Home education highlights {February}

It has been a while since I’ve talked about our home school.  Even though I’ve been silent about the subject, we have busy working and learning in our school.  Here are some of the high lights from our learning in February:

Together we worked on:

    flags of Asia

Geography

We are using My Father’s World Countries and Cultures as the main spine of our curriculum.  To see the rest of our curriculum choices, visit here.

In geography we learned about:

• Kenya and Saudi Arabia
• Memorized the countries in Africa and have begun memorizing the countries in Asia
• The Riffi Berbers, the Pygmies, people of Saudi Arabia and the Kurds
• The religion of Islam 
•  Mancala (homemade game and app on my phone)
• Global positioning

 playing Mancala (link above is to a computer version)

Bible

• Continued reading through the book of Matthew
• Memorized Matthew 6: 19 – 21, 24 – 25, 33, and the Lord’s Prayer
• Read about missionaries:  Mary Slessor, Samuel Morris, David Livingstone

 grassland dioramas

Science

• Grasslands animals and plants
• Experiments with grass (to discover how grass can grow after being eaten by various animals on the grasslands), how elephants stay cool without sweat glands
• Man’s impact on the environment, endangered species, and environmental issues

 In the middle of giving a spelling test, I had to leave the room.  I came back to Grant giving the test for me.  {smile}

History

• The Civil War
• Lapbooking about the Civil War
• Read Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln and Turn Homeward, Hannalee

Greek and Latin Roots

• helios (sun), sol (sun), philia (love), and phobos (fear)

(This pin on pinterest tells about teaching Greek and Latin roots.)

  Reading On the Banks of Plum Creek

Individually we worked on:

Bryce (8th)

• Reading White Fang
• Working on Pre-algebra (fractions and formulas and figures, oh my!)
• Daily written narrations, writing assignments, grammar, and spelling

Grant (6th)

• Finished reading The Boxcar Children.  Began work on Shiloh
• Conquering long division, averages, and divisors
• Daily written narrations, writing assignments, grammar, and spelling

Flower Girl (3rd)

• Reading On the Banks of Plum Creek
• Decoding words with vowel pairs, improving in reading fluency
• Learning to multiply and memorizing multiplication facts
• Writing friendly letters and making words into plurals in grammar, daily oral narrations, and spelling

Sunshine Girl (Kindergarten)

• Has learned all short vowels, still learning the remainder of consonants
• Decoding CVC words (cat, dog, pig, etc)
• Reading short stories
• Learning numbers, counting, calendars, coins, basic addition & subtraction
• Learned about farm animals and penguins

 

Wow!  Despite fighting illness this month, we really learned a lot in our little home school.  {smile}

{The 2011 – 2012 Curriculum Post}

I wrote that title in my best booming announcer voice.

You can hear it, right?  {smile}

Seriously though, I am finally writing this post that I’ve kind of been putting off writing.  There are many reasons why but I won’t get into those. 

 My Father’s World Countries and Cultures

A few things to share, though, before the {big announcement}!  ::wink::

As I was choosing curriculum there were a few things that I was keeping in mind or trying to keep in mind.

Because, you see, I love books and I love curriculum shopping.  I would definitely overdo it if I didn’t keep the big picture in mind. 

Here are the things that I was looking for in our curriculum:

1.  It needed to use living books or whole books.  I tend to shy away from textbooks.

2.  It needed to combine subjects that can be combined {history, geography, science, art…} to teach many grade levels.

3.  This year, I really wanted an easy to plan curriculum.  I needed something where most of the planning was done for me.

4.  It needed to meet our family’s educational mindset which is a little bit Charlotte Mason, a little bit Classical, and a little bit traditional.

For many years I have been researching and looking at My Father’s World curriculum which, by the way, meets all of the criteria I have listed above.    (Except it’s not so much traditional.  I just like traditional approaches to some subjects.)  This year, we finally decided that My Father’s World (MFW) was the way to go.  So far, we love it!

