillows, then puts his box of books in the laundry basket part. He sure couldn't read this way in public school!! It's great to be a homeschooler!!!

Story of the World (SOTW): Introduction

2011-09-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

I like that most of the chapters in SOTW are easily broken up into two parts. We will be studying history twice a week and science twice, so this easily fits into our schedule. We did the introduction over two days this week. In the introductory chapter we learned about what history is, what archaeology is, and how we can find out about the lives of people who lived long ago without talking to them or interviewing them.

After listening to the first half of the chapter, we made a family timeline and recorded major events from the year 1900 through 2011. I just taped a bunch of papers together and made the line with a marker, then the boys helped me figure out where to mark birthdays, marriages, etc. We're planning to hang this in the schoolroom and add to it as we grow! I also showed them how we could take a "piece" of the timeline and break it down into smaller parts, such as a timeline just for 2011 broken into months.

We are also going to make lapbooks for each chapter. Fortunately, I had found and saved this awesome lapbook for SOTW Volume 1 a while ago. Instead of putting our components on file folders, we're putting them into a blank spiral bound book. It will be much easier to store!! Below you can see the cover of my oldest son's book. We just printed out the cover page and glued it to the front of the blank book.

For Chapter 0 (the introduction!), we added a pocket about "What is History?" I just had my first grader do the pocket. However, for my fourth grader, I had him do the pocket with pictures and then write a short paragraph about what he learned about "what is history?". We then folded his little "report" and added it to the pocket. His lapbook pages are shown in the next two photos.

For the second part of the chapter we learned about what archaeologists do and we had our own dig!! This is an idea from the Activity Guide, but I loved seeing how Satori and her mom did a similar dig over at Satori Smiles. Below are photos from our dig.

I mixed up sand, cornstarch, and water to make the sand hold together a bit more than it would otherwise. Then I put it into a metal cake pan (after I'd put a bunch of "artifacts" into the bottom of the pan) and marked off a grid with pieces of string. I showed the boys how archaeologists excavate one area at a time. Luckily, we took a field trip a few weeks ago to a real dig site and I was able to show them a photo of an area marked off into a grid with trenches. If it weren't for the wonderful flexibility of homeschooling, they probably wouldn't have had a real-life experience like that to tie into their learning.

We "excavated" into a colander to be sure we didn't miss any little pieces.

When we found something, we put it into a baggie and labeled the bag with the coordinates of the square we'd found it in.

I had made up a grid worksheet for each of them to record their finds. They had these on clipboards and it was all very official and very fun!! So............no regrets about staying up until after midnight to get this activity prepped. It was totally worth it!! You can see my 4th grader's grid below.

FIAR: The Story of Little Babaji

2011-09-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Technically The Story of Little Babaji is not a Five in a Row book. Truly though, any book can be used the FIAR way. Since I'm trying to align our FIAR books with the country we're studying in Expedition Earth, I needed a book set in India and this one fit the bill. Those of you who are near my age may remember the original version of this story which was called Little Black Sambo. In efforts to be more policitally correct and culturally sensitive, the newer version was written. Most of the main story elements remain the same, however.

We did not do any projects to go with this book. However, a few that would be good companion activities include this Taj Mahal coloring page (NOTE: The Taj Mahal is not in the story, but is important to the study of India.) and this game from Homeschoolshare. I actually printed and laminated the game for the boys to play but so far we haven't fit it in. The Homeschoolshare link also includes a bunch of other ideas for using this book.

So here's the deal..........

2011-09-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

In THIS POST I explained that I have been considering making some changes to our program for this year. I've now made those changes and I feel SO MUCH BETTER about what we're doing!! I promised to explain what I'd decided, so I'll do that now.

Our major change is that I've decided to put aside A World of Adventure for a few years until both of my boys fall into the age range that is intended for which is 4th through 8th grade. I was having a hard time with the difficulty of the literature selections even for my oldest son. And it was also really hard for me to keep my youngest son involved. The publisher does offer a companion curriculum for adapting it for younger students. Still, I feel sure that the direction we have chosen to take is best for us this year. I want to restate that I do think AWOA is a really great curriculum. We were not unhappy with it; it just wasn't a good fit for us at this time.

For my oldest son's literature I am going to let him choose which chapter books we'll read. Now we are working on The Cricket in Time Square. I'll write a whole post on our work with that book once we've finished. I love this book so much and am so glad he chose it. George Seldin's writing and characters remind me a lot of E.B. White who I also love as an author.

For language arts we are adding in Easy Grammar (4th and 5th grade level). We've just barely started this. I had managed to get a copy for a great price at a used curriculum sale this summer. I am also considering Winning with Writing for a writing curriculum for him. It is very reasonably priced and looks really good.

For history we are going to use The Story of the World. I already had Volume 1 and the Activity Guide and was originally planning to use it before I chose AWOA instead. We have done the first chapter this week and are LOVING it!!! I will be posting more about it soon. With all the references in the AG I'm easily able to add extra reading and writing for my 4th grader to amp up the challenge for him. I'm SO excited about this!

Another change I'm really excited about is that this week (tomorrow) we'll be starting a new science curriculum. Again, I had originally wanted to use Real Science Odyssey from Pandia Press for science. Then I chose AWOA and decided not to order. Through the end of September Pandia Press is offering a discount on their ebooks and I jumped on it and ordered the Chemistry curriculum. It is intended for Grades 2-5, but the labs are hands-on and the text is written just right for children so I think my first grader will do fine with a bit of help on some of the lab sheets. My husband (who has a PhD in science) teaches science to the boys on Thursday mornings while I teach Kindermusik in our home studio. He'll do one lab with them a week and I'll do one. I have to admit that I'm so excited about this curriculum that I'm a bit disappointed I don't get to do it all. Admittedly, he's way more qualified than me to answer their questions!!

I can't tell you how much better I feel now. When I made my curriculum decisions last spring as a new homeschooler I really wanted something I could open to tell me what to do each day, especially for my oldest. Even though I'm a certified, licensed teacher and have taught for 20 years, this made me feel better. What I should have know is that even when I taught in public and private school settings, I ALWAYS had to tweak everything and add in lots of my own activities and ideas. It's just the way I love to teach. The changes I've made much better reflect how I love to plan and teach. So it's all good. Can't wait to post more soon!

Spelling and Vocabulary City

2011-09-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

If you have not already utilized the FREE and very awesome website Spelling City, please consider doing so. While there is a subscription option that allows you to do more, with the free option you can create your own spelling and/or vocabulary lists and then your child can play online games using the word lists you've created. I used to use this site a bit when my oldest son was in third grade. I put in his weekly spelling list and printed out worksheets for him to do to practice his words.

