Ch, Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes...

I love homeschooling. I do. And.. no, I didn't romanticize homeschooling... too much ;-)

But I did expect it to be a more fun experience than my daughter has seemingly experienced this last year.

Academically, she has excelled. The child has a reading level grades higher than her own. She's at or slightly above on Math (very slightly). For fun, we did some beginning Geography from a workbook, bought a puzzle map of the U.S., and for Science, she just read her "Let's Read & Find Out" Science books. Had a bit of fun with an experiment or a related craft here & there. Art? I don't need to make that an assignment... this kiddo loves to draw, and just devoured the two drawing books I bought her. Due to our single-car family, and Hub's requirement of said vehicle for work, we didn't get out much, altho we did get to tag along a couple of times to field trips with a local homeschool co-op.

But has she necessarily *enjoyed* learning?

Not nearly as much as I wanted her to.

So this coming school year, we are switching up the curriculum.

*** I MUST add this disclaimer: Horizons (Alpha Omega) has served us extremely well. My daughter reads as well as she does *because* of Horizons, and so I am in no way switching because I found it a faulty curriculum choice. ***

In fact, we will still be using Horizons Math in the coming year. I might like to make a permanent switch to Math-U-See, as I've heard raving reviews on it; but this year, having made the switch we've made, it wasn't in the budget to do so just yet. And since I can't find much fault with Horizons Math, we'll be going forward into the new year with it, again.

So, we're switching up Penmanship... making more changes to Science (and more emphasis on it, now that we're going into 2nd grade)... and delving a little more deeply into Geography, perhaps. I've decided to use more manipulatives in Math, simply because they make it more interesting. We'll bring some Language Arts to life by creating a 'Pen Pal-ship' between Michaela & her sweet little friend, Brenna. Brenna's family lives 'here'... but our families will be about an hour apart, and so get-togethers will be somewhat spaced out. This way, our girls get to be in touch...*and* they will be learning Letter Writing at the same time. They'll be ''old pros'' at it in no time ;-)

Last year, Michaela & I really delved into reading chapter books. Each day, I'd read a chapter from a beloved book, and honestly, it was our FAVORITE thing to do. We weren't doing it 'for school'. Just for enjoyment. And boy, did we... did SHE... enjoy it. I also feel like she *learned* a lot from our reading time, even tho I wasn't teaching from our reading.

And so this led me back to my original desire when we first began homeschooling - literature based learning.

So, I've wrapped up the 2011-2012 session, fully confident that she's done well this year.

But I'm very much looking forward to seeing her *enjoy* homeschool much more in the next.

We Love Our Marine!

My baby brother -  the one I rocked to sleep, whose dipes I changed; the one I fed, and bathed, and cradled on many an occasion... 

Yeah, my baby brother?


He is a United States Marine.

Recently home after his first stint in Afghanistan, my 'baby' brother, my daughter's beloved Uncle B, is not only stateside, but home. Home is 3 hours away from us, but we just got word that he and Mother will be visiting on Friday.

(I had hoped for, and asked my mother for, a week's notice, if possible. Evidently, that wasn't possible ;-)

Nevertheless, it is *very* exciting news that he is coming! We are thrilled to see Granma, too, mind you. But, unless you have known & loved a soldier who was deployed, risking death for our country, then you can't possibly imagine what we who love them go through. As a Christian, I've prayed many a prayer, not a few of them fervent.

But, I was unprepared for the emotions involved with having my little brother 'over there', 'doing what a Marine must do'.

My daughter and I prayed together for him. I always kept my emotions in check during our shared prayer times for him. I certainly didn't want to stress my daughter out!

But when it was just My Daddy & Me, I let it rain. I really, really did. Many times I had to take my fears and my tears to Him for comfort and assurance. But now, after that long wait, he's home safe; he's home sound; he's home in one piece. He's just HOME!

So, yeah. It's sort of a big deal that Uncle B is coming Friday! K? Thx!  ;-)

They will be making a day trip, so Friday's schoolwork will have to be made up on Saturday. Not a thrilling idea, especially since we took Labor Day off, also. It was one of the very, very few days that Daddy got to be off work, which meant home with us! But that's one of the joys of homeschooling, isn't it? The ability to enjoy life, as it happens. Flexibility! Yay!

We have things to do in preparation for Our Marine's visit!

♥   Michaela will be drawing him a special picture.

♥   Last time he came to visit, I'd had chili in the crockpot. Altho not quite done, he kept at me until I relented and let him serve up a bowl, which he devoured. So, this time, I want to make a pot of chili... a big pot... that WILL be done when he gets here, and with enough that he can take plenty home. Cornbread to accompany it, of course.

