Finding our homeschooling groove

I have a good many friends in the area who are fellow home educators ... mostly thanks to the lovely group of women in my Tulsa Charlotte Mason group. I also have, however, many friends and family who have little to no experience with home-educating. Some have expressed interest in what exactly what we're doing for our Kindergarten year. So I'm just going to throw this post out there...

First of all, I started off last spring with plans to do the curriculum Five In A Row beginning this summer and ending in October when baby #5 is expected. Well, we started with what I had planned for the summer, only to find the girls asking for more. So, I decided rather than include some of the teaching suggestions for older kiddos that were offered in the FIAR volumes, I started would implement some of the ideas for what I wanted to begin next spring. So this is what we're currently doing:

Bible: Daily readings for the NKJ and The Child's Story Bible along with corresponding worksheets from Calvary Chapel's Children's Curriculum.

Hymn Study: We read one chapter (each week) from Hymns for a Kid's Heart Vol 1 and listen to the accompanying cd daily while we finish up with breakfast and clean up. The goal is to learn the beautiful hymns by the end of the term.

Reading/Phonics/Copywork: Since Ainsley is reading proficiently well beyond grade level, she is required to read aloud 10 minutes a day to either Eric or me. She spends plenty of time reading on her own, of course. She does daily copywork that I make up for her using the StartWrite program. I find children have a much longer attention span for doing their "best work" when it's not boring repetition. So instead of making endless "o's" and "a's", I have Ainsley working on hymns and poems for copywork. This week, for example, she's writing the words to "Holy, Holy, Holy" which is also the hymn we're working on in Hymn study.

Emmalyn has also taken to reading this summer. She's been working through Explode the Code bk 1 steadily (almost moving to book 1.5) and loves reading Animal Antics, Bob Books, Step into Reading, and Abeka early readers. We're just discovering the world of "silent e" :)

American History: We use the D'Aulaire books. Narration is only required of Ainsley, but Emmalyn is right there retelling the day's episode from the book.

For those of you who are new to the concept of narration here' s something I found that simplifies this key component in the Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. We use a "narration jar" (an idea provided by a fellow home educator in our group) that is filled with such questions as, " Tell me what happened in order." or "Tell me 5 things you learned about ____." or "Set up a scene from the story with your blocks and dolls." or "Draw a picture of something we read today and explain it to me." Ainsley enjoys picking her own question and so narration isn't something dreadful, but something fun. This method gives a far more accurate representation of what the child has understood of the material over more common ways of testing such as fill-in-the-blank and true false questions. It also helps the child commit the material to memory. He/she decides, on their own, which pieces of information were most interesting to him/her as displayed in what she recalls. This hereby makes the lesson her own, instead of relying on a textbook author or teacher, with use of corresponding worksheets and end of chapter questions, to tell what is most important and worth remembering.

Math: I can't say enough great things about math games. Eric and I really wanted to be certain the kids gained a solid foundation in the concepts of math over rote memorization of facts as is characteristic of most American schools both public and private. So we've opted to play a lot of games from the book, Bringing Math Home: A Parent's Guide to Elementary School Math. We also use Math U See (Primer: complete set) to help teach the concepts such as time and place value. To round out our math, and mostly to keep me on track with the games and teaching, we've recently included Horizons Math K bk1 for Emmalyn and bk2 for Ainsley. I feel we have really covered the basics and established a solid foundation in math concepts using all of these things. We primarily play a game or two, do some mommy-made word problems, and a page in the workbook each day. My kiddos love, love, love math - esp my homemade word problems following math games. ;)

Science: We will begin nature study with our CM group beginning September 7th. We also plan to work on our nature journals and study at home. This year, not only will the girls draw in nature journals, but will be honing researching skills using field guides, nature study hand books and the Internet to find out more information about the subject and will work on labeling parts of their drawings. We also do experiments a couple times each month. We also really enjoy reading from the Tom Burgess books for children: namely the Animal book and the Bird book.

Art: We will be beginning Drawing with Children sometime this term. I'm really excited about this book. I know the girls will really enjoy this each week. So will I!!!

World History (Biblical history): Our plan is to begin Mystery of History in the spring with the girls. We already have vol 1 on cd in our car and enjoy listening to so many details in a Biblical timeline. I'm really excited to integrate this into our home educating!


