CRAZY TWO MONTHS

I can't believe I have let this blog go this long. Sorry about that. JRL's phonics instruction is going quite well, and she's grasping pre-mathematics concepts nicely so far. She has memorized all of the oceans and most of the continents and can point them out on a globe we have. She knows some of her more advanced body parts (i.e., wrist, elbow, etc.) Pretty cool. She enjoys it, and that is the most important thing. :)

To recap on non-LWA-related matters:

September:

First day of school
Planning NJL's first birthday party
Sickness went around the family; party postponed a week
NJL turned 1
NJL's first birthday party
Pizza Hut field trip with our co-op

October:

Bought apples and made tons of apple pie filling (to freeze), apple pies, apple crisp, applesauce....
Football and soup/chili night with some friends
A death in the family took us two states away on two days' notice; we were there a little over two days
JRL's first "dissection"--owl pellets with the co-op

Fall festival and chili night with some friends
Apple orchard/pumpkin patch trip with kids
NJL's first self-fed pasta experience
Costume party with church
Lots of jumping in leaves :)

So now may I be excused? :) I will try to blog more consistently from here on out. Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and then it will be Christmas and New Year's. Where does the time go?!

The First Day of School

We had a ball.

NJL has a cold, so that kind of wore on everyone , especially me... but since I know these days pass quickly, I am trying to enjoy the clingy baby. :)

The girls are getting over colds, but they were surprisingly happy to be "doing school" finally yesterday.

We all woke up later than we had planned, but still pretty early around here for a Monday. DH is a minister, but he doesn't believe in taking Mondays off per se... but regardless they do usually feel like our lazy day. Not yesterday, though. We were up and at 'em and going relatively early.

We started out singing hymns. After beginning the day this way I wish we started this years ago. There is something about lifting your voice in song that starts the day off on the right foot. I usually empty and re-load the dishwasher in the morning while *listening* to hymns, but honestly I rarely feel up to singing first thing in the morning. Singing with the family forced me to do so. Maybe as I age I won't lose my range after all if I keep up with it. I was just telling a friend the other day that I have not really used my voice since high school choir, and as a result I can tell when we sing at church that I am not maintaining my range. Since I never learned how to play any instruments, my voice is all I have. I'd hate to lose it!

After singing, DH led all of us in prayer and asked for guidance in educating our children. It was a great way to start our day.

MKL decided at that point that she wanted to go play, so I decided JRL and I would do her math. I figured math is one of those things you should probably do when your mind is sharpest, right? We started with Lesson 1 of the Saxon Math K curriculum. We worked on the calendar and pattern blocks. JRL seemed to enjoy it, so that's good. She liked making flowers out of the pattern blocks. :)

I worked with JRL on her phonics yesterday, and she's coming along nicely with that. I was expecting to be more nervous and uptight about everything, but in the end the absolutely only thing she didn't do was handwriting yesterday, and we'll work on that more other days. No biggie.

DH sat down and did some work on science and social studies with her yesterday, but it was all very laidback.

A very good day overall!

Tomorrow...

We begin.

I CAN'T WAIT. :)

Monday

No case of the Mondays here today... instead, I feel rather rebellious. Today is the first day of school for many of the area schools, yet my kindergarten-age daughter is home. This is all surreal, sure to be even more so in two weeks when we officially start school at home.

Tonight and tomorrow night I have meetings with the two homeschool co-ops we're looking to meet with this year. The one tonight is for a new group, and the one tomorrow night is with the group we have worked with for two years. That should be fun.

Where are you in your homeschooling adventure right now? Starting a new school year? In the middle of a year-round schedule? ???

YESSSSSS

We ordered our Saxon Math K materials as well as this home Bible curriculum. Looking forward to diving into both.

Three weeks from Monday we start school. EEK!

Reading!

JRL started reading this week. She read the first two BOB Books on Wednesday. Needless to say, we are thrilled.

Basically, when she had trouble with blending sounds (we were using Phonics Pathways), I did not really know what to do. Then DH saw a copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons while we were on vacation, so we tried that. It works a lot more on blending, so for that portion of JRL's reading instruction anyway, it worked very well. We may go back to PP for further instruction, as the format of 100 Easy Lessons is a bit repetitive even for JRL.

Exciting times.... and only a little over a month until JRL starts kindergarten! :)

Kid-friendly "tea"

A friend had this "tea" at a birthday tea that some of us hosted for another friend in June. It is really tasty, and the kids are sure to love it! This will be fun for spring and summer teas when the kids don't want the usual sweet and iced variety (although I don't know why they wouldn't!).

An idea!

While trying to firm up plans for this fall, I remembered reading somewhere that another classical CM family had tea every afternoon. What a fun way to unwind with the kids! Since we won't have the traditional "come home from school and get cookies and milk with mom" time, a tea every afternoon would be fun. :)

THE BOB BOOKS ARRIVED

and now I have more proof that JRL and I need to spend some more time on blends before progressing to three-letter words. OOPS.

Back to the drawing board....er, phonics book.

Why homeschooling?

Inevitably, this question arises whenever someone finds out we are planning to home school our children. I hesitate to say this too loudly for fear of everyone I ever encountered in education courses in college or in classes I taught in public or private schools hearing me:

"It is exactly because I was in education that I do not believe it is the place for my children at this time."

Perhaps that will change. Perhaps it will not.

For now, though, I am thankful we have the freedom to home school our children.

The 20-year-old education major in me is shaking her head in disbelief. But this time she's wrong.

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JRL is THIS close to reading. It's so exciting. I gave her a few weeks off of formal instruction, and earlier this week we picked up Phonics Pathways again and had great success. She is now blending and can read two-letter combinations such as "sa," "mi," and "fo". I thought this process would be excruciating; why not just jump ahead and teach whole language/sight reading, ignoring the process that is inherent in a phonics reading education?

Fortunately it has turned out to be incredibly rewarding, and in the end I have decided that I can no longer condemn the public schools for not teaching phonics the way they did in "the good ol' days." Back then they also had the full support of parents at home, either to introduce such concepts before their children started school or to reinforce them once they were in school. Now such is not the case. I know I could not teach phonics well to 30+ students without every one of those students having someone at home to work with in the evenings! The concepts of "word walls," though not sound according to traditional phonics instruction, keep the students on board in a way that pure whole language instruction in the 1990s could not.

Planning

There are sooooo many options! Kindergarten seems especially difficult, because besides teaching reading, handwriting, and basic math, there are few things that MUST be covered. We are tentatively planning the following for JRL (K) in 2008-2009:

Reading: Continue working through Phonics Pathways
Handwriting: D'Nealian using Zaner-Bloser paper
Math: Saxon K

Beyond that, I have toyed with the idea of Galloping the Globe for beginning geography and using our read-alouds to explore other topics of interest. Those selections will allow for a lot of freedom. Any suggestions are welcome!

Introduction

This fall, our oldest daughter, JRL, will begin kindergarten. As a way to chart her and our other children's (another daughter, MKL, and a son, NJL) progress through our home school, we plan to blog here.

At this point our hope is for a classical education (à la the trivium concept in The Well-Trained Mind) with Charlotte Mason to flesh it out.

Thanks in advance for your interest and comments! :)