Just in time for back to school, here’s a bit of encouraging and enlightening news on homeschooling.
http://www.topmastersineducation.com/homeschooled/
Happy reading!
Category: school
Our New School Room
August is flying by and soon the girls and I will be hitting the books again. Since we moved last spring, we are super excited to share pictures of our new school room.
This is the main area for seat work like math, language arts and handwriting. The black bookshelves are from Ikea. The big one holds our library of children’s fiction chapter books and picture books, biographies, reference books, family devotionals, teacher’s manuals, math games and manipulatives, and a few magazines. (We subscribe to God’s World News and Nature Friend.)
The smaller shelf on the right has a cubby for each kid’s workbooks, art supplies in Mason jars, paper, paints, and some extra stuff we may or may not use.
The surface is handy for pencils, stapler, red “in-boxes” for the day’s work, a pencil sharpener and a few other items we want to keep handy. The couch behind this is a great spot for history, science and literature reading.
The bulletin board area is still a work in progress.
The chalkboards are simply art canvases covered with chalkboard paint. These are low enough that the kids can reach them. In the upper right corner is a clipboard for displaying 12 by 12 inch scrapbooking pages. We will use it as a place to show which composer, artist, poet and/or hymn we are studying. The upper left is a picture tray that displays 4 by 6 photos of our family. The bulletin board includes a U.S. map, reading incentive sheets, and a calendar. I’ll add our Scripture memory verses and something else soon.
This is my “teacher” desk as well as the best spot for my kids to do Spanish lessons and typing lessons on the computer. In two of those three-ring binders, I file the kids’ school work by subject. I keep my Well Planned Day planner and other homeschool planning materials here.
This is the storage area for games and puzzles and a few larger educational items. The cash register is where we keep the play money for math.
Thanks for letting us share our new space with you! Happy back-to-school!
So I Married a Rocket Scientist?
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… BLAST OFF!
The Smell of Spring
A goldfinch rests on a branch of golden-green leaves.
A red ray petunia blooms brightly on the deck.
My frog-colored rainboots sink in the soggy bog.
It looks like spring, yes, with the bright yellows and reds and golden greens. But spring doesn’t truly smell like spring until the lilacs bloom.
For three of the past four years, my daughters and I have made an annual romp through the blooming lilac collection at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
This bud is for you, Aunt Lilac!
We adore their heavenly scent, which is why we heartily believe L is for Lilac!
8 Tips for a Great Kindergarten
Homeschooling Kindergarten is so much fun. And while both my Kindergarteners seem to have run off to higher grades in a blink, many of my friends are making plans to teach 5 and 6 year olds at home next fall. So here’s my two cents on Kindergarten.
1. A little structure with curriculum was helpful for me the first year of homeschooling, mostly because I didn’t have a teaching degree and didn’t feel super-confident. But don’t feel compelled to buy/use lots of curriculum for this age group. You can do wonders with a library card and a little creativity.
2. Read-aloud, read-aloud, read-aloud. Reading lots and lots of picture books (and a storybook Bible and maybe a few chapter books) out loud is most essential. Listening to written word read is a vital part of literacy. This is where the library card comes in handy. Check out audio books in the children’s section, too. These are great for car rides, younger sibling’s nap times, or times when Mom is busy elsewhere. This post about reading includes various lists of children’s books you might want to put on reserve at the library.
3. Emphasize reading not handwriting, and don’t complicate letter names and sounds with pictures of apples, bananas and cats. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is an excellent curriculum that avoids the unnecessary “B is for Banana” work. Instead, you point to the letter and say only the sound. A very dear friend/elementary school teacher used it with her children, and that’s how I first heard about this book. It worked really, really well with both my girls. We waited to start it when they were nearly 5. There’s a tad bit of handwriting included in those lessons as well; I consider that part very optional, especially at first and especially with boys. I’d suggest just doing the 10-15 minute reading lesson part and then take a break.
4. If you want to teach handwriting, too, do it at a separate time for 5-10 minutes and don’t rely on pencil and paper only. Hands-on learners seem to like to do letter handwriting lessons on Mom’s back or in a tray of salt or with finger paint or play-dough. Have fun with that; there’s plenty of time for pencil and paper later. Also, lacing cards and writing with chalk are other fun ways to work on strengthening fine motor skills for pencil-holding.
5. Do teach math. For my youngest’s Kindergarten year, we used “RightStart Math Level A.” (We’ve also used RightStart curriculum with my oldest since 1st grade and love it. Check out http://www.alabacus.com for samples and more details.) What I like best is that it is Montessori-style teaching, so it comes with lots of manipulatives and fun math games and visual reinforcements like the AL Abacus. It is really light on worksheets, which I think is wise, and it de-emphasizes counting. It stresses the importance of mental math and thinking through math problems, rather than just memorizing math facts. I personally have totally re-learned how I do math with this curriculum!
6. Go outside! Aside from reading together, almost nothing is more wonderfully memorable than time spent enjoying God’s creation with your children. Soak up the sunshine, smell the flowers and learn their names, discover what little creatures are living nearby — what they eat and where they make their homes. This is science!
7. If you do purchase a boxed curriculum like My Father’s World or Sonlight, don’t let it consume you. You are the parent and the curriculum writers are simply giving ideas. You have excellent, creative ideas, too, and you are the world’s leading expert in what your Kindergartener knows and likes and needs to learn. Don’t become a slave to any curriculum.
