My Children are So Precious!

 Beans, Bugs, homeschooling  No Responses »
Nov 192010
 

No, I’m not biased now, am I?

The girls are in their room playing right now as I’m sitting here working on Lappy on the couch.  Bugs just told Beans, “Did you know that God made you?”  I’m beyond overjoyed to hear the Bugs teaching her little sister the way of faith as she knows it.  Beans did answer yes.  I guess they are listening when they are being taught!

Speaking of teaching, Bugs read the word “Spot” and the word “pop” with very little help in sounding them out this past week.  We’ve been using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons but gave that up a month or so ago.  Bugs was horribly bored with it, and they have lines, dots, and then the symbols for the sounds each letter makes over the vowels, and when we would go and sound out the same word in a “real book” that was in the text, Bugs couldn’t do it.  Even after she had just done it in her text book.  It took me a week to realize that the reason she was having that kind of trouble was because in the “real books” the words didn’t have the symbols and stuff surrounding them. So, we’ve been just sounding out various words while we read and she seems to be progressing much faster and it seems a lot more natural.  I do have another phonics program picked out that we may be getting, I’m not sure yet (our finances don’t have any wiggle room for extras at the moment). We’ll see.  Maybe I’ll get it for her for Christmas.  Ha ha, somehow I don’t think she would like that very much.

Beans is coming along in her speech.  She is a lot clearer than she was, which is a relief. When she is tired or in a hurry you have the most trouble understanding her now.  She can say her sister’s name very clearly and yells for her to come here, I want to show you something, and loves to tell strangers at the store that she is two.  However, she is very advanced physically.  This child is a natural at judo. She’s been tagging along in the school lessons for the Bugs, so I know she is picking stuff up, but how much, I’m not totally sure.  Now to just get completely potty trained and I will consider her graduated from toddler-hood into preschool-hood.

The girls are great friends and typically play very well together.  They make up stories and act them out, they look out for each other and of course, they do have moments when I think they would like to strangle each other.  Bugs figured out how to tattle tale and Beans is already learning to do the same.  I’ve tried every tactic I can think of when the Bugs comes and tattles on her sister, from totally ignoring it, to just saying thank you and repeatedly explaining to her that the only time I want her to come and tell me what her sister is doing is when she is going to get hurt or is hurting someone else.  (yes, I’ve explained time and again what tattling is to her, but her response is always, “I was just telling you.”)  If you have any suggestions on how to deal with this, I would appreciate it. Or stories of how you survived this stage….

Homeschooling has taken more of the unschooling approach this fall.  We do the Developing the Early Learner workbooks when we feel like it, and then it is at least twenty pages straight (yes, Bugs gets on a kick and then we have to do it for at least an hour or so)  We got half-way through book two in two days. They are a great book series on helping develop visual perception, listening skills and early writing skills, I highly recommend them.  I have seen them at many great retailers online, so do some searching to find the best price.  We’ve been reading a lot, which is always a good thing, isn’t it?  We make a trip to the library at least once a week and we fill a huge bag full of books.  In fact, I was using a medium sized bag, but after the fourth week in a row trying to juggle it, the girls and the minimum of five books that didn’t fit in it, I upgraded to a larger bag.  We still have the overflow problems….I think I see the bag and in my mind it is like, oh, we have so much more room and then I over compensate. My husband just rolls his eyes at us with how it seems every time we end up with more books than I can comfortably carry in the bag.  Oh well, at least I have a terrific chiropractor!

I have a ton of writing to get done and scheduled, so this post must come to an end.  I’m trying to schedule posts to make it easier on myself.  It is either that or do housework this afternoon.  I think I would much rather write :)

Good Job Bugs!

 Bugs, homeschooling  1 Response »
Sep 072010
 

Today has been awesome in the school department for us. Bugs finished the first of four workbooks in the Developing the Early Learner series. She loved that workbook and we finished it four weeks early.  Then, this afternoon we resumed our reading lessons (more info on that to follow) and of lesson 11 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, she read six words!  Daddy called on lunch and was told and he was so excited. We then called Grandma. Next up to call is Mimi (my mom).

