Homeschool and fun

We've been having a lot of fun this summer and have not really kept our blog up to date. I haven't even gotten our summer pictures off of our camera memory cards and played with them or organized them yet. You can say we sped through the summer! Soon after the last post which showed the school room all set up, we had a little flood in the basement due to a busted drainage pipe. That was repaired and all of the books we own (which is probably in the 1000's because of Kyle's school and theology books and homeschool books) were relocated upstairs. Thanks to many friends from church, we finally have our basement back in working order! The break from the little amount of schooling we did in April and May ended up being a blessing. I had a lot of time to think and pray about the way the first 2 months of homeschooling went. It was a great time for reflection. God helped me realize that I needed to change some of my expectations and attitudes and confirmed some things I was wondering about. I'll start with my heart change...

God showed my that I really need to enjoy these young years. I was planning on preparing Jo this spring and summer to start Kindergarten this fall. I was torn because he's just a couple of weeks past the public school age cut off. He's eager to learn and I'm eager to teach, so I thought this was the right thing. However, it was clear after 2 months of starting that I was pushing too hard and he has some fine motor skills that just need some time to develope to be ready for kindergarten. When I say I was pushing too hard, I mean that I was thinking he should understand things that he wasn't grasping and getting frustrated with our results. When we took the 2 month break and came back, he had some time to grow and he's improved so much with his coloring, memory, and desire to learn. I am doing a modified K-4 year with him and K-3 with Micah. God is so good to show us where we need to be and we are having a lot of fun. We do a lot of coloring, play-dough, music, and outside play.

Reading and Writing

As for the R's, we are preparing for Kindergarten. We are enjoying Sonlight books. Some are from the Preschool age 3/4 core package (we just have a couple of these that I bought used online) and I just ordered the P4/5 core used for a great price that I found on a forum I visit often, The Well Trained Mind forums. Sonlight has great books to read out loud to your kids and it encompases history, science, language arts, and Bible. It is an enjoyable introduction to many things. It includes many good treasury books that have so many quality classic picture books.

We are learning the 26 basic phonograms of the English language to prepare for a language arts curriculum that I linked in the last post called Spell to Write and Read (SWR). It's an Orton-Gillingham approach to reading, writing, and spelling. I'm hoping to go to a training seminar to better know how to teach the program, as it's very teacher intensive. But, it is a wonderful program that will give them a great understanding of our language. For this year, we are learning the phonograms and Jo is starting to read some Bob Books, http://www.bobbooks.com/ which gives him a start on reading. This isn't really recommended in the SWR program, but it gives him some practice at reading some of the phonograms he's learned. I've also done a few lessons from a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons. However, I will have to modify some things from the lessons in order not to confuse Jo since some of the concepts are different from the approach of SWR. Although, 100 Easy Lessons has given us a great foundation for how to blend the letters by saying them slowly. Here is a link of the video I put on line of him reading his first Bob book to his little brother, Micah. It was a sweet memory.

Math

For math, they are learning their numbers with flashcards and by tracing the number with their finger. They already have a good habit of counting the right way and we are counting objects as we do a number a week. We are going to start Right Start Level A after they learn to recognize numbers 0-10. We started Right Start Level A in the spring, but Jo wasn't quite ready. I think he'll be ready in about 2 months, though.

Little brothers and miscellaneous

You might be wondering how in the world is this done with a 4, 3, and 1 year old? Well, it is interesting and God gives a lot of grace. I do "circle time" in the morning with Jo and Micah. We pray together and go over our phonogram of the week (so far we've done m, s, a, and e) and the number of the week (we've done 1-4, I forgot 0, eek, I know I should have done that one first, I'll have to explain that one later). Usually Micah interupts some, but he loves being included on this part of school. Jo and Micah have gained a lot from the consistency of circle time and they love going downstairs to do school. During this time, Sammy is usually either napping or playing with toys in the school room. Sometimes, he's sitting in my lap. After circle time, I let the boys color, play with play dough, cut stuff, or play with toys.
In the afternoon, I do a reading lesson with Jo while Micah is playing and Sammy is napping. Jo does a little science some afternoons by observing the tadpoles Kyle caught and brought home. We're studying the lifecycle of a frog and drawing pictures in a science journal. Hopefully we don't kill them before they become frogs! Next, we will watch a caterpillar grow into a butterfly with our Butterfly Garden that our friends Kris and Andrea got Micah for his birthday. Fun stuff. For K-3 through Kindergarten or 1st, we will do geography. Right now, we are just learning the continents and oceans along with a song from Geography songs . They each have their own color coded map that I copied and colored and laminated (so it doesn't get destroyed:) We point to the continents and oceans as we sing the song. We'll probably go over this for a couple of months to really learn it.

I'm hoping to post a few pictures soon after I download them onto the computer and organize them.