homeschool

I'm finally back to the blog! it's not that i haven't had any fun stories to share, but my computer time recently has been spent researching homeschool options. i wanted to get a good idea of what we wanted to do so that i could ask some questions and get more information at last weekend's homeschool conference. i was very glad i took the time to figure it out a little early because it turns out that i'm not early at all. i had planned to do 4yo pre-k with evalana this coming school year and then start kindergarten school when she turned 5 in 2013, but, after looking at the kindergarten curriculum, it turns out that she's already half way through the kindergarten reading level, so it should work out great to start kindergarten with her this coming school year. Of course i figure we can just go as slowly or whatever speed works well for her. Even though we've been fairly committed to homeschooling already, in my homeschool research this past month, i just keep realizing more and more reasons why i am so very thankful our family gets to do school this way! I've got our kindergarten program all ordered now, and I'm so excited for all that we'll get to do!!!! If you're curious, here's what we've come up with:
This is the pre-k that Evalana just finished up. We had so much fun with it. http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/pre-kindergarten.html
We've decided to use Sonlight for our school curriculum. Of course we can always change our minds and switch things up however works for our family, but I'm so excited about Sonlight!

They have everything so planned and put together that it will actually be quite a bit less work for me than the hubbard's cupboard pre-k preparation has been. You can click on the button above for lots more info, but basically Sonlight uses books (mostly real books rather than textbooks) to teach through stories. Obviously i have yet to actually use any of the program, but it sounds like just what we're wanting, so i'm very excited to use it.
Here's a breakdown of curriculum we're using by subject, if you care. You can also view it at http://pinterest.com/rachelkarleen/kindergarten/.
Sonlight has most subjects included in their basic curriculum. History and Geography are on World Cultures this year. Science is on Biology, Botany, and Physics. For our Bible time, we'll be reading through an entire Bible storybook, plus learning a Bible verse that goes with each letter of the alphabet. In reading and language arts, we get to learn phonics and start reading little books, plus lots of family reading aloud. And for handwriting, we're doing A Reason for Handwriting.
And for math we decided to use Math U See (Sonlight uses a different math curriculum, but we prefer Math-U-See).
Evalana's actually been doing Spanish since she was two, and i think it was a perfect time to start Rosetta Stone. And we do a little sign language, which is wonderful both for baby/toddler communication and helping with Bible memory.
For art we get to do ARTistic Pursuits and Come Look With Me. I ordered our art supplies, and I'm pretty sure we're going to have a lot of fun.
And for music we're planning to do Piano Wizard and The Story of the Orchestra.
That's it. We'll see how it goes, but I know school is going to be fun. I'm so excited and so thankful that we get to homeschool.

The 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum book was super duper helpful in helping me learn about various educational approaches and figure out what approach we like and then what curriculum works with that educational method.

kindergarten!

Today was evalana's first day of kindergarten, and we had a great time!
i have more pictures of today to get later (once i don't have a sleeping boy on me and can reach the camera cord), but here's a video from last night--our big kindergarten book reveal

This morning we had our last MOPS childcare, although evalana decided she either wanted to stay with lazarus or go to Mo's, so i dropped both kids off at Mo's this morning. When we got home, after evalana's horrible screaming and sobbing nap wakeup, we got to start on her kindergarten school, and we loved it. lazarus was surprisingly content with his legos and markers. evalana and i spent about two hours doing all her stuff. She was super excited to write with a real pencil, and her very favorite was math. i couldn't get her to stop. she did three lessons on her own. then this evening joshua did her read-aloud with her, and they seemed to have a great time reading The Boxcar Children. i'm already excited about tomorrow's lessons!

core a

On Wednesday Evalana finished her Core A (kindergarten) curriculum, which included reading through that whole Bible (one of her favorite parts of school time).
 

We learned some great stuff during our school time this past year. Core A is Sonlight's kindergarten curriculum. I guess Evalana would be the age to start kindergarten either this August or next, but, since we're homeschooling, we just get to do what's at her interest and level. She was really wanting to learn to read and write, so we started Sonlight's Core A this past June. Evalana really loved reading her Bible. We got to do a quick overview of all history and geography. Evalana liked the history, especially Ancient Egypt and around 1900 America. And we both liked the stories of Christians sharing Jesus. We read some great books together. A few of her favorites this year were the Little House on the Prairie books, Boxcar Children, and stories about animals. For her language arts we worked on learning the letters' sounds and writing each letter, along with some creative writing. And she got to read 27 books all on her own.
Here she is in her first read through of book #23 about a month ago. She usually won't let me record her reading, so i don't have any more recent ones, even though i can tell her reading's even improved quite a bit in the last month. Reading was challenging for her just because she wanted to be able to read like she does now when she first started out. She would read the same book for a full week, so by the end of each week, she had it down, but, to start with, she worked so hard on sounding out the words that she didn't get to catch much of the story.

