First Week Back...

And almost done :) It has been an awesome week with school so far. I'm still figuring things out each day that will make it easier the next day, but I suppose that will happen throughout our lifetime!

Jayden started Bigger Hearts For His Glory on Monday. She is doing the left side one day (history, Bible, poetry, music, and a rotating box that has vocabulary, timeline, geography, and art) and then the right side the next day (Cursive, grammar, story time, math, and science) both days she does her reading (DITHOR - fantasy genre right now) and dictation, which covers spelling, grammar, and handwriting. We'll keep on with this schedule for a couple more weeks. We'll take a break for a couple of weeks on the reading program after she finishes each genre. It takes four weeks to do each genre, so we'll do probably four weeks on two weeks off. Bigger Hearts is more suited for a 3rd grade program so we are going to go slowly this school year, probably moving to doing curriculum four days a week until she's 8, then we'll start going 5 days a week when her enrichment classes end.

Grace started Little Hearts For His Glory before Christmas and got through unit 2 day 4.... then we started the 1st grade options for the 3Rs and I had planned on it taking about two weeks for her to catch up. She caught up in three days! So today was her first "full" day of 1st grade level work :) She did a splendid job. We will go full speed and probably do school on Saturday's whenever they don't have an activity. I want to space her and Julianna out so that I'm not overlapping curriculum year after year.

Julianna LOVES her time to do school with just mommy. She flies through Little Hands to Heaven and the extra fine motor skill books we got her, so I know she's ready for more, but she's just not quite ready for the written part of the Kindergarten curriculum. She'll start that this next fall, and do the history, science, and Bible every other day. We'll pace out the 3Rs as she needs them. Maybe every day, maybe every other day, maybe some every day and some every other day :)

Evie started speaking in sentences today. She was playing chase with Jayden and backed up against me and said "ont nent me!!" (Don't get me!) and then they started playing hide and seek and she was "one, do, do, do, do" counting for Jayden to hide. Apparently she was cheating because Jayden said "no peeking!" and then Evie just laughed and laughed. She's quickly learning, so it won't be long before she's doing preschool work as well.

I absolutely love teaching my children. It's easy to say that on days/weeks that are going smoothly, but I even love it when things don't go so smoothly. We finished school today for all three of them in less than two hours. Evie is down for a nap now, and we will be playing games until she gets up. It's really awesome!

A Week Before Christmas....

It's been crazy around here since Thanksgiving! Jayden finished up all her work before Thanksgiving, so she's itching to begin again. Grace only had three workbook pages to go and we finally got around to them yesterday. Julianna keeps reminding me that we have to buy her new school books, and Evie keeps finding anything to write with and writing everywhere!

Matthew and I went on a vacation for a week The girls stayed here at the house with Grandma and seemed to have a great time! We came home to lots of presents and goodies.

We started our Jesse Tree advent study; I tried to incorporate our goody making as much as possible. I'll put down our schedule at the end....

I'll be ordering our new curriculum (Heart of Dakota) and books/workbooks in the next couple of days... They are all so excited to start back. Apparently, four weeks off is way more than they need. And we still have at least one week, if not more to go!

I'm going to stagger their starting times to make it easier on myself. Jayden will start her reading program (Drawn Into The Heart of Reading) as soon as we get the new books in, then I'll start Grace after a couple of days on her 3Rs to catch her up even with her history/Bible/poetry, then after Grace's birthday I'll start Jayden on her curriculum and then the next week add in Julianna. I still haven't decided if we will be doing 4 or 5 day weeks. We'll see how it goes :)

Jesse Tree Study:

Adam and Eve - Apple (Genesis 2:4-3:24) - fried pies

Noah - Ark or rainbow (Genesis 6:11-22, 7:17-8:12, 20-9:17) - cake balls (with sprinkles)

Abraham - Knife (Genesis 12:1-7, 15:1-6) - cutting something with a knife

Isaac - Ram (Genesis 22:1-19) - pb balls

Jacob - Ladder (Genesis 27:41-28:22) - make pretzels in the shape of ladders

Joseph - Colorful coat (Genesis 37, 39:1-50:21) - cathedral windows

Moses - Tablets of the law (Exodus 2:1-4:20) - make scrolls

David - Harp (1 Samuel 16:17-23) - play music and sing

Isaiah - Lion and lamb (Isaiah 1:10-20, 6:1-13, 8:11-9:7) - chex mix

Mary - Lily (Luke 1:26-38) - go smell the flowers at the store

Elizabeth - Small home (Luke 1:39-55) - gingerbread house

Joseph - Hammer or saw (Matthew 1:18-25) - build something

Jesus - Christmas story - birthday cake for Jesus

It's all coming together!