In our homeschool, I'm using the vocabulary list option and am finding that I LOVE it! As I mentioned a few posts back, my oldest son is currently reading The Cricket in Times Square for literature. On THIS website, I found online quizzes to go with that book as well as vocabulary lists. I typed the vocab lists into Spelling City and every few chapters I'm having him use my list to write definitions for his words. He writes the definitions on index cards which are filed alphabetically in a card file. After he does his cards, I give him various games to play using the lists. He then reports to me his "score" for the game. So far he's really enjoying doing his vocabulary this way. One great feature is that when you type in a list as "vocabulary" the program automatically offers you several suggestions for definitions and allows you to pick the one that fits the context of the book you've taken the word from. Therefore, you don't have to spend time looking in a dictionary for a good definition of each word........it's already done for you!! This free resource is well worth a look! Let me know if you already use it and if you have any additional suggestions for getting the most out of this great resource.

Word Wall

2011-09-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Increasing sight word vocabulary is a daily part of my reading/language arts program with my first grader. I have word lists from our local school district for kindergarten and first grade. He had mastered the kindergarten list last year as a public school kindergartener. I used the lists to assess the first grade sight words he already knew. Then, each week, I'm adding about 5 "new" words for him to learn. I am taking these from the unknown words from our first grade sight word list as well as words he doesn't know from the guided reading books we read each day. His "new" words are added to his "word ring" and he does various things each day to practice them such as stamping them on paper, writing them on a marker board or building them with letter cubes or magnet letters. I wanted a place where he could refer to these words during writing and also a place where all his "known" words would be easily accessible for more "word work" activities. I decided to use a folding presentation board (I bought it at Hobby Lobby) and turn it into a portable "word wall." Many early elementary classrooms have a "word wall" of frequently used words and I think its a very valuable addition to any classroom, including home based classrooms. I didn't have the wall space in our schoolroom to devote to a word wall, but the presentation board is the perfect solution since it folds flat when not in use.

I used shipping labels (cut in half) to print my alphabet letters. Then I printed all the words he's already mastered on those teeny tiny return address labels. These labels come 100 to a sheet and their size is perfect for the presentation board. In my previous life as a special education teacher, I had a word wall with words that had velcro on the back and attached to a felt-covered bulletin board. That way as we added new words we could reorganize the existing words in alphabetical order. With the printed labels, I didn't worry about ABC order. Some of our "word work" each week will involve having him pick a letter and alphabetize the words beginning with that letter on a separate piece of paper. I am really happy with how this turned out and I'll post more in the future to let you know how we are using the board.

Taking a little detour

2011-09-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

We are now about 4 weeks into our homeschool journey. Overall, things are going very well. However, after reflecting a bit about the curriculum I've chosen and how it's working/not working for us, we are making a few changes.

As you may know if you've read my curriculum page, I chose A World of Adventure from Learning Adventures as my main curriculum for my oldest son who is in fourth grade. In hindsight, I admit that I chose it because it reflects the kind of education that I wanted to give him and I liked the fact that Dorian (the author) had done all the work for me so I could just open to "today's" lesson and be good to go. I should have known myself and my child better than that, but I'm sure that many a homeschool-newbie has followed this same path or something similar. Before I go on to explain some of the changes we're making, please know that I think this is an excellent curriculum and as of now we are not abandoning it entirely. It's good stuff.

So............here's what's going on. First of all, I really wanted a curriculum that presented history in a chronological manner and I really, really wanted the literature we read to correlate with the history period we were focusing on. AWOA completely fit the bill in this department and that's largely why I chose it. The first six-week unit in AWOA is Ancient Egypt, and the main literature selection is The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. The literature selection is recommended to be read aloud and then there are comprehension questions for discussion in addition to vocabulary and written language assignments. Although my son was not complaining (bless his heart!), I soon realized that this particular text is pretty advanced for a fourth grader to easily comprehend, even when it's being read aloud. Keep in mind that my fourth grader is a gifted learner. And still, I found that it was really hard for him to keep track of the characters and all the details of the plot. So I asked my mom for advice. She taught reading and language arts in the upper elementary grades for MANY years and is truly the voice of experience. She basically confirmed to me what I already knew.........my son would not make gains in reading comprehension from a text that was too difficult nor would he grow to love literature (remember, he's a non-fiction kid) if only presented with texts that are either a.) too difficult or b.) not interesting to him or c.) both a and b. Essentially, she gave me permission to abandon the book entirely and try to find something that my son was more interested in and that was better suited for him. And I had to get over my need to have our literature align with our history study. Which was a bit hard, but I'm over it now. :-)

Luckily, my mom (the veteran retired teacher and lover of books) had a whole stash of great upper elementary chapter books in her basement. I hauled about 12 to 15 home and the next day I allowed my son to (gasp!) read the cover blurbs and choose which book he would read next. (Sidenote: The Book Whisperer author would be so proud of me. I actually heard her voice whispering in my ear as we made this transition. I'm totally serious.)

So now we are happily reading The Cricket in Times Square by George Seldin. I LOVED this book as a child. Fortunately there are a ton of free resources for this book online. For example, Lesson Pathways has a really comprehensive list of very cool activities and links to enhance a child's experience with this book. THIS LINK has been invaluable as it has an online quiz for each chapter as well as activities, vocabulary and English lessons. I've been having my son take the online quiz after reading each chapter. In a future post I'll share what we're doing with the vocabulary lists. I haven't used much yet from THIS link, but it looks like a bunch of good stuff. And of course there is a great bunch of resources at Homeschoolshare. Many of them are for making a lapbook. I'm not yet sure if we'll be doing a lapbook. If so, I'll be sure to post about it.

I feel much better about our literature now that we've made this switch. I think The Golden Goblet is a really wonderful book. In fact, I may finish it myself to see what happens. We may just hold off a few years and try it again. As of now, I'm not sure how we'll be using AWOA. After abandoning the literature component, my plan was to continue using it for our study of history as well as for some of the science units it includes. However, the further I go into this journey, the more I find myself wanting to tap into my children's interests and to build learning experiences around those topics. I'm realizing that by randomly (although it was far from random..........weeks and weeks of research went into my curricular choices!) choosing curriculum without considering their interests and needs, what I am offering them is really not a whole lot different than what they'd get in public school. So I'm taking some time to reflect on this realization and to think about what it means for us and what direction I want to go next in our exciting journey. I'll be sure to post more on what transpires very soon!!

I'd love to hear from you if you've had similar issues. I am 100% positive that I'm not the only one!!

FIAR: A Pair of Red Clogs

2011-09-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

We "rowed" the book A Pair of Red Clogs for our third week of homeschool. We tied this book into our study of Japan in Expedition Earth. This is a sweet story with great illustrations that all of us enjoyed so much. There is a great resource page for this book at Homeschoolshare. We did not end up using many of these resources because I'm finding that we are learning so much from the living books we check out from the library about each country. With the living books and the resources from Expedition Earth, I am not feeling the need to do a lot of extra activities with each book. I had planned to do a simple origami project with the boys for this book, but we ended up rowing it on a week that began with Labor Day and ended with an out of town field trip, so we didn't get around to the origami.