8. Stay flexible. Don’t feel like what you do the first year sets things in stone. As you go along, you can always change it up or combine styles or switch out what isn’t a good fit for your child’s learning style or your teaching style. Flexibility is one of the huge benefits of homeschooling.
Origami Love
While my youngest and I were making lollipops last week, my oldest daughter sat at the kitchen table making origami stuff. Last summer I bought her this easy origami kit and she was completely hooked on it after spending an afternoon playing with the kit and my dear cousin.
Over the last several months, she has very much folded herself into quite an impressive little origami artist. So for Valentines, origami was a perfect idea for sharing with her friends. She made these cute little origami frogs. They really hop!
We stumbled upon a new origami book at the library last week — Easy Ocean Origami by Christopher Harbo. The book has directions for origami water lilies. They turned out quite well!
My little artist was not sure she approved of using scissors with origami, as this book suggests for several of its projects. Even so, she had quite a lot of fun making the goldfish in this book, too. But probably the most fun was racing the windsurfer boats. We give the book two thumbs up!
Cinnamon Heart Lollipops and Candies
A few years ago the girls and I started making cinnamon candy hearts, and now it is a Valentine’s week tradition. We use Wilton’s candy melts (the red ones) and cinnamon oil for flavoring.
This year my youngest baker helped the most — especially with the stirring. Her dream is to become a French chef someday.
She loves nearly all projects in the kitchen, except those involving the dishwasher.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Glory in the Interruptions
This week our homeschool had an unplanned, last-minute field trip that turned out to be a very memorable one. We had planned to do our usual school work at home, but then mid-morning a realtor scheduled a showing, and so we needed to leave the premises for at least an hour. I was grumpy about the interruption, but I quickly threw a picnic lunch together and headed to a nearby nature center for an attitude adjustment.
As we meandered into the woods, the sunshine glowing through the brilliantly colored leaves created a magical canopy overhead that helped dissolve my frustrations.
We ate our lunch — during which my youngest lost tooth #6. Oddly, she has lost three of her six lost teeth away from home. After our picnic, the girls and I played for about an hour in the nature exploration area, building a house out of sticks and logs.
The girls would have stayed there the rest of the afternoon, but I was hoping to get in a nice hike through the woods, so we set off on the trail. I lagged behind just a bit so I could capture a picture of them hiking down the path.
I paused to put away my camera, and I looked up when I heard sudden screams. The girls came running madly back toward me in a complete panic. When they ran right past me and nearly all the way back to the visitor center, I knew they must have seen something more frightening than a bee. Through the tears and sobs they finally explained that a garter snake in the path had spooked them. My oldest daughter was first to see it and, thinking it was a colorful stick, had bent down to pick it up just as it slithered off the path.
So much for my hike. Nothing — and I mean nothing — would convince them to head down that trail again anytime soon. I never even saw the snake, but I must admit I felt a little creeped-out, too. We headed toward the nearby dock to re-group for a few minutes at the lake, where snakes weren’t likely to find us. En route back to the visitor center, we came across a “wooly bear” caterpillar, which was much more warmly received than the garter snake.
Shortly after that, we loaded up into the truck and started for home. But just outside of the parking area we noticed a pair of Trumpeter swans on the pond.
Oh joy! And they were close enough to photograph. I turned around, parked the truck, hopped out and captured a few shots of the swans. The girls weren’t eager to hike much closer to the pond, but I didn’t mind. This distance was close enough to photograph the beautiful pair.
If you’ve been reading this blog long, you know I am slightly obsessed with Trumpeter swans, as I have mentioned in this post about a spring swan sighting and this post about how God orchestrates our homeschool plans.
It’s amazing how God truly reveals His glory in the interruptions some days.
Hitting the Books
It’s been a long, hot summer but now we are hitting the school books again! During our break, we read aloud one of my favorite chapter books: Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls. By the way, Rawls is also the author of the tear-jerker Where the Red Fern Grows. Anyway, Summer of the Monkeys partly inspired the sock monkey theme we have going in the school room this fall.
Our bubbly first-grader named her newest monkey Gris.
And our dilligent fourth-grader named her newest monkey Marron.
The sock monkeys and books aren’t all that’s new to the classroom this year. The biggest addition is a couple of used school desks (with storage under the lid!) that I bought from a nearby Christian school that had closed. The girls are quite enamored with these desks, and I love that they are exceptionally durable and adjustable in height.
So that’s a quick update of what’s shaping up around here. I might be back in a few days to discuss some of the books and various curriculum we are using this year. But for now, please excuse me. I have some reading assignments waiting!
Feb. 21 is an Official Snow Day
One of the downsides of homeschooling, from a parent’s perspective, is having to make so many decisions. Which math curriculum? What spelling book? Do we skip learning cursive handwriting? How much time should we focus on this period of history? Should we continue with this language program or switch to another method? The list is endless.
Likewise, one of the best parts of homeschooling is getting to make decisions about your daily schedule. That’s so true today — we decided to declare Feb. 21 an official Snow Day! When there’s 3 inches of fresh snow and conditions are finally perfect for sledding and snowman-building, fractions and spelling words can wait until tomorrow!
Happy Snow Day!
Starlight Writer 