So, since I haven’t given a school update yet, here we go. This is week 5. After week two, I noticed that Bugs was acting bored with her schoolwork. She was horsing around, pretending to not know things she’s known before and being a general pain. Then she would complain that our read alouds weren’t long enough story-wise, nor enough reading time at all.  So, after panicking about what I was doing wrong, lamenting that I should have gotten the Kindergarten Core instead of the Preschool 4/5 core and asking the help of some homeschooling friends on a forum, I decided to just basically chuck the instructor’s guide for the daily lessons. I’m using it to see what order the books are read in and such but the daily plans are chucked. The workbook we finished today wasn’t supposed to be finished until the end of week 9.  We are over a semester ahead in our science reading too.  And we are just reading in our read alouds and having tons of fun. I think we will be done with most, if not all, of P 4/5 by New Years at this rate. The only thing I’m not really moving ahead on is Bible. I like how it is going through it chronologically and the memory work layout (though, I’m still considering adding some extra stuff to it, I’ll let you know).

Two weeks ago I took the girls to the George Washington Carver National Historic Site. I still need to post pictures of that trip. If you are ever close by, it is worth a stop, and it is free! Yes, a very economical field trip, and being a National Park, they do the Jr. Ranger program so you have lots of ways to work that into school. On September 11 from 10 am to 3 is Prairie Day. Lots of demonstrations, interpretations, story telling and old time gospel, bluegrass, country and western music for FREE! The girls and I went last year and had a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it again in a week and a half. If you are close by, come and join us.

Today I also scheduled a tour of a local chocolate factory. The Candy House is a local establishment that offers FREE tours too.  We are going on the 20th. The girls have fallen in love with Curious George Visits the Chocolate Factory and Bugs has been begging to go see one. I can’t wait.

Then, the 25th is Smithsonian Magazine’s annual Museum Day. They are offering vouchers online (sent to your email) for two tickets to any museum on the list they have. We decided to go to Cowtown in Wichita. Bugs loves Little House and this is close to the same time frame.  I did get the book Sarah Plain and Tall put on hold at the library to read before we go. The movie was filmed at Cowtown. I was wanting a DVD of the movie to she her before we went, however, our library only has VHS and our ancient VCR/TV combo decided that it much prefers eating tapes instead of playing them, so I’m not going to risk having to replace library materials. If anyone local happens to have the DVD, can we borrow it?

Well, I have to go and tweak a book review that needs posted today and move laundry out of the washer. Hope you have a blessed day! I still can’t believe my Bugs is starting to really read!

Reasons We Do School At Home

 homeschooling  No Responses »
Sep 052010
 

I thought I would post some of the reasons why we homeschool today. Keep in mind that this is not an all inclusive list, and I’m sure the longer we do it, the longer this list will be.

-We believe that God gave us the authority and responsibility to raise our children. We will be held accountable for how we raise our children, and to whom else we delegate that authority to.

-We want our children to be taught all subjects with a Biblical world view. The Bible is the standard and basis for our lives, and we want our children to see all of life through that lens. They won’t get that in a public school. Teachers are not allowed to teach with that world view, and the textbooks aren’t even close to it. Children are young and impressionable. We want to do the impressing.

-We want our children to be challenged academically where they are at with curriculum that fits them best. We want them to be able to be taught with the curriculum that works best for them. Education isn’t a one size fits all approach. I am a visual print learner. My husband learns best from hearing things and doing things. We want to be able to teach our children in the best way to reach them.

-The Bugs is already doing kindergarten level work. She will be four the end of the month. She can’t go to kindergarten in this state until she is five. Because of where her birthday is, she will turn six the month after school starts, making her among the oldest in her class. By the time she can start kindergarten due to her age, she will be way advanced compared to the rest of the class. She is already starting to read and she can reason better than a few first graders I had when I taught school. Yes, I realize that next year we may be able to get an age waiver, however, the kindergarten classes for our district are projected to be huge the next few years so there would be a good chance of having that denied (besides, the bus for our elementary school picks the kids up at a quarter to seven in the morning. I’m sorry, but a child that young doesn’t need to be out on the street corner waiting for it that early)

-Our children are only young once, I want to spend as much time with them as I can. I love it that we are the ones getting to witness all their “firsts.” Not just stuff like their first steps and words (which were amazing), but the days when they learn something new for the first time. We get to see those lights go on in their eyes when they finally understand something. Right now we are teaching the Bugs to read. When she figures out a new phonetic sound, and sounds out three letter words are something to see and I get to see it. We get to celebrate it when it happens. I love being the one to get to teach them these things, and being the one to see the results right away.