We did do a quick kimono art project that I found on Art Projects for Kids. I enjoy doing these projects with the boys and thought our kimonos turned out great. As suggested in the project instructions, I made a cardboard "T" shape which we traced with a Sharpie marker to give us all a uniform starting point. Then we used oil pastels to add the details.

FIAR: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

2011-09-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

During our second week of homeschool we "rowed" the book How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World by Marjorie Price man. We have been trying to over lap our FIAR books with the country we are studying for Expedition Earth, but I couldn't find a book to go with South Korea which we studied during our second week. So.......since the season is right for apple-picking here in Iowa, I chose this book which I love so much! The boys loved listening to it every day and retelling all the places the girl has to go to get the ingredients she needs for her pie.

I found a bunch of great printable activities for this book at Homeschoolshare. However, as I am getting further into homeschooling (a veteran of over 3 weeks now........haha!), I am finding that doing every cute printable activity I find may not be the best fit for my two boys. Which kind of stinks because I really like cute printable activities. However, I am learning about their preferences and while I had visions of the awesome lapbooks we would complete for each book we row, I am finding it hard to fit in time for all the extras. And truthfully, I don't think their experiences with the books will suffer if we don't do a bunch of paper and pencil or cut and paste activities. Please know that I LOVE the idea of lapbooking and still plan to incorporate it into our learning, I just haven't found the right balance yet. However, I wanted to add a link to the wonderful resources for this book from Homeschoolshare. That site is truly a treasure trove if you haven't already discovered it.

So, instead of having a cute lapbook to share here, I'll share some photos of our first "field trip" to a local apple orchard where we picked our own apples.............

A few days after we picked the apples we made an apple pie out of them. And BOY was it yummy! I used this recipe which I've made in jars (SO cute and fun), but just made a regular "big pie" with it. I really like the syrup coating on the apples with this recipe.

About Montessori

2011-09-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

A few of you have asked why I haven't set up a Montessori curriculum for my sons this year as I started homeschooling them. While I understand why you're curious, it surprised me a bit because I honestly hadn't thought about the fact that I wasn't using a Montessori curriculum for them. After it was brought to my attention, I was forced to reflect on why I hadn't set up our homeschool environment in a "Montessori" way. So I'll do my best to put my thoughts about that into writing here. Please don't hesitate to email me or leave a comment if you'd like. I love getting comments!

OK, first of all, my Montessori training is for 3-6 year olds and that is the curriculum I'm most comfortable with in regard to Montessori education. I can assure you that if I'd started homeschooling back when they were in preschool or younger, our "schoolroom" would have had a definite Montessori vibe with open shelves and materials from which they could self-select. That said, I don't have the training in Montessori Elementary education. I have thought about getting it in the past, but it just hasn't been feasible from either a financial or time-commitment standpoint.

Next, my oldest son (who is turning 10 soon) attended a private Montessori elementary for first and second grade. It was a wonderful school and I feel he got a great introduction and exposure to the key elements of a Montessori elementary education. If he were attending a Montessori school this fall, he'd be in the 9-12 year old class.......and that is definitely out of my realm of expertise when it comes to Montessori training. I think Montessori is a wonderful model, even at the older age levels. I just don't feel that I could replicate it in a homeschool setting. As I researched homeschool curricula almost obsessively last winter, I wasn't able to come up with a resource for "doing" Montessori with upper elementary children in a home setting. If any of you have any suggestions or references for something like this, I'd be thrilled to take a look!

From the little I know about Montessori education at the elementary level, I know that there is a great deal of emphasis placed on non-fiction reading and reading for research purposes. While I believe these to be very valid and necessary goals for children, my oldest son excels in this area and would spend all his time reading non-fiction or for research if given the choice. Reading and understanding fiction at a higher reading level is an area that I felt I needed to focus on with him this year. So when I chose our main curriculum (A World of Adventure by Learning Adventures), I was looking for something that had literature at its core and which tied in the history and science with the literature components. In many ways, I can see that the structure of AWOA actually closely matches what I can imagine would be emphasized in an upper-elementary Montessori setting: lots of content reading from "real books", learning history in chronological order, and hands-on projects to reinforce concepts.

Finally, I think one of the basic tenets that characterizes Montessori education is to "follow the child". This, more than any material or exercise, is what I believe to be the essential message of Maria Montessori. Given that, I will definitely be implementing a "follow the child" philosophy in our homeschool setting as I try to build on my children's interests and strengths while simultaneously matching my support and encouragement to their areas of need or struggle.

I truly appreciate being asked this question. It has been very thought-provoking and reflective for me to ponder. And I hope I've adequately explained my reasoning for choosing the path I've chosen. If any of you are using a Montessori approach with your older children, I would really love to hear about it!! I love how blogging connects people of similar interests and allows us to learn from each other.

I. Love. It.

2011-09-03T13:35:00.000-07:00

My intention is to write on this blog more regularly than once a week, but, boy!, homeschooling sure is keeping me busy! On top of homeschooling my 2 boys, this week I added teaching 8 piano lessons and 3 Kindermusik classes. Perhaps that explains why I've been absent in this space! Also, when we get going with our school days I find that I forget to take many pictures. I'll try to be better about that!

Here's what I love about homeschooling so far:

I love not having to rush myself and the boys out the door each morning. We are easing into our school day gradually, trying to start around 9:00 every morning. This allows me time to exercise before school as well as time to check email, clean up after breakfast, throw in a load of laundry, and gather any last minute things I need for our day.

I love starting each school day cuddled on the couch with my two favorite guys in the whole world. We have been reading a short devotion from the book Jesus Calling each morning. It starts our time together on a positive note, which I feel is very important.

I love that I've had time to make homemade bread for us to enjoy twice this week so far. It disappears quickly! Is there anything better than homemade bread fresh from the oven?

I love being able to incorporate my boys' interests into their school day. One way I've done this with my little guy is to have him create a scene with his Legos. I then took photos of several "action" shots as he manipulated the scene to tell a story. I printed each photo on printer paper and each day he's been writing the words to go with one page. When he's finished, he'll have his own book! This is a much more motivating way for me to get him to write than anything else I've come up with!

I love having the flexibility to add in little field trips that support our learning. Yesterday I took the boys apple picking at an orchard since we read How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World this week for FIAR. I'll post more about that later.

So.......I'm loving it.