♥   We also want to make some cuppycakes for his visit. No reason in particular... we just want to love up on Uncle B.

♥   I am toying with the idea of balloons and streamers, since we were unable to attend his homecoming, which hurt my heart somethin' fierce, lemme tell ya. I just don't know if he will find that all over-the-top, or what. So, the jury's still out on that one.

I do know my daughter wants to make it all home-comey for him. And yeah, I put all that in her head (laughing). So, I guess we will be doing something like that, too.

Is it all mushy-gushy? Yeah, probably.

But we can't help it!

We just Love Our Marine!
OORAH!

Our Very First Lapbook!

We recently completed our very first lapbook!

First thing I learned: My daughter cares a little less for glue than I'd thought!  ;-)  As it turns out, she evidently has an aversion to sticky, like her Mama.

All the stuff I'd read about lapbooking urged beginners to start with something easy. Honestly, I would normally nix that idea. See, I'm a 'jump-in-with-both-feet' kinda gal. "I got it covered, thanks! This is easy peasy!"

... Until I started my first food garden this past spring, that is. Everything I'd read about THAT had told me to start small, with just a few varieties. Which I thought was completely ludicrous, and so I planted about a bazillion types of a bazillion things.

Ask me how my garden grew... ... ... .

So THAT little lesson taught me that, perhaps, it would be a good idea to 'start easy' with this, too. And so we did. :-)

Since we have a full curriculum already, I don't *have* to incorporate every subject under the sun... or any subject, especially, (aside from the science that the study was derived from, of course). So it was easy on the 3 R's, and focused just a little on nature (in the lapbook, itself).

We are BLESSED to own most of a WONDERFUL series of children's science books. The series is called "Let's Read and Find Out". One day soon I will have to blog a bit about the series for you, in case you're interested. But for now, I will just mention that each book is on a specific subject; clouds, the Big Dipper, or a specific animal, for instance.

I allowed My Precious to choose the first book she wanted to lapbook on, and she chose "How Animal Babies Stay Safe." Of course she did! What little girl doesn't love animals AND babies? Because our not-spayed-in-time cat had her kittens recently, it was a fitting subject as well. So, because animal babies are just so stinkin' cute, our lapbook was easy on the info, and heavy in the graphics department.

I must say we were both delighted (once we got past the paste issue) in the work involved, as well the finished product. Well... ok. Fact is, we are both so stinkin' proud of how our first lapbook turned out, that we could hardly stand it, and couldn't get enough of looking through it, again and again. (Which, is part of the point behind lapbooking - creating a 'book' that your child returns to again and again.)

Without further ado... Our very first lapbook :-)

A Little Professional Help ;-)

Yes, I need it!

Well, my BLOG needs it, because I really wanted to create something amazing - for our family 'away', so they can keep up with our 'goings on'; for my daughter to read one day, should she choose to do so; for myself.. and, yes, the wild and crazy idea that anything I write might actually touch or inspire another Mama out there.

But, as you can see, I haven't been consistent. I started ok-ish last year... but that totally fell by the wayside. Life happened. Writer's block happened - which is funny when one considers that one isn't a writer ;-) Homeschool went great, mind you. But how many times can one actually blog about the same ol', same ol'?

We *did* get a couple of field trip opportunites. But isn't it a tricky situation, posting pictures of your kids... and, especially, other people's kids online? The prospect of asking permission from all those parents was daunting enough that I didn't want to bother with it. I know, I know.. some people would've just posted them. But I am one of those parents who doesn't want her child's pic plastered all over without permission, and so, I just couldn't bring myself to post images of others' children, either.

So, I've just struggled... with motivation, with inspiration, and even some frustration when it came to the blog.

But now, facing a new school year, I was again quickened to blog, (if only a little). I do *want* to blog. I just haven't been sure how to go about it. I felt like I definitely needed some professional help with it!

So, for my birthday this year, I asked for this: Mom Blogging for Dummies. And I got it.

I don't get a lot of uninterrupted time to read, but I am devouring this book in tiny bites. It is so full of helpful information, and even better, inspiration.. I am really enjoying it (as much as you can a 'tech-y' book) and am sooo glad I asked for (and got!) it.

I have no idea if anyone besides me will read this post, but if you are toying around with the idea of starting a blog for homeschool, or any sort of blogging... I can definitely recommend this book. You won't be sorry. If you are reading, and are an experienced Mom Blogger, and have advice to offer.. I'd be grateful for that, too :)

The First Grade Line-up!