We also include Artist/Composer study, poetry, Literature, and geography each week. This may or may not seem like a lot of material for a 5 year old Kindergardener/1st grader and her little sis. I assure you we work only on that which the girls express interest in and can handle without any frustration. Emmalyn is free to come and go as she pleases, but she has always wanted to stay. They love to tell Daddy all the things they did "in school" each day. The can't wait to finish breakfast and do their morning chores so that they can "do school". My goal is to continue to foster this love for learning and offer a broad smorgasbord of topics and subjects without hampering their natural creativity and curiosity.

Most of our days school lasts about 1.5-2 hours. If the girls wish to go longer or come back to something we were working on earlier, we go ahead and do that later in our day. We spend a lot of time playing and being outside or with friends. In the late afternoons, we gather everybody up on someone's bed for family reading time. Sometimes we each find our own nook in the room to do our own reading, but most often I find myself reading to the children from a literary classic. They constantly beg for more. It's a great way to end the day after working hard in school and playing just as hard.

I am soooo blessed to be really starting this journey with my kiddos. I pray that this leads us to establishing very close ties as a family. I pray we help build and encourage each other in our faith and educational journey. It's really been fun the last few weeks. It is an adjustment as I have had to plan a great deal more... and finding things for a 2 year old and an eighteen month old is a bit of a challenge. There is definitely a learning curve to getting it all in each day - and some days we don't. I consider a day where we learn about God throughout our day, strengthen family bonds, and have a lot of fun together is a very, very successful day.


To God be all the glory!

daily reminder

Just wanted to post a note to myself.. that every single day spent resting in God is a "best day ever" ... it doesn't matter how many cereal bowls toppled over, spilling milk across the floor... it doesn't matter that laundry is heaping ... Go and sit with Him. Pour over his words with your kiddos. Their excitment alone in the "why's" of the creation story are enough to bring him so close he's tangible. It's the excitement in their eyes that often stirs my heart most. Thank you, Father, for always loving me in unexpected ways - in bringing me the gift of this new day... this brand new moment.

This is the best day ever... :) Thanks for reminding me.

Oh the irony

So my last post was on paying attention to important things in life... okay, so it was a soapbox for a spiel on eating well (which, I will probably always have something new to share on that anyway.) Okay. So most of you know I'm, well, somewhere around 8 months pregnant. Lately, all I want is breakfast food. Lots and lots of it. Now, it's easy to make most of the things I'm wanting... and easy to make them incredibly healthy....

But today, I had a friend make me some fantastic unhealthy ones - well, still better ingredients than most, but not exactly healthy. We had white flour waffles that actually call for bacon grease as an ingredient. We had nitrite and nitrate free bacon of which I ate 7 pieces. Yep, I didn't even tell the kids we had bacon as an option. We had fresh, crispy, homemade hashbrowns. Oh, and the bestest part... the waffles were topped with lemon curd - in all of it's creamy glory! I was in heaven. I ate like a pig. Seriously, I was so full I couldn't breathe... and I'm carrying so low, that I have never had that problem yet during this pregnancy. Yes, I ate and ate and ate more. DELISH!

So she sent it home with me... If you could see my plastered smile! Ah, I get more later. Seriously, I'm nuts over breakfast. I'm blessed to have friends offer to cook me up some craving foods... and watch my kids as I make a run for the store to restock my fruit supply. What a great day. We started out over at her home at 10:30 and stayed until 4:30. Littlest Sissy had no nap today and all the kids we delightful together. It was a cooler day in the mid 80s. What a blessed person I am always... but I was overly blessed today.

Oh, and the icing on the cake - all four of my kids fell asleep on the way home. So it was peaceful and quiet the entire ride. I made some dinner for them and they were all so tired and in need of some down time, they went to their perspective sleeping places, drawing doodle pads in hand (all four of them) and asked me to tuck them in for the evening. The time: 6:40pm. Yee Haw!!!

So I am off to clean up the kitchen and have some peace and quiet time with a book and a jetted tub. What a perfectly delightful day of goodness and blessing. Thank you, Jesus, for really smiling big on me today. I am most appreciative. ;) The single thing that would really make this day over the moon - to have my hubby walk in the door and give me a great, big hug and some snuggles. Ah, maybe in a few days, God willing!

Who knew?