For her handwriting, we just practiced on how to write the letters. I don't expect a four-year-old to have great handwriting, but i'd rather she learn how to write them correctly, and we'll work on making them look nice as she keeps practicing. And she loved her Explode the Code workbooks.
For science we learned about biology, Earth science, and physics. Evalana really liked her encyclopedia that includes internet links for some additional online learning for each topic. She loves that part. Daddy was in charge of science experiments with her, and they still have quite a few more to go, but they have fun with those, too.
Evalana flew through her Primer math book and finished it in November since she enjoyed doing it so much, so she's already started on her Alpha Math-U-See book. Most recently she's learned how to add 8s and 9s. Here's a video of her working on math a month ago--not the greatest video, but it's the most recent I have of her math time.

Evalana uses Rosetta Stone to do her Spanish, and she enjoys that, too. I know I have a video of her doing Spanish for a couple months ago, but i'm not sure where it is right now. She likes to let Lazarus help her with Spanish, too. We also continue to use Signing Time videos, but we don't really make sign language part of our school time.
Both kids love our music time, too. We use Piano Wizard for learning piano. And we also read about composers and instruments and listen to classical music, which they have a lot of fun with.
For our art appreciation, we're using the Come Look With Me books, which i think work well. Evalana likes them. And Joshua does art with the kids. They have a lot of lessons left to go, but they have a great time with it. Here's evalana learning a new piano song about a month ago.

I think that's all the school stuff we did for the past 36 weeks of lessons. We really had a lot of fun. Today we got all our next 36 weeks worth of stuff all set up, and we're ready and excited to get started.
Our 3/9 celebration at Fritz's


And then we stopped by Aunt Michelle's to say hi to her and wish her happy birthday, and she always sends stuffed animals home with the kids.

halfway through kindergarten

Today we finished week 18 of evalana's 36-week kindergarten, so we're halfway through. i'm expecting we'll finish up the last week of March. She's almost finished with her first math book. she says she loves being a mathamagician. her favorite problems are algebra (like ____ + 3 = 10). Every week she gets to read a new little book that includes just the letters she's learned so far. At first she was a little discouraged that she reads so slowly because she was focusing so much on the sounds that she wasn't getting the full story. now she reads through them much more quickly. she likes the idea that she can read on her own. we've read many fun read aloud books together. she's enjoyed learning history--so far from prehistoric times to the first world war. she really likes learning about how people lived. We use the internet to learn more about our history and science a lot, and she loves online. She isn't very good at handwriting, but i guess i don't expect a lot from a four-year-old. She loves doing her handwriting worksheets, and i think it's good for her to learn how to write the letters, and we'll work on writing them more clearly as we need to. Joshua usually does the science experiments and art lessons with her. They love their time doing those together. She's also doing great with Spanish and slowly improving with her piano, which she and lazarus like to do together. Evalana's favorite part of every school time is Bible. She listens to every detail of each story. We started at the beginning and are currently at Elijah. Thankfully there isn't any part of school she doesn't like. I'm not wanting to rush her into anything that she's not really wanting to learn. We have plenty of time for her to learn all this stuff, but she is just really interested in it now, so we'll just keep moving with that. She loves soaking up knowledge, and i really love helping her to learn.
Because i need to order her a new math book, i went ahead and figured out everything we'll need to get for her in the spring, to start her first grade curriculum. i'm guessing we'll probably start on it right when she finishes up the kindergarten stuff, but then we'll take a break as needed after the baby comes near the end of May. looking over all the Core B Sonlight curriculum makes me excited for all we get to learn together. Things like world history from Creation to the fall of Rome, meteorology, biology, electricity, soil science, astronomy, physiology, and hydrology, and adding and subtracting multiple digit numbers. And i love looking at all the art supplies she and Daddy will get to work with. Right now, though, i'm excited to keep working on Core A with Evalana, and i'm looking forward to doing it again with lazarus in a couple years. So far we are having such a wonderful homeschooling experience. I'm so thankful we're able to help our kids learn this way.

