Educational Toys for Christmas Pt. 1

We got so many educational toys for Christmas that I thought I'd highlight some of them. The first and most successful educational toy D-Man got for Christamas was his snap circuit set. This was a present from Grandma and physics-professor Grandpa. It was an instant hit. At first, D-Man was mostly interested in what the circuits did (eg record his voice, light up an LED, etc), but after awhile, he started to get some of the concepts.

Today, we set up a rather complex circuit (for us) using three resistors and two switches to demonstrate how the different resistors affect the LED. It was funny as we were setting up the circuit using different resistors that D-Man told me that they make the LED go dim and didn't want me to use them. Once we set it up, he was very happy that we could make the LED have three different settings. One of the games we played with this one was trace the circuit. With the two switches, we had three different paths so both boys were tracing where the current was going depending on if the switches were on and off.

Christmas School

We took the month of December off from school to focus on Christmas. We still did some math (only because it's D-Man's favorite subject) and reading practice, but we abandoned all of our other school activities in favor of learning about Jesus' birth and the traditions surrounding it.

Our favorite resource was this book that I bought from Costco last year. It contains several short stories about how Christmas is celebrated in other countries as well as classic Christmas stories.

Reading about other countries inspired us to celebrate St. Nicholas Day and talk about other holidays related to Christmas like St. Lucia's Day. It was interesting and I can't wait to dive deeper into next year.

We also read some classics such as The Night Before Christmas which was such a big hit that we ended up reading it several times before Christmas Eve. Grandma and Grandpa D also bought the boys the children's version of The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck. It is a sweet story about Christmas presents and Shawn got a little choked up while reading it.

A feature of Christmas school this year was learning about the real St. Nicholas. D-Man asked us point-blank this year if Santa was real. We've never really focused on Santa at Christmas, so he didn't even have a real clear concept of who he is. We told him the truth about Santa and told him that Santa is based off of a man who was real called St. Nicholas. We checked out a few books about St. Nicholas plus a really good one was included in our own Christmas storybook. It was fun to talk with D-Man about how St. Nicholas' kindness showed Jesus to people. He is really someone we should try to emulate all of the time. Being the black-and-white thinker he is, D-Man just doesn't understand why people choose to believe that St. Nicholas is still alive. It was hard, but we convinced him that he could not enlighten his friends with this knowledge.

Of course, our Christmas school included plenty of Christmas movie classics. Our favorites are: A Muppets' Christmas Carol, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman, and the Christmas portion of Jesus of Nazareth. I tried to have the boys watch A Miracle on 34th Street, but they were too young to enjoy it. Oh well, we'll get to all of those more mature Christmas classics later.

Plans for the Spring

We only have 7 weeks of our Sonlight core left and it's only November. However, I don't want to start the next core early; I'd really like to stick to my schedule. I think we'll run into this problem every since we school year around. We do take breaks and have less intense weeks when we pare down school to the minimums, but we end up having an extra 11 weeks or so of school/year.

My plan for that time is to focus on reading some good literature that isn't contained in the Sonlight cores. We already read extra literature for fun, but this would be a time when we can really focus and devote some time to it. This year, we're going to do a quick run-though of Sonlight's preschool core: Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fun for Little Learners. We own about 80% of this core, so I've scheduled it out over 12 weeks. We've been reading it here and there, but we usually end up re-reading C-Monster's favorites over and over. I'd like to go through it systematically to read all of the stories. Technically, D-Man's not in the age range for this core, but it contains classic literature that doesn't have an age limit. I'm most interested in his reaction to the fairy tales. They are not Disney versions, but the real thing. They haven't watched (or read) any of the Disney versions so they won't be comparing like I will, but there are quite a few surprise endings. We'll also be re-reading our favorites from Exploring God's World and adding in some extra science books.

Once we're finished with this, we'll go back to reading both Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fun and Exploring God's World when the mood strikes us and at bedtime. I think there's a lot of benefit in repetition for classic stories like these. One of the benefits of buying Sonlight cores is that we end up with a nice family library for the boys to utilize. I won't be putting any books away until it is clear that they've all outgrown them. That might be a decade or more for these books. Here's my schedule for a 12 week run through of Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fun:

12 Week P34 Schedule

It's a work in progress, so it may change slightly from time to time.

Homeschool Conversations Pt. 2

D-Man: Mom, I don't want to do school anymore. I want to play all of the time!

Mom: Alright, I guess we can throw your math books away, then.