A few of you asked about why I'm not incorporating a lot of Montessori materials into our homeschooling. Which is a fair question since many of you followed me for that last several years over at My Montessori Journey. I've been thinking about how to answer that question and will try to do a post about that soon. I just wanted to pop in here today so you'd know I was still around. :-)

FIAR: The Story About Ping

2011-08-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

During our first week of homeschool, we "rowed" the book The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese. I have loved this book for a long time and it was great to share it with the boys. My oldest son had heard it before, but my youngest hadn't. This book gave us a good chance to talk about the consequences of behavior since Ping decided to hide out to avoid a punishment.

On one of the days we did an art project and tried to draw Ping. I found a great website with lots of easy step-by-step drawing instructions for drawing a variety of animals. CLICK HERE to go check out that site. My little guy was in a bad mood when we did the drawing project, but did a nice job. He colored over the top of it, so it's hard to see his drawing. I thought SC and I did a decent job with our little "Pings" as well. I think my Ping has been eating a LOT of fish! haha

We also did a sink and float experiment to explore the concept of buoyancy, which is represented in the story. I used a sink and float paper from Homeschoolshare. Before we did the experiment I had each boy fill out their predictions about whether each object would sink or float, then we tested the objects to see if our predictions were correct. They enjoyed this experiment very much. I think we'll be doing a lot more of these in the future!!

Since the story of Ping is set in China, we also "traveled" to China in our Expedition Earth curriculum this week. The boys were so excited to build the Great Wall of China as a special project. To do this, we followed Erica's directions and it turned out great! We used one whole box of Project Bricks plus a bit out of a second box. We have plenty left over now to build a pyramid or castle. I ordered the first box from Amazon, but found the second box at Hobby Lobby in the hobby section.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the Wall being mightily defended by an army of LEGO mini-figures. One of the attackers was a LEGO gorilla wielding a banana for a weapon.......not much threat to security there!

Weekly Wrap-Up: What We/Mom Learned Our First Week

2011-08-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

I have been silently lurking around Kris' blog for several months now. Her blog gave me lots of inspiration (and a few giggles) last winter after we made our final decision to homeschool. At that time, we had not told many people about our decision so I was quietly spending hours every night surfing the web and absorbing everything I could about homeschooling. Thanks, Kris, for giving bloggers the chance to link up here each week to share. I'm excited to write my first wrap-up post.

We started homeschooling (for the first time ever) on Monday the 22nd. We made the first morning special by going out to breakfast. The boys were excited to get going and we had a great day.

Then Tuesday rolled around and the honeymoon abruptly and unexpectedly came to a HALT. On this day, my youngest threw me a bunch of attitude about doing his schoolwork. To my surprise, I burst into tears when talking to the Hubs about it. He wisely reminded me that I could not declare our homeschool journey a disaster on the second day. Although my feelings were raw, I needed the reality check.

I think I had built up homeschooling so much in my mind that it was destined to never be able to live up to my pie-in-the-sky visions of what it should look like. The letdown I felt on Tuesday reminded me a bit of how I felt upon having my first child. When you are expecting a baby, it is so exciting and as you anticipate the arrival of your little one, your focus is mainly on all the great and wonderful experiences that child will bring to your life. And, of course, having a child IS an amazing and wonderful experience. However, once the child is born, the reality of living with a newborn sets in quickly. Late-night feedings, diaper blow-outs, and inconsolable crying can quickly bring a new parent to their knees. Tuesday was a little like that for me. I have wanted to homeschool the boys since my oldest was born 10 years ago. It's kind of like a pregnancy that lasts for 10 years. I have spent the past decade dreaming about finally having the opportunity to stay home. During that time, my mind has engaged in multiple fantasies about those "perfect" homeschool days that would surely manifest themselves once I quit my job and stayed home to teach my sons. The funny thing here is that I've been a professional teacher for 20 years. I should have known better!

So............what I've learned this week is that homeschooling is going to be a transition for all of us. It will take time and patience to adjust to a new routine. As my cousin, Phyllis, (a veteran homeschooler) said, "Those perfect homeschool days will be few and far between. You'll have mostly good days, some days will be just okay, and some will be just plain rotten." I'm now feeling much less stressed and much more realistic about our homeschool journey. I guess it's a blessing that this catharsis happened on the second day of school instead of the 102nd!

On Monday and Tuesday I was a little uptight and a slave to my schedule. By Wednesday, I decided to relax and go with the flow. I reminded myself that a benefit of homeschooling is the flexibility it allows. Why not take advantage of that!

Perhaps as a result of my new-found attitude, Wednesday and Thursday went well. We went to a homeschool park day on Wednesday morning and got to know some other homeschooling families in our community. I think we'll all look forward to this fellowship each week.

On Thursday, my little guy asked if we could start our day by building the Great Wall of China, a project to go with our Expedition Earth curriculum that we hadn't gotten to yet. Although I had planned to have them wait until our core subjects for the day were completed, I decided to say, "Yes! We can absolutely start with the Great Wall today." After all, it's more important to me that he was excited about learning than that he does his tasks in the order that I deem best.

So we worked on the Great Wall throughout the day and fit our other learning around waiting for the layers of bricks to dry. My little guy repeatedly said, "This is going to be our bestest building ever!" He was so excited about it, although he also frequently commented that "I didn't know it was going to take this long." I reminded him that it took hundreds of years to build the real one, so it's not unreasonable that it would take us a day or two to finish our model!

At lunchtime on Thursday, my oldest son suggested we have a picnic lunch outside. So we threw a blanket under our big walnut tree (the one we named our school after!) and had a picnic lunch. While most of my friends were missing their children who went back to school today in public school (or maybe they were doing the happy dance!), I was enjoying a picnic with my two favorite boys in the whole world and reflecting on how great it is to be a homeschooler!

You can see our picnic blanket under the tree in the photo above.

I'll be sure to do some more posts soon that describe what the boys have been up to with their work. I wanted to make this wrap-up post about what Mommy learned. I think self-reflection is absolutely vital to success. So my wheels are definitely turning after this first week! I can't wait to see what we'll be up to by the wrap-up next week!

How we're using "workboxes"

2011-08-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

When I was initially thinking about homeschooling I came across several blog posts about Sue Patrick's Workbox system. I really fell in love with the idea of having school work organized this way; however, as I saw others' ideas and thought about how to do it without purchasing a lot of extra containers, I decided to utilize some plastic drawers I already had.

As described on my schoolroom page, each of my guys has a shelf with their drawers and materials. I use adhesive velcro dots to place a label on each drawer and these may change from day to day since they only have 6 drawers each. Also, I've decided to only do science twice a week and history twice a week, so those drawers flip flop each day.

As I write this we are only two days in and so far the boys aren't using these drawers very independently in terms of "working through" them. However, at this stage I am wanting to sit with each of them, especially as they do their core subjects, so I can assess where they're at and then determine what might be most appropriate for them to begin to do on their own.

For now, I'm using some pieces of cardstock that I laminated to write their "assignments" on, and I place these in the corresponding drawer. These can easily be wiped off each day and reused.