Warning... this is a lot... but I want to make sure I have this written down for myself :)

Jayden will finish up our unit studies next week (we will end with Thanksgiving unless she just WANTS to do Christmas), will finish up her math review this week, and finish her reading program (Drawn Into the Heart of Reading) biography (including the project) before Thanksgiving! After Thanksgiving, she's going to finish the last three verses in A Reason For Handwriting 'A' just so we can have that book completed, and I'm going to start her in the next book for DITHOR and that's IT! until we start Bigger Hearts for His Glory (3rd grade curriculum) half speed sometime in January.... I have to order it after the first of January, so who knows when I'll start it. We'll take a break when Grace gets to a break point.

Grace will finish up unit 3 in Little Hearts For His Glory (K and/or 1st grade curriculum) and will be finished with the right side (basic - 3 R's) K options completely by Christmas.... we'll pick up 1st grade options after the new year. I'll start her back about a week or maybe two before I start Jayden in Bigger and catch her up by doing left side (starting in Unit 4) one day and then two days of basics (starting at the beginning) so she'll be caught up even at the end of unit 6, which will take 10 weeks.... then we'll take a break for a week or two, and start back at traditional half speed (history/science/Bible one day, basics the next) for 3 or 4 units, which should take us to the beginning of the term on our attendance chart for the state, at which point she'll be technically 1st grade and we'll go full speed, probably starting in unit 12 or so. She'll also be doing the Emerging Readers set from Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory half speed, taking breaks as needed.... it's a pre-cursor to the reading program Jayden is doing.

Julianna is going to finish up her preschool workbook by Christmas and we'll get her another preschool workbook to do after that. I'm still undecided if we will start Little Hands To Heaven at the beginning or in the middle. Either way she'll start LHFHG half speed in September. She will technically still be preschool age, but she will be more than ready for K level work by then. We will go half speed all the way through LHFHG with her. She will finish it around Christmas 2012 and we'll start Beyond and do it half speed all the way through.

I haven't decided yet when Evie will start preschool. Not any time this year... I might start her next fall doing LHTH one or two days a week, depending on when/if she actually wants to do school work like her sisters. Right now she's content just to mess up all the big girls' work! :)

So just a recap, when the new school term starts next summer (July 1st) Jayden will be about 1/3 of the way through 3rd grade work, Grace will be about 1/3 through 1st grade work, Julianna will be finishing up preschool, and Evie will be 2. If they were in public school starting next fall Jayden would be starting 3rd, Grace would be starting 1st, Julianna would just be starting preschool, and Evie would still be 2 ;)

When did they grow up?

Autumn Unit Study

We FINALLY finished our Autumn/Leaves unit study today. I was supposed to finish last week, but I forgot about a few things I had intended for her to do until this week :) She made a lap book, which I will post pictures of later today. It contains definitions of words, poems she copied, poems she wrote, a mini-book on leaves and leaf structure and an essay on fall she wrote :) She also learned about six different types of trees we have on our property, wrote an essay on elephants (following a zoo trip) and learned how to alphabetize.

We will start a short unit study on Halloween things (bats, pumpkins, more poetry) Monday and it will include a lot of crafts and decorations :)

We also began a reading program this past week (Drawn Into the Heart of Reading). She's reading "Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims" right now. She had her first assignment other than reading yesterday... it was a vocabulary assignment teaching her how to use hints and clues in the reading to figure out the meaning of a word. It really helped her understand how that works because there wasn't really a word so far in the book that she didn't know. So she picked 'village' and was able to see how the context pointed her to knowing what it means. She also began learning how to use a dictionary to find the meaning of a word.

Grace is moving ahead with her reading and will be starting the Emerging Readers portion of Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory in January. She is still working through Little Hearts For His Glory at a good pace.

Julianna is having fun working in her workbooks for now, and we'll pick back up with Little Hands to Heaven in February.

