... I didn't think we had done all that much, but now, thinking back, I think we have accomplished rather a lot! Maybe we could have gotten a lot more done, but I think being that it's our very first year of homeschooling, we have three different aged kids, and all the extracurricular activities and mystery shops we've been doing, we made out pretty well. Do you agree? See:
Art
We've done two painting lessons so far. We started with primary colors and then we did secondary colors. The kids learned how to use those three colors, and white, to make other colors. They first had to make a light, medium and dark red, yellow, and blue with colored pencils, and then they had to do it again with paint. In the second lesson, they had to do the same thing, with the addition of making the secondary colors using just the primary colors. It was challenging, for me and for them! Sophia, of course, required a lot of assistance, and Chloë worked mostly independently. Jack was somewhere in between.
Along the way, they learned some other skills, like holding the pencil or paintbrush lower to have more control, loading the paintbrush with paint (but not too much) so they wouldn't "scrub paint," and how to mix paint. Ask any one of them, and they should be able to tell you how, on their palettes, to draw out a bunch of the lighter color and then add just a teeny-tiny dab of the darker color to make a new shade. That was a hard lesson for Chloë in the first session. All of her colors turned out too dark, and she was disappointed with herself. She learned the lesson, though, and she did a much better job when making the secondary colors.
We start out the week with Art, and end the week with Music. I like the way it book-ends the more academic subjects, and we begin and finish on a high note that way.
Music
We sang two songs: "Mary Had a Little Lamb", and "Wish I May, WIsh I Might..." several times, both with and without instrumental accompaniment. Sometimes, we sang it a capella; sometimes, we listened to the CD that came with our instruction book; and sometimes, the kids joined in with their own instrument. That became a bit of a cacophony, because we haven't learned about rhythm yet, but it was fun. All week, they looked forward to getting to use their instruments, so when it was finally time, they really let loose!
We also learned about the concept of pitch. I sang high notes and low notes, and then they had to come up with some other things that made high sounds (like a bird or a whistle) and some that made low sounds (Iike thunder or an elephant). Finally, they listened to a dozen different sounds on the CD and had to jump up high when it was a high sound, or crouch down low when it was a low sound. They all did great with that, except for a couple of times when Sophia got confused. We finished up with some impromptu yodeling!
English
I'd rather call it that than Language Arts. Chloë would rather call it Language Arts, so I'll probably just continue to use the two interchangeably.
Chloë: Every morning, she has to correct two mistake-ridden sentences. She has a spelling pre-test on Monday morning, followed by writing any word that she has missed five times in her notebook. If she misses any words on Friday's final spelling test, she has to look up and write down its definition and also make up and write down a sentence using it. She missed three words last night, after being over-confident and not studying, and she had a meltdown about it. After a week of exceptional work and getting lots of smiley faces and gold stars, this was not what she wanted!
On Tuesday, she does her "Tortures," which are a bunch of fun and interesting (but really, torturous, to her) exercises using the spelling words and introducing new concepts in the language. Wednesday, she does a take-home exercise with me; Thursday she does a skill test with the words, and Friday, she does a Cloze test and a Dictation test. My mother-in-law spent hours on typing up this whole program for her for both 4th and 5th grades this past summer, and it has been a tremendous help to me. (Thanks, Mom!)
Additionally, she is allowed to read whatever book(s) she wants to during her "free" time; we haven't yet developed a reading program where we discuss the books, but I want to get to that eventually. She is working on her cursive writing, and I also give her a new writing prompt every Monday. She has to complete that assignment by Friday. This week, her writing prompt was to do a narrative about what she likes about going to the beach. She chose to write all about playing in the sand, and for her first narrative, I thought she did a fantastic job!