In the above photo you can see one set of my oldest son's drawers. In the photo below, you can see his "assignment card" along with the necessary materials (in this case, his Reading A-Z book and science notebook).

I guess you could say that for now we are mostly using our "workboxes" to organize their work instead of as a system to increase their independence. And for now I'm fine with that. I really like having a designated spot to put all the materials they need for each day. It seems a lot easier to break that all down by subject instead of having it all glopped together somewhere in our schoolroom. The drawers are not wide enough for all my teaching manuals, but for the ones that fit, it's nice to be able to stick the manual in the drawer along with a paper-clipped assignment card. So far, it hasn't been taking me a whole lot of time each night to get the drawers ready for the next day.

Our First Day!!!

2011-08-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

Monday the 22nd (yesterday) was our first day of homeschool! I was really ready to start our routine and the boys were game too. (I don't think they actually know that the public school kids around here don't start until Wednesday and Thursday. Shhhhhhhh!!)

I wanted to record a few details about our first day, mostly for my own sake. First off, a week or so ago I came up with the idea of taking them out for breakfast on the first day to make it special. So we did that this morning. They were both really excited about this, exclaiming over and over again that we NEVER go out for breakfast (which is true.........in their young lives we've only ever gone out for breakfast when on vacation). We got a bit of a late start because of an insanely long and drawn-out thunder/hailstorm that lasted most of the night! Enough already! Anyway, the four of us enjoyed a special breakfast out. My oldest (SC) claims that I also promised that we'd go out for breakfast at the beginning of each quarter of school. I have no memory of saying this, but I'm pretty sure it will be hard to make HIM forget it. And having breakfast out four times a year versus zero DOES sound pretty fun!

By the time we got home from breakfast it was about 9:30. I gathered the boys on the couch and read them a book I'd picked up especially for this first day. If you haven't read it, it's a must-read. So uplifting and encouraging. And true! It's called The Boy Who Changed the World by Andy Andrews. I had the privilege of hearing Andy speak at the Women of Faith conference about a week ago and that's when I bought the book. Without giving you a full book review, I'll just say that the gist of it is that everything we do makes a difference and any single one of us can make choices and take actions that can ultimately change the world for good! After I read this to my precious boys, I told them that Daddy and I believe in them and love them so much and that one reason we've decided to school them at home is so we can do our best to help them develop into men that can change the world. It was an empowering way to start the day and I know they both enjoyed the book.

After reading this book, we went into our schoolroom and got started learning about China in our Expedition Earth binders. One of the things that tickled me most this morning was when I told them I was going to read some "fun facts" about China that they could try to learn and remember. My little one (LG) in all seriousness stated that he thought he'd better "write this down so he doesn't forget". He then proceeded to get a piece of paper from the printer and wrote a few notes about what I was saying. I was not expecting such industriousness on the first day, especially from him! Hopefully it isn't just part of the "homeschool honeymoon period"!!

My biggest concern for our first day was the balance between work together and working with the boys individually. My youngest is CRAZY for LEGOs (thus his nickname on the blog "Lego Guy" aka LG) and always has various constructions nearby. When I was working with his brother he wanted to play with his Legos while he waited. I decided this might be a good way for him to be occupied, but told him that when I was ready to work with him he had to put the Legos away without arguing or they would be off limits until school work was done. He was very agreeable to this and it ended up working out well. As we go along he'll have more independent assignments that he can work on that are "school" related, but it was nice to know that I might be able to allow this when needed. After all, we're schooling at home. And playing with his Legos more is one of the advantages that we pointed out when helping him see the "benefits" of homeschool versus traditional school.

Another moment I really loved was when my boys got into a discussion about the land size and population of various countries while looking at our big world map. This conversation came about during our study of China. I was getting a little anxious because I wanted to show them something on the laptop and Hubs was using it at the time. It was a good reminder to me to go with the flow and allow learning in the moment to evolve between the boys. If we hadn't had the delay in using the computer, they might not have had such a good conversation.

One other memory from today is how hard they both giggled when we put their names into Google Translate and listened to the digital voice say their names (and mommy and daddy's and all our pet's names) in Mandarin. It was really fun to see them get so tickled. I did use it as a chance to point out that there might be some little Chinese boys on the other side of the world using Google Translate to listen to their names in English and that they might be falling down laughing too about how different it sounds.

I feel great about our first day. I am going to love this special time with my boys. Being a homeschooler is awesome!!

Planning our year

2011-08-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

I decided to write a post about how I'm organizing my planning for our first year of homeschool. I'm sure as time goes on, I'll tweak this a bunch, but this is what I'm using to start.

I've made a binder that holds several forms and planning sheets. It will be my "bible" for everything important in one place. In it I have an attendance sheet for each boy. I found these at Homeschool Launch. Next is a section with monthly calendar sheets. This is where I can write extracurricular activities such as piano lessons, soccer, etc. Following the calendar sheets are weekly planning lists. I have a separate lesson plan book that my cousin gave me for free that I am using to write our day to day plans. These planning sheets will serve as a to-do list for things I need to copy, prepare, and gather for each homeschool week. I tend to write to-do lists on little scraps of paper, anything I can find, and leave them all over the place. So I know I will benefit from having these sheets in the binder where I can always find them!! The monthly calendar sheets and weekly planning lists are both from Mama-Jenn.

Next, I have a Books I've Read sheet for each boy, also found at Homeschool Launch. (Note: You'll have to scroll down quite a bit; it's under the "Organization" heading.) This will be a nice place to keep track of what they read independently throughout the year.

Then I have a section with sight words lists for my first grader. I have both the kindergarten and first grade lists from our local school district. Next up are some spreadsheets I made to keep track of the Right Start math lessons for each boy. When we complete a lesson, I'll check it off and add the date we finished with any additional notes.

At the end of the binder I have a list of "independent choices" for each of my sons. I think this will be useful for me to refer to either when planning for the week or to pull out during the week as needed to remind me what I can give one to do while I help the other one. I am planning to write a separate post listing some of the choices on this list. Many of the ideas are ones I've found on Pinterest this summer.

In the front pocket of the binder I have a menu-planning list to help keep me on-track with planning healthy meals each week. I'll probably share about that in a future post too.

I'd love to hear from the rest of you about how you organize everything. Leave me a comment if you have a great planning resource.

Food for Thought

2011-08-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

I recently ordered (and very recently finished reading) The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller. I first became aware of this book when Nicole from Journey to Excellence blogged about it over the summer. My youngest son (6 years old) is an emerging reader, and my oldest son (almost 10 years old) is a very gifted reader. However, my oldest generally prefers to read only non-fiction. While I'm happy that he is so eager to devour any and all information he can glean from non-fiction texts, as a book-lover, I really want to try to nurture his love for literature during our homeschool time together.