 Sonlight American History plus some other History resources that we use.

The following are our curriculum choices for our 8th, 6th, and 3rd graders.  I wrote about our Kindergarten curriculum here.

Combined Subjects

My Father’s World Countries and Cultures {geography, science, art, music, Bible}

English from the Roots Up {Latin and Greek roots}

Sonlight American History  {started last year, we will finish this year}

Artistic Pursuits (older boys) and Drawing with Children (the girls – the older boys have all ready done this)

Worship Guitar

Spanish

Typing Instructor

Ready to Read Music

Every 6 weeks, we will do an artist study or composer study.  We will also have nature study about once a week.

Bryce’s subjects (8th grade)

In addition to the above, Bryce will also study:

Life of Fred – Pre-Algebra

Applications of Grammar

Spelling Power

Christian Kids Explore Chemistry (1st semester)

Christian Kids Explore Physics (2nd semester)

Writing Strands 4

Literature selections from Sonlight and This list

extracurricular ~ guitar, youth choir, swim team,  Boy Scouts

Grant’s subjects (6th grade)

In addition to the combined subjects above, Grant will study:

Horizons Math

Saxon Grammar

Spelling Power

Writing Strands 3

Literature Selections from Sonlight and This List

extracurricular ~ guitar, children’s choir, swim team, Boy Scouts

Emma’s subjects (3rd grade)

In addition to the list of combined subjects above, Emma will study:

Singapore Math/Teaching Textbooks

Language Lessons for the Elementary Child

MCP Phonics

The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading

Cursive Connections

Daily Grams (we have an older book)

All about Spelling

Literature Selections from Sonlight and This List

extracurricular ~ piano (possibly soon, we hope), swim team, children’s choir

Resources that we use in our homeschool

These are some extras that we like to have around to supplement our studies:

The Story of the World History books

The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia

The Usbourne Internet-linked Encyclopedia of World History

Veritas Press Timeline Cards

FREE math facts sheets from Math-Drills

The Usbourne Internet-linked Science Encyclopedia

Creative Kids:Simple Cooking Fun

1000 Good Books List

 

Well!  If you read all of that, then I thank you very much!  It was a lot to read.

That’s it folks!  Our 2011 – 2012 curriculum choices post is now complete!

 

 

 

Kindergarten week 1 pictures and curriculum

Sunshine Girl has been so excited to begin Kindergarten this year.  This girl loves to learn.  We were originally scheduled to start school on August 15.  Seven days before that, Sunshine Girl started counting down the days until the beginning of school.  Every morning, she would run to us with her little fingers showing the number of days and exclaim, “Only six {five, four…} days until school starts!” 

Imagine how upset she was when the big day finally arrived and she woke up sick!  I really thought her first day of school would not really be enjoyable with a fever and a cough so I postponed the first day of school.  She tried her best to persuade me to go ahead with the school plans but by mid-day, she was feeling worse so it all worked out for the best.

A week later we finally got to have Sunshine’s first day of Kindergarten.  She was thrilled!  Little Brother, who is three, sits in on his sister’s lessons just like he has for the last three years.  I was actually surprised on the first day of school how much he all ready knew.  I’m not pushing him at all.  If he shows interest in what we are doing then he is more than welcome to join us and learn with us.  Today he became bored with an alphabet game we were playing so he went on to play something else. 

We are loving our activity bags from the swap we participate in during July.  The two little ones sit on a blanket during the older kids’ Bible and memory work time and work on the activity bags. 

Sometimes I need to keep the little ones occupied while I teach the older kids.  I wrote here about some of the activities that I keep on hand in plastic shoe boxes that I can easily grab and distribute.  Also listed in that post are links to sites that offer wonderful printables and activities that I keep on hand for fun extra practice. 

