The Home School Month Ahead: August 2014

If you find homeschool organization boring and don't want to know what other homeschool moms do, you can skip this post, you won't hurt my feelings. I for one, enjoy seeing what others do so I can get great ideas for our own school day!

August will be a light month for us, we will only be doing 2 days a week of school to ease back into the school year. This frees up days for us to enjoy the rest of the month! The public school children return to school around the 7th, so that's when homeschoolers take back the park, pools, museums, etc. It's ok, we don't mind sharing the world with all the children, but it is nice to have less busy places to take our children too. It makes kid counting a lot easier at the park.....

So what's up for our family in August!? Well, I finally got to sit down with my nifty Well Planned Day planner and get to organizing!

We will only do school on Mondays/Wednesdays and not every subject. We do not go in any particular order of school work, I ask the kids what they want to work on first. Some people like to get started early in the morning, get math done and out of the way. For us, we are still working on that "magic method.". I do have subjects we do together and some we do separate. Remember H is going into 4th grade and E is going into 1st. So we cannot do EVERYTHING together. Math, Grammar and some electives are separate. So here's our basic August Monday/Wednesday 'to do' list. (I don't say schedule because I do not schedule out block of time in any particular order.)

Bible Study: We do YES Lessons just like I did as a kid in my church. You can find them for free if you are interested here: http://www.coghomeschool.org/site/cog_archives/yes_lessons/COG_Library_YES_Lessons.htm

Along with the YES Lesson we work on Character Studies from Confessions of a Homeschooler. If you haven't bookmarked her blog already, you should open a new tab right now and save it! (Come back here though...) AMAZING resource.

Math: H is still catching up on Teaching Textbooks 3 as we started it late last year. So he's got to finish that up and then move on to Teaching Textbooks 4. Eli does worksheets and Life of Fred. We love Fred, he's great. I highly reccommend it as a math program.


History: We wouldn't normally do History in this part time summer month, but we have a few chapters left to finish up before we are done with Story of the World Volume One. Since we are excited to get started on Volume 2, the Middle Ages to Medieval Times, we need to get done with Volume One! I really cannot speak highly enough about this book series. Reasonably priced, well done, a good history program for elementary students.


ELA: English Language Arts, I don't even like calling it ELA, since that's not we grew up calling English, but I do use it to mean any and all English, Grammar, Spelling, etc. I am VERY literature based and believe children learn best through stories and books, not textbooks and boring technical information. So, we are currently reading Chronicles of Narnia. We are just reading it as we go although I did find several lapbooks and unit studies on it. Surprisingly it was not listed on Teach With Movies, but we will be watching the movie version.
Also in ELA we use a program called Five in a Row. I love, love, LOVE this program. It is similar to how I taught literature based lesson plans when I taught early childhood. We are currently on Volume Two, even though it's suggested you start Volume One in the fall. I decided there were more books I wanted to try in Volume 2 for now.

I love the fact that FIAR is pretty much all you need for a young child other than Math and Phonics! I pick and choose the stories we want to do based on time of year, interests, availability, etc.

Phonics: E is still wrapping up his Saxon Phonics K book from last year. He is doing so good in reading, I could likely just skip the rest of it and he'd be fine, but I do want to cement a good understanding of Phonics since I feel H missed out on that in public school. E goes through his lesson and worksheet in less than 10 minutes.


Electives: We will add more electives in September but for now the only true electives we do is H does a Typing Instructor program on the computer.

He seems to really enjoy this and it reminds me of the typing tutor programs I used as a kid. (On my rocking Commodore 64 mind you....)
In September we pick up more electives like American Sign Language, Handwriting, Music, Creative Writing and Art. I look forward to all of these!

So I hope this helps you see a little bit of just one fraction of what one can do in the area of curriculum!

What are some of your favorite curriculum? Free resources?

~~Amy

**This post contains affiliate and non-affiliate links. All affiliate programs are listed on my Disclosure Page.

March Home School Theme: Butterflies

Well, it's that time of year! Spring is JUST starting to make herself known..more so down here than in you snowy states...sorry! I've got seeds sprouting in the window greenhouse, birds in trees and blossoms on the Bradford Pear outside! Spring IS coming and I will enjoy it immensely as it quickly shifts to 100 degree temps, hurricane warnings and 100% humidity!

Here is a smidge of what we are doing this month:

Unit Study: Butterflies. All Month Long. Read "Butterfly Battle" a Magic Schoolhouse Book.

Make a sensory box with Butterflies from TOOBS. We downsized the sensory box and will be adding fake flowers, grass, and maybe some plastic bugs as well. :)

I've got some really fun ideas pinned here: http://www.pinterest.com/mamaslilmonkeys/homeschool-unit-butterflies/

We made some coffee filter butterfly art of course. Mark on a flattened coffee filter with washable markers. Cover as much of the filter as you can. Squirt with a water bottle, let dry (put paper towels underneath as it does bleed.) Once dry, secure with a clothespin (color it too if you wish!) and pipe cleaner antenna!

I found these blank "books" somewhere, I forget where but likely Target or a craft store. I added the graphic on the front and the boys added the scrapbooking butterflies I found at Dollar Tree. Inside they are free to do what they wish, they've drawn butterflies, added butterfly stickers, written a bit. I challenge them a bit on each page but it's their book to create how they wish.