Although this book is written by a classroom teacher and is intended primarily (I assume) for a classroom teacher audience, I really found it full of food for thought as I plan for our reading together this year. A few points that hit home with me as a homeschool mama are:

1.) Requiring children to only read books that we adults choose for them can kill their love of reading. Miller requires her sixth grade language art students to read 40 books each year and also has genre requirements; however, her students have a great deal of freedom to choose which books they will read. This makes me determined to find a genre that my oldest son can connect with and (hopefully) grow to love. I was the girl who nearly always had her nose in a book all the way from late elementary on.

2.) Requiring children to do a lot of "busywork" or to complete a lot of assigned activities for each book they read can kill their love of reading. I completely get Miller's point about this. It's a bit of a hard one for me because as a former public school teacher, I love the idea of doing a bunch of fun little "projects" to go along with the books we read. However, if I look at it from my own perspective as a reader, I would be much less inclined to read on my own if I had to complete a bunch of work for each book. So it totally makes sense.

3.) More than anything our goal should be to instill a life-long love of reading in our children. This is more important than skills or tests. I can completely embrace this. I do want my children to love books as much as I do.

I really recommend this book whether you are a classroom teacher, a homeschool mama, or just a lover of books. It gives a lot of great insight and (for those of you who love data) the philosophy put forth by Ms. Miller is supported by decades of research in best practices for reading instruction.

Have any of you read this book? If so, what did you think?

A great math resource

2011-08-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

If you've read my curriculum link above, you already know that we'll be using Right Start Levels B and E this year. I am really excited about the Right Start program for both my guys. I dove into it a little bit this summer and used many of the activities during some remedial and enrichment tutoring that I did. I really like the emphasis on teaching beginning number concepts in combinations of 5 and 10 as well as the way the program uses games to reinforce the concepts. It is very hands-on, and without having actually used it with my sons, I already feel that I can say it was well worth the price.

Another great book that I used during tutoring this summer is Mega-Fun Math Games: 70 Quick-and-Easy Games to Build Math Skills by Dr. Michael Schiro. I picked this up at a used curriculum sale this summer and it has lots of really great math games to reinforce learning for children in grades 2-5. I am very excited to play these games with my oldest son this year. If you have a middle to upper grades child, I really recommend this resource.

Expedition Earth!!

2011-08-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am excited about a wonderful geography curriculum that I'm planning to use with both boys this year. It was created by Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler and is only $15 to download. That is a bargain!!

Using this curriculum, we will explore a different country each week. There are different levels of activities, so I feel that both my first grader and fourth grader will be adequately challenged. The most fun of all will be learning together about our world. We went to a "big" library in a town about 20 miles away the other day and came home with a load of books. In addition to getting books about the countries we'll study the first three weeks, we got books about deserts and ancient Egypt to supplement our World of Adventure curriculum. This photo shows our living books all ready to be explored. Can't wait!!

For the Expedition Earth curriculum, I've made up a binder for each boy where they'll keep their work related to the countries we study. Their binders look the same on the outside, but are a bit different inside.

Each binder has a passport in the front pocket. We'll "stamp" each country into our passport as we move around the world. In the photo below you can see the passport sticking out. Erica suggests using dividers and tabs for each country, but I felt that was a bit cost-prohibitive for us given that I'd need 62 dividers between the 2 boys. So......I am going to print a colored map of each continent (included in the curriculum) on white cardstock to use as dividers. I'll probably add tabs to just those sturdy pages for each continent. Then all the papers for that continent will be filed behind the map. You can see the Asia map in the photo below.

Erica has included a details page for each country as well as a black and white flag to color. Below you can see the info page for China in my youngest son's book. I forgot to take a photo of it, but my older son's binder has a more detailed "report" type of info page for each country instead of the one shown here. I won't make him write a detailed report for each country, but I will have him use his more detailed note page to occasionally write a report, maybe I'll let him choose one country per continent to write up as a report. I want the focus of our geography study to be on the joy of learning, without bogging them down too much with "busywork". My youngest son has a flag coloring page behind each country page. He likes to color flags, so I don't think requiring this for each country will be a problem for him.

In the back pocket of each binder is a full-size sticker page that I printed (from the curriculum) with the flags for each country. The boys will attach these flags to their passports at the end of our "trip" to each country. These could easily be printed on regular paper and glued into the passports. I just happened to have sticker paper on hand.

Finally, I am going to try (as much as possible) to choose a picture book read-aloud each week to go with the country we're studying. I'm planning to use a FIAR format, reading the book aloud each day and doing an accompanying activity (which might just be a brief discussion about the theme or illustrations). I'll post my book selections as we go along.

Is anyone else using Expedition Earth this year? I'd love to hear your take on this wonderful curriculum. I forgot to mention that Erica has a ton of suggested resources to use as well as internet links for each country so you can really provide your children a rich experience without a lot of preparation on your part! I also like how she has included prayer cards to allow your family to pray for the people in each country during your "travels". It's just a really well done curriculum and I highly recommend that you check it out!!

It's been a while..........

2011-08-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

............and boy, have I been busy! I finally got ready to post again last night and discovered that Blogger was all goofed up. Apparently, Blogger no longer works with Internet Explorer as a browser, so in the wee hours of the morning, I tried to download Firefox. Stupidly, I tried to move some things into the recycle bin while Firefox was trying to install and bogged down the whole computer. So........I went to bed frustrated and without a post. Dear Hubby got up this morning and got everything going again, and this afternoon I was able to successfully install Firefox. To my great joy, as soon as I tried to open Blogger to write this post, everything looked "right" again. Yay!

I am super excited to start documenting our first year of homeschooling. I've been busy, busy, busy this week planning and preparing for our first several weeks. I cannot tell you how great it is to be spending all these hours planning rich educational experiences for my own two children. In the past decade, I would be spending this time of year preparing things in my classroom for the upcoming year, and dragging my kids along with me while I put in countless hours getting things ready to go.

This morning I spent about 2 1/2 hours meeting with Miss Janet, who is replacing me in my previous Montessori classroom. It was fun to go up and see how she has everything set up. She is going to do an AWESOME job and the families are so lucky to have her!! As I drove down the hill when I left, I paused to ask myself if going there today made me feel at all nostalgic about not going back this year. I immediately realized that I am completely at peace with my decision to stay home. I have no regrets!!

Although this isn't homeschool-related, those of you who have been hanging out with me for a while might enjoy a glimpse of my newly redecorated craft room. I spent much of the last week sewing and reorganizing that space. I am really pleased with the results. To give you the backstory, I am blessed to have a room all for myself in our basement. It has always served as my craft room, and also as a guest bedroom as it has a pull-out couch. All these years (8 to be exact) that we've lived here, I had never done anything to "spruce up" this space. It was organized, but not "cute". This summer the craft area has been in disarray as we've had two garage sales and it has been the necessary "holding zone" for all those items. With great joy, I made a trip to Goodwill last week to haul the remnants away. Then I looked at my craft area with new eyes and decided to sew up some pretties for it. It makes me so happy to make things, and I think it will be more important than ever for me to have a place to "get away" this year as I transition to being home with the boys full time. Without further wordiness, please come along on a little tour........