Our Kindergarten Curriculum for 2011 – 2012

My Father’s World Kindergarten

Abeka’s Letters and Sounds (phonics)*

Essential Math (Singapore)**

Language Lessons for Little Ones

In Kindergarten, we mainly focus on learning to read, write, and do basic math.  And we read a lot of books!  The little ones also listen in on the lessons of the older kids.  Today the little ones could almost repeat the entire list of pronouns that the older children were memorizing!  I am amazed at what they pick up! 

In addition to the above, Sunshine Girl will also be participating in:

Nature Study, Artist and Composer Studies, Learning to read music, Children’s Choir, Running Club, and Field Trips.

(Possibly piano lessons too if we can figure out how to get the piano that my Mom has given us to our house.)

Notes about the curriculum:

* Both My Father’s World and Abeka’s Letters and Sounds teaches children how to read.  After looking at My Father’s World, I realized that it may move a little too slowly for Sunshine Girl.  She is so ready to read.  I decided to supplement with Abeka’s reading.  I’m not quite sure how I’m going to meld both of them together but I just love MFW (My Father’s World) so I’m going to do both…unless it proves to be too much.  I’ll keep you posted on that.  I am also adding in sight words to her reading lessons that I get from 1+1+1=1. 

** MFW has math integrated into it but Sunshine wanted a math book so badly.  I almost went with Horizons having used it before with one of my older boys but I decided to go with Singapore’s Essential Math.  We haven’t received it yet but Sunshine Girl talks everyday about getting that math book.  She can’t wait! 

So far our Kindergarten is off to a great start.  We are just beginning week 2 and all ready, Sunshine Girl is learning so much.  She is so much fun to teach because she really, really wants to learn to read!  It is so exciting.  {smile}

In our homeschool {week 1}

This week was our first week of official homeschooling for the 2011 – 2012 school year.  We had a blast!  First, we love our new curriculum.  {more about that soon}  Also, we had a light load this week.  I like to “ease” back into the new school year by starting with a few subjects and then adding a few more the next week.  Starting a new school year this way is so much easier and less stressful for us all. 

We began the week with filling out applications for our passports {from My Father’s World curriculum ~ Exploring Countries and Cultures}.  We will be visiting places all around the world and learning more about the cultures, people, and ecosystems of those areas. 

One of our projects in geography was to draw the continents and equator onto an orange representing the globe.  Then we carefully peeled it and tried to make a flat map.  We found out that it is quite difficult to make an accurate flat map.  (The objective of the lesson.)

One of the things that I loved most this week was the books we read together.  During our Bible time, we read the book, God Speaks Numanggang.   This book is about a family who moved to a foreign land and helped the people write down their language.  They then taught the people to read/write this language.  Then the family went on to translate the Bible into the language of those people.  The book moved me to tears. 

image from amazon.com {click image to visit link} 

Another great book this week was Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman.  Last year, we began Sonlight American History (this book is part of that curriculum) but we went so slowly through it that we are going to complete it this year.  The waterworks flowed as I read this book also. 

 

Earlier I mentioned that we did not cover all of the subjects this week.  That’s not totally accurate.  Actually, we start our day with Bible and memory work time.  During memory work time, we memorize verses, Latin/Greek roots & meanings, parts of speech, geography, history facts & dates, science terminology, math facts, and much more.  In those few minutes a day, we cover many subjects worth of information.  On certain days, we also complete notebooking pages about the info that we are memorizing. 

We ended our week with our first field trip to an art gallery.  We were able to work on some art projects such as:

tissue paper flowers

creating sculptures

weaving

We also were able to tour the art gallery and learn some American history while on our tour.

Guess who made this bell?

Love it when you see the history you’ve read about with your children right before your eyes! 

It truly was a great first week back to school.  We are looking forward to this new week where we add a few more subjects into the mix.  The kids are even excited.  I’ve been told that they “can’t wait for a new school week”.  We’ll see if they’re still singing that song when grammar, spelling, and writing get added to the weekly lesson plans! {smile} 

{Our Kindergartner and Preschooler will have a separate post about their first week posted soon.}

This post will be linked at

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