first week of kindergarten

we just finished evalana's first week of kindergarten, and we had fun! so far i'm happy with our selections! I'm surprised at how much she's learned in just one week, too. Our main goal this year is just for her to appreciate learning and to have fun. Her natural desire to learn, though, means that she's already doing a lot. here's some of what we worked on:
in her bible, we read genesis 1-17 (creation, adam and eve, cain and able, noah, tower of bable, abram and lot) with some good discussion about those stories. And we memorized Romans 3:23 for our "A" verse (all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God).
for history we've been talking about the first people (what they ate and wore and how they may have lived). Today we read one story out of I Heard Good News Today, which is about sharing Jesus with other cultures, and Evalana really liked a story about a man in Africa.
For reading, we've enjoyed The Boxcar Children book 1 and some poems, along with some extra stuff since she can't get enough of the reading stories.
We practiced the F sound and worked on writing our Ff's. Evalana has a hard time with the handwriting, which i expected since she's a three-year-old doing six-year-old work, but she wants so badly to learn, and she tries writing the letters, but she does it kind of funny, so i figured it's better to learn how to write them correctly, even if they still turn out hard to read at this point. We're using Get Ready for the Code to help with reading, and she's enjoying that workbook. We just worked on F this week.
We worked on telling stories, and i liked typing out a couple of them for her.
For science we learned about the layers of the earth, the continents, seasons, and air, and today we read about tadpoles. i think the science is a little over her level, but i've been surprised at what she does seem to understand. it's just teaching very basic stuff about those things, but those can still be some hard concepts for a 3yo. I figure if we want to, we could repeat the same science again next year, if she needs it. but probably we'll just keep moving through, and we can go at her pace and review or slow down whenever we want. And she'll get to see all this stuff again in a few years when we go through it with Lazarus.
Her very favorite so far is her math. She loves it and asks for more and more. This week she worked through 10 lessons and worked on counting, shapes, recognizing 1-9, reading numbers, and place values for ones, tens, and hundreds. It's neat how Math-U-See teaches the place values; she got the hang of it very quickly and loves practicing building numbers.
All of the above things, we do pretty much every day (monday-friday). On Tuesdays we do art appreciation, and i, so far, have liked the Come Look With Me books to help us with that. Right now Joshua's doing Evalana's art creation project with her for the week. They're working on drawing something.
We're continuing with Rosetta Stone Spanish, which we love, doing that three days a week. And then for sign language, we're just watching the Signing Time videos we get from the library, which we like.
We'll start piano three days a week in June, but we don't have our keyboard or program yet. On Thursdays we're doing music appreciation, and I love the book for that--The Story of the Orchestra, and we learned about Vivaldi. Both kids loved that, and i found it pretty interesting, too.
So, anyway, so far i'm very pleased with all our curriculum we've been able to use! And Lazarus has done surprisingly well with entertaining himself with whatever toys i set up with him for the day.

5/19: As i was putting evalana to bed last night, i asked her about what she might like to do today (tomorrow). She said she'd probably start her day with some math. I told her that tomorrow would be Saturday, and we weren't planning to do school time on the weekends. She responded, "What?!" So maybe we will do school on the weekends...and holidays and vacations, and finish out our 36 weeks much more quickly than i anticipated with an end-date of mid-april   :-)
I asked her what some of her favorite things about school are so far, and she said that she really likes the Bible study, especially when we get to put a sticker on our timeline. She said she likes math because it's so much fun. And she said that she's enjoyed the reading with Daddy.

Here are a few pictures and videos of some of her work this week.

Evalana was so excited to use a real pencil and learn writing!

Lazarus did a wonderful job of playing independently! 

The first read-aloud time--they both loved it!

 

She liked tracing f's, then, when i left for a few minutes, she added a bunch more f's with some "Evalana"s thrown in, too

sonlight box

April 30th we had our first box day with our sonlight books arriving! The box came while joshua and the kids were out running errands, so i was able to hide most of the goodies, but i let them open some little things in the box when they got home. joshua was really disappointed i didn't have more in the box, which was kind of funny, but the kids had a great time with the little they did get and then decorating the box :-). We're going to have a big surprise with all the boxes when we start the first day of evalana's kindergarten tomorrow!

cartographer evalana

part of our stash hidden in the garage

  

 

dancing to their bible verse cd they got:

first week of first grade

Evalana and I are having a great time with the beginning of our Core B Sonlight curriculum. I took some pictures and videos this week so those of you who are interested can see what we're up to. Our Sonlight is set up to be a five-days-a-week curriculum, but, for me, that's not necessarily a Monday through Friday week. Like this past week we went to the zoo, played with friends, and should have gone to Walmart, although I always seem to find some reason that I can put that trip off a little longer (Walmart and carrying laundry upstairs are two of my least favorite chores). So sometimes we do school that's in our curriculum, and sometimes school is a field trip or some other activities. And we also spend parts of every day with cooking, cleaning, and other normal things that i still consider learning opportunities.
Several of our subjects are just continuing from Evalana's kindergarten-level curriculum, such as music, Spanish, piano, and math.
These are all the books we got to open for our first week of school.
And here are the books we got to use our first day. We were very excited to read them!
So far, her favorite parts of our school are missionary stories, Bible stories, read alouds, science experiments, critical thinking, and learning about and praying for groups of people who maybe haven't heard about Jesus. Here are some pictures and videos of some of her school time, for all the relatives who keep asking her about her school, since she refuses to "perform" for anyone.

 

 
science experiments with magnets and then a game with magnets

dancing to the classical music we're learning about

and plenty of this sort of thing interrupting our school day too

lunch break. lazarus's favorite food these days--cheese sandwiches

Plus our "field trips"


  

    

And here's a little of Lazarus's school

  

playdough creations

all done with pre-k!

April 19th we celebrated Evalana finishing her pre-k school! We've had so much fun these last two years! for her celebration dinner, she chose pizza and kale salad. i am so excited to continue our homeschooling journey with sonlight kindergarten this year, and i don't yet know when lazarus will start pre-k and which curriculum we'll use.