This is the view looking in from the doorway. I was pregnant 10 years ago when we picked out the red pull-out couch. I now wish I'd gone with a neutral. But.......since this is what I've got (and I do like red) I found some fun fabrics and pulled in lime green and pink to go with the red and make it a bit more "peppy". I already had the shelves up, but I added some red wooden crates we had elsewhere and a few other red accents to make them have a little pop of color. They are still quite utilitarian-looking, but not quite as bad as before. We also added the rug which was rolled up in the rafters of our garage. A quick vacuuming and steam-vac-ing and it was good to go.

Close-ups of my purty pillows. I already had 4 pillows on the couch, so I just used the quilting cottons to make slipcovers for each of them. They have an envelope opening on the back so I can just slip them off to wash. Like if a cat barfs on them, not that that's ever happened.......... :-(

I love this area the most. First of all, I sewed a little skirt for the table to hide all the ~~crap~~ craft items stored under it. They were a real eye-sore in the room and the skirt makes it look so cute. I also used a pillow that had Silly Putty permanently adhered to it and made it into a little seat cushion for the chair. I love repurposing! (And I was so ticked about the Silly Putty!)

Then, I wanted to add something fun to the boring and bare wall above the table. A LONG time ago I'd picked up a big embroidery hoop while thrifting and I've been saving it to use as wall art. I just added a circle of one of my fabrics and Done! It's hard to tell in this photo, but for the CREATE pennants, I Mod-Podged the different fabrics from the space onto scrap cardboard and used some pre-cut letters I found in my stash to spell CREATE. I then tied the pennants together with little scraps of black and white ribbon, then hung them with thumbtacks. I hot-glued little teeny white clothespins on the end of the tacks to hold the ends of the ribbon. I love this so much. It's such an improvement!

In the corner just to the left of the craft table is a shelf with more craft supplies. I whipped up a little curtain on a tension rod to hide everything on that shelf. Then I hot-glued some pink-checked fabric over the top of the circa-1950s lamp from my childhood home that graces the shelf. It looks pretty decent from a distance, just don't look too closely at the back, 'kay? Also in that corner is a little TV and DVD player. I have my exercise DVDs, weights and step stored down here so when I start getting up early (ahem) next week to work out, I'll be able to do so in my own little space without disturbing the household.

There's also a treadmill right here that I will also use (ahem) regularly.

Here's a close-up of my wall art. I have a few more wall decor things to add, but for now I'm so happy to go hang out down here. I've been dragging all my homeschool planning stuff and my laptop down there at night and watching HGTV with my popcorn and glass of wine close by. Heaven!!

PS: I know the ribbon end on the left is longer than the one on the right. Trust me, it's been buggin' me too. I need to even that out!!

Well, thanks for joining me on my little tour. I'm going to write some homeschool-related posts tonight that I'll publish real soon so I can share some of the planning I've been doing. I'm planning to start next Monday the 23rd. I'm really ready to get back into a routine after the summer and I think the boys are too! I'd love to hear from you over here, so leave me a comment if you're so inclined. (Apparently few people wanted to talk about cleaning. haha...........see previous post)

PS: I love Firefox now that I can post again. Blogger was only doing one weird thing while I typed this. Every time I hit return to start a new paragraph, the cursor thingie jumped to the paragraph above, then I had to manually click to get it where I wanted it. Kind of a pain, but I'm so happy it was so easy to post photos and that I could actually post without a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish!

Toilets and Towels

2011-07-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

How about that attention-grabbing title? And what does it have to do with homeschooling? Well, I'll tell ya. Since I'm now home full-time I am trying to get my act together and get into a regular cleaning routine. When I was working full-time I had to just try to fit cleaning in whenever I had a chance. I've seen on some of the blogs I read how some people assign a cleaning task to a day of the week. It reminds me of some cute little embroidered dish towels my mom used to use to dry dishes. Each towel had a little sunbonnet girl doing a various task such as washing, dusting, ironing, etc. (Sidenote: Ironing is never on my to-do list. I'm just sayin'....) Anyway, I've come up with a pretty simple routine that I think I can stick with. It definitely doesn't encompass all the little daily cleaning tasks I do anyway, but it does emphasize a particular area each day of the week. I can't remember which blog I adapted this from, but here it is. I liked this particular sequence of tasks in particular because they are alliterative and thus easy for me to remember.

Monday: Menu planning & Market day (My husband usually does our grocery shopping once each week on his way home from work. I realize how awesome that is. So......I'll probably do menu-planning over the weekend and use any extra time on Mondays doing prep-ahead tasks for the meals we'll eat each week.)

Tuesday: Toilets and Towels (With two little boys I have to give daily attention to toilets, but this will remind me to focus a bit extra on the bathrooms on Tuesdays. I'll also remember to launder and put out fresh towels each Tuesday.)

Wednesday: Wash (I do at least a load of laundry every day of the week it seems. However, I have not been on a regular schedule of changing out and washing our sheets on the beds. So, I'm going to remember to strip the beds and put fresh sheets on every Wednesday.

Thursday: Dust (This one doesn't start with "TH", so if I forget to dust on Thursdays that's my excuse. haha!)

Friday: Floors (I have to vacuum and sweep several times each week due to two boys, one dog and three cats in our home. However, on Fridays I'm going to put in a little extra effort and steam vac a room (as needed) or steam mop the floors.

Hopefully by sticking with this routine, I'll break up the cleaning and be able to have less cleaning to do on the weekends. When I worked full-time, I usually ended up doing most of my cleaning after church on Sunday. (I know, I know...........it's supposed to be a day of rest.)

What's your cleaning routine? Post it in the comments section. I'd love to hear some new ideas.

Oh........one more thing. Two of my absolute favorite cleaners right now are:

Method All-Purpose Cleaner--Pink Grapefruit

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day (Basil Scent)

I love great-smelling cleaners that have a clean, fresh scent. I absolutely despise using any cleaners with a chemical smell. I use both of these cleaners almost everywhere, on counters, floors, and pretty much any other surface. Nothing compares to a clean, fresh-smelling house!!

Gotta go scrub some toilets...........it's Tuesday, after all........

Pinterest Love!!