Of course I couldn't help crocheting a bunch of butterflies to hang on the ceiling! Okay, so that was more for me than them....I also found the big purple metal butterfly on clearance at Hobby Lobby for 7 bucks!

I made this one up this morning. Eli was drawing a caterpillar after we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and finished reading comprehension worksheets on it, so while he drew his caterpillar I created this simple math game. He doesn't like doing math but it pretty good at his math facts. I figure the more ways we can get those 0-20 math facts memorized, the better we can proceed when it's time to bump up in math. I want those facts CEMENTED before we move on, because that's the mistake I think happens in public schools a lot. They teach so many different methods but don't assure children KNOW the facts inside and out. I've discovered my third grader can't spout some of these off the top of his head! What were they teaching him?? That's for another day...

Anyway, I used a hole punch because there is NO way I'd cut those circles so pretty! Trace the circles, write problems in the circle laid out like a caterpillar and as he answers them with the correct caterpillar piece, glue them on. Or have him write the answer for a more advanced lesson where the answers aren't multiple choice.

And of course we ordered a refill for our Butterfly Hatching Kit! We raised them back in August and it was such fun! The caterpillars are on their way!

That's just a bit of what we've done so far. Lots more fun things are planned! Of course lots of butterfly books checked out from the library!

Outside of our Unit Study, we are continuing in Story of the World Volume One. We're roughly half way done. I anticipate having it done by late summer.

In science we skipped ahead to Lesson 14 I think it is in Apologia Flying Creatures for the Butterfly chapter. I admit he doesn't love Apologia, I think he finds it kind of dry as I do, but we are learning from it. It's well written, I just personally loathe science and find it boring. I wish I didn't. I try not to let my opinion show. We're definitely learning, I'm certainly learning things I never knew about God's flying creatures!

Eli works on Saxon Phonics K as well as Life of Fred: Butterflies for math(which spurned this whole theme this month.) Harrison works on Teaching Textbooks for math and First Language Lessons for Grammar. Technically FLL-1 is for Grade 1 (first grade) but since I feel the grammar education Harrison received in public school was hugely lacking, I decided to start him on the first level. We could blow through it in weeks but I want him to really understand it. I'm honestly surprised he got the memorization parts so fast. There really is something to this Classical Education gig!! Eli will start FLL-1 next year for First Grade.

They do plenty of other things, if it interests you, here they are:

Geography: Various websites and apps for geography like Map Snap, Stack the States/Countries, National Geographic Kids, my children just eat up geography. I am actually willing to bet my 8 year old knows more about geography than the average adult.

Language: Right now Harrison takes American Sign Language with me at the homeschool co-op and Eli picks it up as well. I'd like to start Latin but was waiting until I get a bit more homeschool experience under the belt!

Reading: Seriously, just read all the time to your kids. That will teach reading. I honestly think you could throw it all away except a books and a good math curriculum and you'd be all set. Classics, picture books, read alouds, non fiction, just let them read! And read TO them.

PE: We take a PE class with our local gym, but will soon take a break in April to enjoy the two months before school lets out where we get the pool to ourselves.

Music: Daddy's department. He plays guitar. All on him. PHEW.

Home Ec/Life Skills: It's called chores, baby.

Scripture: Very important. I like to use the Bible Writer from Kristen Joy Awake. as well as Confessions of a Homeschoolers' Character Studies. We're on Patience this week. I collect them in a binder and we will go over them again and again. Love, love, love her blog. If not for her blog and Homegrown Learners, I don't know where I'd be! Such great resources.

I hope this gives you some ideas on doing a Butterfly Theme!!

This post does contain Affiliate links and you can read my affiliate list under the DISCLOSURES tab at the top. These affiliate programs help fund this blog and help us buy more fun school supplies! Thank you!!

~Amy

Charlotte's Web Fun

We have been working on "Charlotte's Web" for a week or so now and the boys are loving it. It seems now that we're reading it, we are seeing it everywhere. Spiderwebs in our backyard, pig books in plain sight in the library, finding out today is the birthday of the book being published in 1952, and now I see characters everywhere! I know that's the way life is, those things aren't suddenly there, we are just more aware of them because we are learning about them.

The boys love the book and I'm rather surprised some of the words in the book Harrison doesn't know and stops to ask me what they mean. I was always told he was such a great reader while he was in public school and maybe he is, but these are words he should know. Yet another good reason to homeschool, I'd have no idea he didn't know these words if I didn't take these extra steps! I'm continually amazed at how much they are learning, and how well it is working out!

Here are some photographs from our recent fun! We have some more crafts to do for the book, and an activity pack I printed out. We will wrap it up by of course watching the cartoon version of the book, one of my favorites. 

 We created this little farm sensory barn by adding our barn and animals to our lightbox. We added easter grass for grass and swiped some unused timothy hay from our guinea pigs for the hay for the animals! A little strip of blue felt is the ducks' pond!

 We picked up some little animals from Hobby Lobby and of course had to get Wilbur his own food pail!

 This intricate spiderweb was between our swingset and trees. It was beautiful, I wish I could've gotten better up close pics but it kept swaying in the wind.

 

And just a gratuitous photo of Yoshi the guinea pig, isn't he cute?

I haven't read the book in years and it's still a wonderful, easy read for kids, and my boys are enjoying me reading it aloud. Since we will also be going on a field trip next week to a pumpkin patch on a farm, this ties in wonderfully!!




Long Live Wilbur!

~~Amy