-Children are easily influenced. I have seen this after my children are around others. They pick up behaviors that they have never exhibited before. After being around one little boy, Bugs started throwing fits just like this boy did. She had never done it before until she had witnessed it being done by another. Also, my girls have always been very good eaters. Never have been picky. After spending time with some other children on a regular basis who were picky, they started rejecting food they used to love. They had seen how these other children ate, how they got to eat what they wanted and tried it at home. That took some time to undo (I refuse to cater to pickiness.). If we sent them to school, what else will they learn? I remember learning a whole bunch of words that were not permitted in my house and getting into trouble for saying them when I got home. I remember learning to really talk back to my mom and getting into trouble. We don’t want to encourage our children’s bent for sinfulness. They do well enough sinning on their own without the help from others. In fact, we want to mold them into Christ-followers, and that is a hard enough job without others influencing against it.

-We strive to cultivate a culture of family. We like spending time with each other and value family. Sending the children away to school would undermine that value. They would be gone most of the day and then come home with homework to do. Our lives would be dictated to by a schedule not of our own making and we would have to order our lives to accommodate it. We don’t want to do that.

-Our kids are just a lot of fun to be with. The stories they come up with are amazing. Right now, they are playing with a box they had conned me into cutting an opening in to make a space ship. Well, right now, it is just a box they are hiding in. The flipped it upside down to make a cave and are taking the part I cut out to cover the one opening. This space ship has been to the moon, gotten buried in dirt and turned into a boat. All since I cut it Tuesday morning. I love watching and hearing them play with it. And I like to play with them. Even if I am normally either the step-mother from Cinderella or Grandma.

-The girls have never been sick like our friends’ kids. I used to work in a day care, and believe me, groups of kids are just hotbeds for illnesses of all sorts. So are schools (worked in two private Christian schools teaching too before I was married). So far, the kids have had nothing too serious illness wise. We did all get that sinus flu-like thing going around everywhere early this summer, and last February we did all get the stomach flu one right after the other. But other than that, they’ve had like three colds. When I was in day care, some of our continuing ed. stuff said that by the time a child is two, they have had ten colds on average! That is a cold every-other-month from the time of birth nearly! Mainly from children going to school or daycare while sick, passing it around, then the virus mutating slightly and getting to go through everyone again. I have other things I would like to be spending our money on instead of constant doctor’s visits and copays from illnesses that could have been avoided in the first place.

Basically, to sum it up, homeschooling our children is something we have been called to do by God. We want to be able to answer to Him for how we raised our children totally. We don’t want to say, well, we let the school do that, when it was our responsibility to begin with. We will be held accountable for to whom we delegate our God-given authority over our children. We love the lifestyle homeschooling lets us have. We like not having to have our young children out on the corner for the bus at a quarter to seven in the morning (yes, the bus for our elementary school would be picking our children up at 6:45 in the morning. That is just way too early for little ones.). We like not having to schedule our lives around the school calendar.

Is homeschooling easy? Some days yes, some days no. Some days I do get tired of being around the girls so much for days on end. However, the end result will be worth it. We are endeavoring to raise our children to be first and foremost followers of Christ, responsible, honest, respectable productive adults. We feel the odds are better to get the result we want if we school them at home.

So, why did you choose the schooling option for your children that you did? Just something to ponder about for you. Have a great week!

TOS Crew Review, Peterson Directed Handwriting

 TOS, TOS Crew  1 Response »
Aug 302010
 

Recently I was blessed to receive a copy of Peterson Directed Handwriting’s Cursive prorgram to review for our homeschool.

Peterson Directed Handwriting is not a new company.  It has been around since 1908.  I like companies that are well established and are able to adapt to the current culture.  You have to be doing something correctly to be able to stay in business that long, right? :)

I received five PDF files to download, each with individual licenses so I can print for our use.  They were the Cursive First, Step 2 Cursive, Step 3 Cursive, Step 4 Cursive and the On Your Mark Game.  With these, I can go and find exactly the information I need to teach when I need it, and I can print and reprint pages (especially helpful if you need to go over the information repeatedly with your scholar).  The files I received are at about a second grade level, where most public schools will start to introduce cursive.

Peterson is different than any other program for handwriting I have ever seen.  This is the first handwriting program that is more auditory based.  As you learn the different strokes for each letter, you say what you are writing.  Such as Loop Top and Sharp Top.  The program also utilizes different colors for the strokes to help with those who are more visually oriented, but this is mainly an auditory program.