Okay. So one of these days I may get around to getting my food blog up and running... we'll see. It's so interesting - today's world of food. What is even more astonishing is just how much I didn't realize until I started reading. It has knocked my socks off... I literally dread trips to regular supermarket (and now with Azure Standard I won't have to go much at all), bc I don't know if there's much in the way of food there. Honestly, there isn't much. Not real, whole food anyway. We are basically a nation of chemical consumers and genetically altered "food" junkies ... and it's no wonder we feel the way we do. The thing is, many people haven't even given it much thought.

There are lists upon lists of ingredients found and consumed by the majority of Americans that have been scientifically linked to cancer, hyperactivity, anxiety, insomnia, depression, weight gain, headaches, poor vision, balding in both men and women, hormonal problems, infertility, alzheimers, and the list goes on and on. So what do most Americans do about these health concerns? They seek healthcare providers. Who mean us no harm, but what they have to offer, typically doesn't do us as much good, or may have better effects if only we'd make changes in the way we think. And go a step further in allowing that shift in thought to permeate and change our behaviors... And I'm not only talking about foods...

We live in a culture that is so busy running here and there - we live by an overly filled schedule. I am all too guilty of this, too. And in the process, we give little thought to some very key areas of our lives... we're just too busy to add one more thing to our lists of things to think on awhile. And somewhere we get this notion that , "we're young and this is what we do in our 30s and 40s, right?" But then, what really lies in store for us in our 40s, 50s, and 60s? Are we so caught up in the "I'm here and want it now" consumer culture that we really haven't stopped to see what might be coming ahead?

Today's babyboomer generation is seeing record numbers of cancers, heart disease, etc. And the age of those effected by the same illnesses are dropping. In a study found in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (vol 27, no 17 (June 10) 2009) they are projecting a 45% increase of confirmed cancer cases in the next 30 years. And that is only one study I looked at recently. Could it be this harried lifestyle coupled with not so great exercise habits, stress-filled lives and no-thought eating habits and consumption habits (like lotions, etc.) could be causing our bodies to say - "Whoa, I can't run on this or like this anymore."

Okay. Enough soapbox chatter. All I meant to get on here to say was that I recently borrowed a cookbook entitled Nourishing Traditions. Now, I have been interested in eating well, healthy cooking, and getting back to the old way of doing things for awhile now... This book neatly packages it into one book. I think it's great for the beginner. So today, I decided that the Cream Cheese Pastries sounded good. I don't much in the way of sweets in our home. I avoid white sugar at all costs. In all seriousness, that stuff will kill ya - right along with canola oil and other vegetable oils... But I digress.

So I have been in the mood for something with cream cheese. I didn't have any on hand today.... which always gets me thinkin' how people made the item prior to it being in a consumer-happy package at the local market. Well, I learned today you can make homemade yogurt very easily and for cheap. Esp if you have a crockpot or a dehydrator. Yep, and you take that freshly made yogurt and hang it up. Mine is currently hanging from my microwave (it's a much better use of it than using it for cooking/heating anything) and once the whey has stopped dripping, you have cream cheese. With more flavor (and mine is raw milk so it has all the needed enzymes for lactose digestion and processing along with a lengthy list of minerals and vitamins) You get the added benefit of the whey (which also has a bunch of uses, I'm learning) with which you could make homemade ricotta cheese.

Who knew? My grandma probably. Man, in looking around the store, my kids' friends may one day think it novel to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I mean, they now make a all in one package of dump and stir) I wonder if our grandmas were disillusioned by boxed brownie and cake mixes? I'll bet they were. Hmmmnnn and we're trading all this rich tradition and know how for chemicals that are making us tired, making us obese, and making us ill...

That's some food for thought today. :)

Can we get back into the swing of this, please?

Okay. So this whole blogging thing is funny. I don't really have time for it, but if I don't write something down, I fear I will miss these funny chronicles later. So for the record, today I learned that school in the afternoon needs to be VERY light for a 4 and 5 year old. ;)

I had given a brief, 3-second thought to doing a few school-type things with the girls this morning before leaving to meet Eric for the behind the scenes shark tour today. Then I had this funny feeling that if we didn't get there right at 10am when it opened, we'd be sunk. So I got the five of us fed and ready and in the car, grabbed some gas, and headed to the sharks! Only to wait in line and miss the tour cut off by two people. Bummer. We did thoroughly enjoy having Daddy come and see all the things we have been learning at the aquarium. It was fun. I always like having Daddy along for activities. Then we had lunch together...another fun treat we try to do together when we can. Especially during the week before Daddy leaves us for another long business trip.