Evie is absolutely driving me insane! :) She is so busy and into everything and FAST! She is the main reason I'm not doing preschool with Julianna until February and not doing school every day with Grace right now. I'm hoping she is more easily entertained and for longer amounts of time 4 months from now :)

I'll be back to post some pictures from our learning adventures a little later on...

Where Did September Go?

I cannot believe it, but it's already October! School is going so well that I don't want to jinx it.

Jayden is really enjoying the unit study. We added in another part of her school for the fall. Climate study. She will record the high and low temperature and precipitation type and amount every day this month. I also ordered the reading program that goes along with her curriculum that we will start in January. The program is called Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. Depending on how fast you go, you study nine genres of literature in either one or two years. We'll see how she does, but we probably will do the two year plan for 2nd and 3rd grade. I wanted to go ahead and get at least one genre done before we start the rest of the curriculum (Heart of Dakota's Bigger Hearts For His Glory) so that it will be old hat when we introduce the new harder work and more writing. We haven't gotten very far with the cooking, but it'll come. She's watching me more, and that counts for something, right?

Grace is still doing great with her school work. At this point I'm able to get about 2-3 days worth of school in with her each week... I'm happy with that for now, then we'll start going 4-5 days a week in January.

Julianna is doing much better. She's really growing up and maturing.... she's screaming less when things don't go her way and using her voice more.

Evie is almost 18 months now and her vocabulary is just exploding. She's also the most affectionate of all our children and will just randomly give hugs and kisses and smile at you. She's also on the last legs of potty training. We have a couple more weeks I would say before I'm comfortable with her going diaperless out and about.

So that's been our days lately. Lots and lots of outside time as well... daily walks even for all the girls. And very very good days even on the bad ones!

The Best Laid Plans....

After much deliberation a few months ago, I had our homeschool journey for the next couple of years all planned out. Well, leave kids alone for a couple of months and they'll blow those plans to bits.

Jayden is still loving our unit studies. I can't say at this point how much she's learning, but the focus academically was to get her reading and writing more.... it's working! On the household side of things.... she made bread the other day and it turned out really good! We haven't done much more with that yet because Evie has been exceptionally clingy, and when she's not clingy she's into everything!!!

Julianna is having a hard time lately.... the responsibilities of being almost 4 are taxing to a little mind ;) But as far as school goes she's having a blast! Right on target for my plans!

Grace however, during the past couple of months when I was really focusing on Jayden, decided to just blossom! She's reading quite well, listening and comprehending super, and being quite bored with what I was doing with her. So I told her the new plan was to start Little Hearts For His Glory (Heart of Dakota) slowly in a few weeks. She said she wanted to start now, so I told her we could do a little bit today. I was thinking we might get halfway through one day of plans.... NOPE... in about 45 minutes, including an interruption, she had completed the whole day plus her awana verses. So, even my well thought out NEW plans have been upended and she'll progress full speed with LHFHG starting today.

Autumn/Leaves

We have finally started. I picked this week to "start back" at school. Of course Evie picked this week to be majorly clingy and have a fever :) So Jayden started back, Grace and Julianna had a little bit each day, and I survived!

Since Evie wasn't letting me put her down, we didn't get to do much cooking or cleaning. Jayden made bread one time, but that was it... we'll do more of that as the fall moves along!

Jayden has done a great amount of copywork, about 10 pages of math, and identified three leaves/trees from our yard. I had her pick three different leaves, do a rubbing of each one, write down the type of tree it was from along with three sentences about each one.

She also has done an acronym poem (beginner, it doesn't really make a poem) and a poem about Autumn. Here are her poems:

Little
Evergreen
Apple tree
Free to fall

Autumn

Hello falling leaves
Goodbye green leaves
Hello brown grass
Goodbye green grass
Hello cool
Goodbye hot sun
Hello hot fire
Goodbye air conditioner

She also finished reading the last two chapters in The Courage of Sarah Noble and I let her have a "break" in reading by just letting her read a Junie B Jones book for fun.

We are making a lapbook with the autumn/leaves theme. We will be working on this theme until about the middle of October. I'll post a picture of her lapbook when she is through with it. She still has a little fact book about leaves, alphabetical order work, some poems to memorize, and an essay to write on fall, as well as defining some vocabulary words and a few more poems to write.

It's awesome to have her begging to do school and having absolutely no complaining... I might schedule breaks for unit studies at different points in our curriculum for her....