The line-up for this year's curriculum includes:

Bible: Foundations Bible Curriculum 1.

It's broken into Preparation for Christ (1), Christ, Our Messiah (2), and Christ, Our Hope (3) - We'll be starting at 1. This is a wonderful resource, as it is really just a guideline, and I find it easy to go with the flow. My responsibility is to raise my child up in the way she should go, and to teach her about God and His laws. Fortunately, He didn't dictate how much each day, or what order (altho the beginning is where we started), or how long to spend on it. Of course, I teach her always and all the time, according to instruction from the Lord - Deuteronomy 6:7 - "And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up." But teaching (& learning!) doesn't hafta be boring, so we try to make it fun anywhere we can. If that means drawing and coloring a scene from Creation while Mommy reads about it, (and it did), then that's what we do.

We will also continue with Leading Little Ones to God. We've enjoyed that a good bit... it really is an amazing book.

A decent chunk of our curriculum will be Horizons by Alpha Omega, including:


* Reading/Phonics 1
* Math 1
* Spelling/Vocabulary 1, and
* Penmanship 1


I did consider trying a different curriculum this year, but for the most part, my daughter enjoyed Horizons, and did extraordinarily well with it. So, as tempting as it was to try this new curriculum, or that one, I decided, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." (And yes, I do realize that 'ain't' ain't a word. ;-)


I probably over-selected for Social Studies/History this year. I purchased A History for Little Pilgrims, complete with Teacher's Manual (its so good!), as well as the accompanying coloring book. This is the SS/H we will begin the year with.


For later in the year, I plan on incorporating A Trip Around the World. I also got Beginning Geography by Evan-Moore. This looks VERY fun, and we'll toss that into the mix, too, at some as yet undetermined point in the coming year.


For the Science, we will continue using those amazing little "Let's Read and Find Out" books that we began with last year. Admittedly, last year we just casually used them, often reading them at bedtime or quiet time, as opposed to school time. This year, tho, we'll be learning more from them, and the learning will be FUN! As you can see, much of the above (especially the boxed curriculum) is paperwork, or, as we homeschoolers like to say, "seatwork".


Well, a significant part of reason I chose to homeschool is that I wanted my daughter to *have fun* while learning. It's not enough for me to 'get it all in her head'. I want her to *enjoy* learning. To that end, Science is where the REAL fun will begin. My Precious is one crafty little gal, and I've truly never met a child who more loved crayons, markers, paint, glue, scissors & construction paper! So, we'll be doing 'lapbooking' to each of our Science books, as we go along thru the year. It will give me a subject to start on, and I can add more learning info as I see fit. She will get the amazing text & illustrations to hold her interest, and free reign to be her creative little self by creating her lapbooks. We are, admittedly, MOST excited about this part of the upcoming year.


And, I do believe that's the Line-up Wrap-up!

Homeschooling in a Tiny Space

My days are filled with all things homeschool, and we haven't yet begun, officially. Sure, we still 'do school' ... we have here and there since she was 3. Storebought workworks in math, ABCs, and these days, two really awesome workbooks by KUMON - My First Book of Cutting and My First Book of Mazes. And I've picked up the pace of our school work the last month or so, just to give her a taste of what's to come.

But largely, I've been reading, planning, rearranging. Getting organized is such an important part of this homeschool thing - and, for me, it's been just as daunting as choosing curricula. We live in a very small space. There is not much room for much of anything, really. I've 'set up' for homeschool around here, what? Think it is 3 times, now.

But I think I've finally found the most workable solution. (Third time's the charm ;-)

Of course, I am still tweaking ("Oh! Let's put this HERE!"), and reorganizing ("Mmm, I'd like these manuals HERE, instead")... and I must say, I am liking how it's coming together. No, I don't have a schoolroom. Yes, my living room is half 'living room' and half 'classroom'. But ya know what? I am finding that I actually enjoy this decor. It looks like a homeschooling family lives here!

I will get some pics up as soon as I can.

So, I'm Crazy About This Froggy Calendar!

Some pics for you!

If you've read the post where I described this calendar, then you know that 'my first choice' was this cute little apple calendar. But God gave us a froggy one, and so that's what we would work with.

After obtaining it, having it laminated (to last), all the trimming associated with THAT, and hemming and hawwing about WHERE in our tiny little house it's home should be, I've finally put it up! And, I must confess; I AM SO GLAD I DIDNT GET THE APPLE CALENDAR!!! This one is so stinkin' adorable, and the colors are so vibrant... I just love it. And ya know what? So does my daughter. She's beyond tickled with the frog.