2011-07-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sure many of you have already jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, but if you haven't, you MUST check it out!! If you don't know what I'm talking about, Pinterest is a (free!) online organizational tool which allows you to virtually "pin" ideas that you find online onto virtual "pinboards" that you create. I have been an avid blog reader and follower for several years. I prefer to read my blogs in Google Reader. I like having one place to go to check out who's posted something new. However, I have been less than happy with the limitations of GR for keeping track of posts I want to refer back to. GR allows you to "star" items you like, but then you just get a super-long list of starred items arranged chronologically and it is somewhat difficult to go back and find what you're looking for when you have to search through a really long text-based list of starred items. With Pinterest, you can quickly and easily pin a visual image and Pinterest saves the link, so all you have to do when you want to refer to the idea is click on the image you "pinned" and it takes you directly to the link. The possibilities are endless for how you can arrange and organize your pins. If you are interested in checking out my pinboards, CLICK HERE. It is so fun!! You do need an invitation to get started, so if you need me to invite you, please leave a comment with your email address and I'll send you an invitation. I hope you love it as much as I do!!

Oh........one more thing...........some of you may be interested to know that I have resisted getting on Facebook for many years now. Let it be a testimony to how much I wanted to be on Pinterest that I FINALLY opened a Facebook account. Apparently you can't get on Pinterest without a Facebook or Twitter account. I even emailed Pinterest to ask how to access it without FB and they didn't even reply! I still love them though! I feel kinda sorry for all the people who know me in real life and have friended me on FB because I really just joined for Pinterest and I'm not planning to put any information on my profile other than my name. I know, pretty boring! Truthfully, I prefer blogging to FB now that I can honestly compare the two. You can write so much more on a blog! I guess I'm just a wordy kind of girl. :-) Plus I don't think anyone wants to read about me doing laundry or wiping dried poop off a chicken's bottom (which I really had to do tonight). See.........no one wants to know that. That's why I would be really bad at posting on FB. OK.........wordy girl signing off now.........G'night!

Stories of the Great Composers

2011-07-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Here is another book I bought at the state homeschool conference called Stories of the Great Composers by June Montgomery and Maurice Hinson. This book explores the lives of 13 important composers. In addition to an illustration and simple biography, there is a fictional story featuring each composer which is based on facts or events in his/her life. There's also a fun game in the back of the book that can be used for review of the information learned. And the best part...........it includes a CD with a featured work by each composer. I'm thinking we may alternate between a composer or artist to study each week. This is a great introductory resource for the composers. There are also progressively more advanced versions of this series available, so if we like it we'll probably continue using this resource in future years. Have any of you used this book or series? If so, did you like it? I'd love to hear from you!! (Bloggers love comments! hint hint)

Another Resource for Art

2011-07-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

I picked up The Usborne Art Treasury by Rosie Dickins at the state homeschool conference I attended in June. This is a treasure of a book. It features 22 different artists and highlights one of their works. It gives brief biographical information about the artist as well as interesting details about the featured work of art. My favorite aspect of this book is that there is an accompanying art project to go with each artist. I think we could easily use this as our primary resource for art study this year. I am thinking about making up some study cards depicting each work of art that we can use to review the artists and works we've learned. If I do so, I'll probably put a download link on the blog so you can access the file. Does anyone else use this book? And if so, have you enjoyed it?

Hey, everybody!

2011-07-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a little trip out of town with the boys. We visited my good friend, Beth, and her family and had a super time! It's good to be home though. I am really excited and energized to start writing and sharing a lot in this place. However, I have a van full of vacation "stuff" to unpack, laundry to do, etc. So, tonight I just wanted to share a blog I've been reading for a while that I just love. It's called "Skipping School" or "Unschooled" and is written by a young woman named Kate who lives in Manhattan, is a gifted writer and blogs about being homeschooled all the way through from early childhood to high school. I really love Kate's writing and find it fascinating to read about homeschooling from her perspective. Please head over and check it out. If we bombard her site with Montessori Journey traffic it would be fun to leave her a bunch of kind comments. I know there are a lot of homeschooling mamas who read my MJ blog and who have now headed over here. Let's all give Kate a big pat on the back for sharing her thoughts on this topic. Now GO SEE KATE!!

You guys are awesome! (and one of my favorite resources on the web)

2011-07-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

Seriously. I have the best readers ever!! It's amazing to me that this new blog has gotten over 2,000 page views within the first 12 or so hours of "launching". That is totally because of all you Montessori Journey readers heading over here to see what's up at Walnut Hill. Thanks for visiting!

Since I don't want to disappoint you by having nothing to say over here, I thought I'd do a quick post to share with you one of my absolute favorite resources on the web for art projects, Kathy Barbro's Art Projects for Kids. I used her ideas quite a bit for inspiration in my Montessori classroom, and I've also used them for ideas to do with the boys here at home. Tonight I've spent quite a while browsing her site and pinning ideas (LOVE LOVE LOVE Pinterest) to use with the boys during our upcoming school year. I think if you click THIS LINK it will take you to my Pinterest page where you can view all my boards. I'd love it if you'd leave me a comment to let me know if this link worked and you could view them. I am really new to Pinterest.
In addition, LG made a project from her site today that he is going to enter in the open class of our county fair next week. Last year my oldest son (SC) exhibited a project he'd made using an idea from her site as well. I'm including a photo of LG's project because I think it turned out great. I love how innovative, yet simple Kathy's projects are. Additionally, since I'm not a trained art teacher, I appreciate her descriptions of how to set up the projects so children can be successful. SC, my oldest son, gets a bit frustrated when trying to draw, but I think his confidence will increase if we try some of Kathy's projects and use her suggestions. And you know what else? After pinning a bunch of her ideas on Pinterest, I have a strong urge to start my own art journal and try out her projects. In fact, I think I'll do just that. It's going to be awesome to be a homeschooler!!

OK, here's LG's Starry City Night:

I love how this turned out. It's a bit hard to tell, but in the middle "building", he drew a balcony with a person on it. And in front of that building he drew a motorcycle. So even though this was kind of a "canned" art project, he put his own details into it and it is truly a unique creation. I want to get it matted with a thick white mat and frame it with a wide black frame. And I want it to hang on my wall forever!! :-)

One more thing (and for some reason I can't get Blogger to format any of the text after the picture with left margin alignment.........driving me batty!)......I think that grandparents would LOVE receiving any of the projects on Kathy's site as a gift. I already have a few in mind for my boys to make as Christmas gifts. It's never too early to start planning for that, right?

Welcome!

2011-07-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

Hello! Welcome to my new blog! Many of you have followed me for years over at My Montessori Journey. If you are a MJ reader, thanks for stopping by to see what I'm up to over here. I'm excited to document my new journey as a homeschooling mama here in this new space. We won't officially begin our school year until mid-August, so I'm not sure how often I'll post between now and then. However, I've put quite a bit of time into the pages of the blog, so you'll have plenty to read there. I'd love it if you'd drop me a quick line when you visit! It would be great to hear from you!