{I'm perhaps more critical of her work than she expected I would be, and we had some tears in the first week. She complained tearfully, "You promised everything would always be easy!" and I had to set her straight. No, no, I certainly did not promise such a thing, and I never would. What I did say was that we would have a LOT of fun, and that I would start her over from the very beginning in Math, and we would not move forward until she understood the previous concept. She completely misinterpreted that, and she had to come to terms with the disappointment. I think she's over it now and has realized that yes, Mom is actually going to make her work, and work hard. Sweet Pea Academy is definitely not a fluff school!}
Jack: For now, we are just working on improving his reading skills. I bought Hooked on Phonics for grades Kinder through 2nd, and I started him at the kindergarten level to get him caught up and back to speed. (He should be in 2nd grade in public school, but his reading has progressed quite a bit more slowly than I would have liked, so we began at the beginning.) He moved through the entire Kindergarten level in one week! Now, he is happily working on the First Grade program, and he is eager to continue. I don't want to move him through too quickly, though, partly because we have SO much else to do with school, and partly because I don't want to overwhelm him. I'm proud of both his achievement and his enthusiasm, though!
Other than reading, we have not worked on anything else yet for Jack. I need to do more research to develop a program for him!
Sophia: I started her at the pre-K level in Hooked on Phonics. She learned all of her capital letters in preschool last year, so she whizzed through those and knows them backward and forward. Lowercase letters are proving to be a bit more of a challenge, but after working on them all week, she only has three main difficulties: confusing "a" and "d," confusing "q" and "p," and confusing "n" and "h." We just go over and over it, but not too much, because she quickly becomes bored with this.
She has also started working on the sounds each letter makes. She doesn't quite like the way the HOP program runs her over and over through the flashcards, and I can't quite blame her. It's a bit tedious for a kinesthetic learner like herself; it's more Chloë's speed. Also, she sees Jack breezing through the HOP reading books, and she is eager to start reading and gaining stickers on her chart as well. She doesn't understand that she really does not know how to read yet, and she isn't ready!
Finally, I have been working with her, just a little bit, on her writing. We have mostly been concentrating on the reading, so we will get more into this as time progresses. She is a lefty, so this is a bit of a challenge for Mom, especially since I keep forgetting and putting the pencil into her right hand! We're doing our best, though, and I am careful not to mention her left-handedness and make it seem like it's an issue that must be overcome. I'd rather have her just do whatever is natural and comfortable for her, as long as she is able to produce the letters and numbers the way they are supposed to be written.
Science
For Science lessons this year, we are going to do Biology. Specifically, the girls both wanted to work on animals, so we are going to study the vertebrates.
My intention is to have the children make a lapbook for both our Science and Social Studies lessons, so I introduced that concept as well, after our first Biology lesson on Monday. On that day, we discussed the Five/Six Kingdoms (I'm mainly going to keep it as a talk about the 'five,' since they really aren't ready to study more deeply than breaking the bacteria into two different kingdoms, I think) and developed their first mini-book for the unit. I assembled the blank mini-book, and Jack wrote down the Kingdom name on each page.
Sophia didn't get a whole lot of out this lesson, I don't think, but she did enjoy playing with the pictures I'd printed out and laminated to represent each Kingdom. I let her glue the pictures in each page of the lapbook, and she liked that.
Chloë wrote all the information that I presented them with for each Kingdom on that page of the mini-book.
On Tuesday, we went on a field trip to the zoo in Norfolk. We are going to make that our weekly thing, every Tuesday, because there is a story time at 1100 followed by a meet-and-greet with an animal or two. The story time is a bit of a wash, because it's attended mostly by toddlers (which cured my of my baby fever PDQ), but they seriously enjoyed getting up close and personal with the two critters who visited this week. Here, we have a skink. I forget what Sophia said about him, but it was cute. She compared the way he felt to something familiar to her, and I wish I could remember what it was, but it was a rather brilliant comparison!
The second animal they were allowed to meet was the chinchilla, which of course they loved. His name was Ashley, and the girls absolutely loved him. "Awwww!" came the chorus.