So we arrived home this afternoon and my first thought was to grab the latest read-a-loud book, head for a bed to rest and read together. Then the girls started asking for school bc we hadn't done any that morning. They really wanted to do math games. I love that they love them! So I pulled out the "Weekly Schoolwork" bin, and rummaged to see what I thought we could mentally handle this late in the day. Ainsley found a few worksheets I had printed off that were a sample from a 2nd grade Math workbook. I knew that they would take major mental energy, so I mentioned waiting on them until tomorrow. Nope. Now there was a challenge on the table and she was all about setting out to see if she could beat it. Well, it did take awhile, but she completed it all on her own. I just want to say I was pretty impressed. So when I went to do something else, she said her brain hurt. I'll bet it did.

Emmalyn was eager to work on reading again, so I told Ainsley to grab a novel to read while Em and I worked through a page or two in her book. Emmalyn sailed through like nobody's business. She might be a kid who actually reads better after a morning of getting out the wiggles, whereas Ainsley and I like to start fresh and rest later on. This could make for some interesting dynamics. :) Oh, the fun!

All in all, I must say that things around here seem to run much more smoothly in the morning hours. I think most of it comes from the familiar routine we have established. Ah, the power of habit formation... I so need to re-read the Laying Down the Rails book and see what other fun things we might practice. Anyway, so I learned lots today... I learned that it's probably a good idea to stick to using the car-schooling ideas on our trips about town and to come home and spend the afternoons reading together. Ah, I love homeschooling. I really, really do.

I truly am blessed to be a mama who gets to educate her kiddos at home. It isn't always the easiest, but it is SO rewarding. I couldn't imagine life any other way - I've tried, but I can't comprehend it. Maybe that's God's doing, I have no idea. I just am grateful and humbled.

I don't think there will ever be enough words to express all that I feel about homeschooling - it's just beyond words. Perhaps until one starts the journey into exploring the world of home educating, it can't really be understood. I'm not sure. All I know is that I certainly didn't understand it before I was led to consider it for our family. It used to be so foreign. Although, I naively thought I had at least the major viewpoints figured out.... ya know, the "whys" of choices of homeschooling families. I still couldn't understand what would draw people to it in the first place. I thought they were mostly comprised of families who didn't want to be separated from their kiddos all day... or families who home educated bc they wanted to be the only major Christian influence in their kids' lives...or families who really wanted to see their kiddos grow in their knowledge. The truth is, all these things fit somewhere into the mix, but that's not the heart of it at all. Not for us. It goes SO far beyond that. It goes SO far beyond even educating... but falls more along the lines of life-training and rich family connections and moving beyond the fast pace of our culture... and, really, so far beyond these reasons. Like I said, it's just beyond words - but the feeling I have of immense gratitude and humbleness... It's tangible. Gosh, that God would lay this calling on my heart and give me all that is needed to step out in faith each day. Why would he chose to bless our family in such a way is beyond me. That He promises to take us step by step through this process, astounds me. I am nothing. I have nothing to give. He is everything.... and I get a front row seat. It's pretty incredible.... No words.

I am constantly amazed by how many blessings I have received in and through the process of our journey in beginning home education. I could have never, ever imagined walking this road even 5 years ago. I couldn't image my life any other way, today.

So among the many lessons I learn each day - from my kiddos and along side them. I am constantly reminded of how little I really know and how much of God I need moment by moment. I think that might be the richest part of the blessing - seeing in many, many details how much I am in need of God and His grace and guidance to get through each day.

Yep, I learned much today... I love my life. I love my hubby and family. I love homeschooling...and I really need to work school into the fabric of our morning routine if possible, but also that flexibility in all of life is a skill and a gift - one that needs embracing regularly.

So, all in all, it proved to me another successful family home educating day...

and we even got in Math and Reading even. :)

Off to read our read-a-loud to my giggling gulls in the other room. I love hearing their laughter. It truly makes me grateful to be their mama... living a full life - with lots of laughter. :)

Hope your day is filled with the awesomeness of God and His amazing grace and goodness...

Lisa