The website for Peterson Directed Handwriting is full of very helpful information.  Do you have a left-handed student?  There is a special section for them here.  You can also order the Left Handed Writer, E-Book from their online store.  I wish that when I was taught how to write, someone took the fact that I was a leftie into consideration.  I was taught to just reverse what the right handed students were doing.  I honestly believe that my handwriting would be much nicer today if I had been taught how to write according to which hand I use.  My husband is also a leftie, and I’m sure he could have also benefited as a child as he has the strangest grip on a pencil I have ever seen.  So far, Bugs is a leftie too.  This information has been quite helpful so hopefully I will be able to teach her how to write better than her dad and I were taught.

I attempted to use this program with the Bugs.  She is my oldest scholar and is doing well in her preschool studies (I believe that cursive should be taught first after having taught other children cursive in several different grades before now.  The children who learned cursive first had an easier time learning to write that way than those who printed first, and they had much nicer handwriting.  However, that was my experience with it).  Bugs had a hard time being able to say the strokes as she was writing them and she was getting extremely frustrated as her fine motor skills are not yet quite to where they need to be for this level of instruction.  After searching all over their website, I did find a preschool program.  I am in the process of “tweaking” what we have though and it should work.

This program is great as you don’t have to teach the letters in any particular order.  First you teach the basic strokes, and then you can teach the letters in any order you want.  I like this as I like to have my handwriting to correlate with our phonics lessons for extra reinforcement of those.  This program can also be adapted to move at a pace that you are comfortable with, either faster or slower.  I don’t know about you, but rarely do I use anything without adapting it for our specific needs.  Peterson is really adaptable.

The customer service I received was very good.  Mr. Nelson gave us instruction online on how to use the program and was very througough.  You will be able to find help for any problem that you may be finding in your endeavor to teach handwriting, either on the website, through a PDF, or with the live help options. I was very impressed and pleased with all the assistence that was available should I have needed it.

To purchase the files I got, you can go HERE.  The cost for each of the individual licesnes (which is all you would need for homeschooling) is 19.95 apeice.  You can also purchase other items like triangular pencils, grips and paper positioners through this site.  They have everything you might need to teach your child how to write fluently.

I received a copy of the Cursive First, Step 2 Cursive, Step 3 Cursive, Step 4 Cursive and the On Your Mark Game with individual licenses from Peterson Directed Handwriting as a part of The Old School House’s Crew. for the purpose of this review.  No other compensation was received and all views in this review are mine and mine alone.

Day One Down…

 Beans, Bugs, Homekeeping, homeschooling  3 Responses »
Aug 102010
 

And the rest of their lives to go.

We did our first “official” day of school today. Bugs woke up this morning begging to do school. It was all we could do to hold her off until after breakfast and seeing Daddy off to work.

The day started with chocolate French Toast for a special breakfast (two chocolate jiffy muffin mixes baked at 400 in a bread/loaf pan for about 40 minutes, prepared the night before) and then turned into French Toast this morning. We served strawberries on top and it was yummy!

The girls got their start of school presents and loved them. We had to convince them to move their goodies for breakfast. After we ate, we had family devotion time and Dad got ready for work while I packed his lunch and got laundry sorted and the table cleared.

After Daddy left, school commenced. Bugs insisted we do EVERYTHING at the kitchen table. Even the read alouds.  Which, since we went with Sonlight this year, there are a lot! We were finished in about 45 minutes for the day, including the extra handwriting and a few extra tracing worksheets. Beans sat with us, listened to me reading and colored with her new triangular markers. She loves her markers (she hates crayons for some reason. Her Sunday School teacher took to bribing her with animal crackers to get her to color with them so she could send home a colored paper with her like all the other kids would do. Beans loves markers and paints but really dislikes crayons for some reason). After we were done with school, I let my munchkins use their new paints.

All in all, it was a good time. The kids liked it, we accomplished all we needed to and now they are playing. It wouldn’t surprise me if Bugs comes to me later asking to do school again today.

Well, time to swap out loads of laundry and clean the breakfast dishes. And start eggs for egg salad for lunch. Then I need to tackle the deep cleaning of the living room. It needs over hauled today. We are moving the big roll top desk into the guest room and really converting that into a study. Bugs had bout outgrown her toddler bed, so we are moving the twin bed from the guest room into the girls’ room for her, letting Beans have the toddler bed and totsally rearranging stuff. And it has to be done by Friday as my MIL has decided to come out for a few days. She is bringing us a portable air conditioning unit. I’m glad. I’m sick of roasting or being cooped up in our room all day with the ancient window unit in our room with two kids bouncing off the walls.

Ok, really going now. Talk to you all later.

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