There were lots of interesting things in the education room, so the kids spent a little time in there doing some exploring, before we headed out to enjoy the rest of the zoo.
The kids had fun with these turkeys, but when Sophia started harrassing the poor birds, we had to nip that in the bud!
Chloë and Jack had fun popping up inside the prairie dog habitat!
I'll post more pictures of that trip on the main blog later or tomorrow.
Later in the week, the kids and I had a discussion about the Animal Kingdom, and they were able to figure out into what two groups I was separating all the creatures whose names they shouted. At first, Chloë thought it was "sea creatures" vs "non-sea," but soon she was exclaiming, "Oh! I know! It's vertebrates and invertebrates!" I was impressed that she came to that conclusion by herself, with that vocabulary, just by my writing their animal names on two different pieces of paper. I had to help Jack and Sophia along a lot more than that, but now they know that animals are divided into two major groups: Those with a backbone, and those without. Sophia can even tell you that. We are going to make another mini-book for the lapbook about that, and then we are going to begin with Fish. I have about a dozen books on the subject from the library, and of course I have my own personal collection, too. Should be fun!
Social Studies
For this Unit, Jack wanted to study cars and trucks, so I have expanded that into a study on Transportation. On Monday, I introduced the subject by asking them to tell me what 'transportation' meant and then thinking up all the kinds of transportation. With a little nudging, they were able to come up with every single item I had printed and laminated, except for the pedicab/rickshaw. We'll be able to discuss a little history, a little geography, a little about culture, and more with this study, so it should be a lot of fun! We're going to make a lapbook for this Unit, as well.
That afternoon, we went to the library so I could get books about the first mode of transportation that Jack wanted to explore: blimps! I found a couple of books and a VHS tape on the subject, and Jack has watched "the blimp movie" at least a dozen times since then. The kids now know all about dirigibles of every sort, and they have expanded their vocabulary accordingly. It will be a fun study and include lots of field trips. Too bad I can't take them on a ride in a blimp, which Jack really wants to do!
Math
We are using the Math-U-See curriculum for all three kids, and it's going absolutely swimmingly thus far. Chloë has had difficulty with this subject since the very beginning, and while Jack has done a bit better, I decided to start all of them off with the very basic Primer level. After a couple of days of that, Chloë decided it was far too basic for her, and I agreed, so she started on the Alpha level last night. She loved it! I can see that we are going to do very well with this program, and I am so very, very thankful for that after all the tears we've had over the years.
"Extras"
We started our garden in late July, and we have been checking back with it routinely. The squash has really taken over the raised bed in which we put about a dozen different species, so that may be the only thing we actually get this year. Oh, well, live and learn. We went out last night and discovered these three guys, along with many more that are coming along nicely. It was very exciting for all of us! I was able to tell and show them that the fruit of the plant comes out of the flower, which we could see because the flower was still attached to many of the squashies. Fun times!
To fill out the rest of our week, Chloë began her 7th year of dance lessons on Monday, Jack went to Cub Scouts (he's a wolf now) on Monday night, and Sophia started gymnastics on Tuesday. On Thursday, Chloë had her first meeting as a Junior Girl Scout, while I ran my first meeting as a Daisy Girl Scout leader for Sophia's troop. (OY VEY!) On Friday, Jack was supposed to start Aikido (which he calls Karate, but whatever), but Rob came home late and they had to miss it. Bummer!
So that's been our schooling so far. It's a lot of work, but I am loving it. The major trepidation I felt over the summer has vanished, and now I am enjoying every minute of it. Well, almost. Not the whining, the "I don't want to DO this anymore!" that we had at the beginning and occasionally now, but I think I have even solved that problem. We are going to do a Treasure Box, where the kids can pick a small prize every Friday night, BUT there are two caveats: They must do their BEST work and they must have a positive attitude. If they whine and complain, no Treasure Box that week. It's working!
So, hopefully, I'll keep up better with this now that we are getting more into the groove. So long for now!
Fin.