D-Man: No! I still want to do math and spelling.

Mom: Okay, that's fine. We'll just stop doing geography .

D-Man: No, no. I love geography...I want to do that.

Mom: What about our school reading?

D-Man: Well, I want to do that too.

Mom: D, that's all of school. What is it exactly that you don't want to do?

D-Man: Tree book. (That Developing the Early Learner 3 and he doesn't like it because it requires outlining occasionally. The first two were his "favorite workbooks, ever!")

Mom: So, you still want to do school, just not tree book?

D-Man: Yup.

Whew, I'm glad we got that straight! I decided that we could take a break from tree book...

Weekly Update--catch up...Week 20

Oh...the neglected blog! I've been delinquent with my blog recently because we've been so BUSY. Between Airrosti treatment (my shoulder feels so much better), minor illness, and dr. appts (it was only a mosquito bite!), we've been on the go. However, school goes on. We've had some great school days in the last few weeks. It really is fun for this mom to watch her son's brain figure things out. So here's what's been going on...

LA: SWR has been a big focus for us lately. The words have gotten a bit harder so D-Man needs to practice them more during the week. I've had to add in some extra review. He really knows his phonograms and is good at applying them to the words, but when there are phonogram options for a word, he needs to practice that word to remember which phonogram to use. An example of this is the word "read." He knows that both 'ea' and 'ee' make the long e sound so he could use either in this word, but only one is correct. So, we've started dictation once/week trying to use as many of his spelling words as possible. He usually writes three sentences as I dictate to him and we'll get about 6-7 of the 10 words for that week in the sentences. I've also been giving him quizzes on Wednesday and Thursday to reinforce his words, but there is a big difference between the quizzes and a test. He's allowed to ask me questions on the quiz and I stop him if I see he's writing a word wrong. We do the quizzes on his little white board which is quick and easy. They take about 5 minutes. I also solved my problem of D-Man not reading the words out of his log book by assigning 2-3 lists/day. I wrote down our list assignments on my schedule so it gets done. Now, he's getting into me timing him reading the lists and is proud of how fast he can read many of the earlier lists. All of this practicing has been paying off as he's gotten a 100% on his last two tests.

The other exciting LA development is that he now knows all 70 phonograms. We finished the last four this week. He has about 60 of them mastered. A few will take some time for mastery (ie, ei, and ough), but we have plenty of time for that. He really likes my blue/yellow/red method of sorting his phonogram cards as it shows him his progress and motivates him to get more cards in the blue pile (he's a strong visual learner!). Now that he's learned all of the phonograms, I'm assigning him reading. It's pretty exciting to see him tackle a book and read it with minimal help from me. Right now, we're working our way through our rather large (thanks Grandma) library of level 1 readers. He could probably handle harder books, but I don't want it to be "torture reading" (Wanda Sanseri's phrase). These books are easy, but do allow him to practice his decoding skills. I'm seeing the beauty of the WISE guide words lists in action. They are designed around frequently used words. Because of this, he can read several words in his readers fluently (his spelling words) and only have to work at reading the few that he hasn't encountered yet. This way, he gets plenty of practice and the satisfaction of reading a book all by himself, but doesn't get frustrated sounding out each word. He's been reading about 2 readers/day. We'll keep cycling through these and SL Readers 1 until March when I order our next SL core. This will come with Readers 2 which will be a step up in difficulty. After that, I think we'll be able to follow the SL readers schedule and include library books when he needs some extra reading. He is really getting into reading books on his own. Thursday night, he read a knock-knock joke book and Curious George's ABCs to C-Monster as bedtime stories. He did it on his own accord and really enjoyed it.

Math: D-Man has finished Singapore 1A and is now working on 1B. He's done 21 lessons in a week. I thought we'd slow down when we got to 1B, but the material is still easy for him. He understands regrouping and now automatically uses it when needed. We will start multiplication in a couple of weeks and I plan on slowing down to make sure he really understands it. We also need to work on his addition/subtraction math facts a bit. They come naturally for him and he automatically recalls most of them just from completing Horizons K, but I want him to have them down cold because he's advancing in math so quickly. We're still doing 1 lesson of Horizons 1 every day as well. Horizons includes a lot of problems and gives him good practice of what he's learning in Singapore. Horizons 1 includes tests every 10 lessons and I've been administering them as tests. D-Man doesn't have any problem with this...he thinks tests are fun. In fact, he likes to see how well he knows the material. It helps that he's received a 100% on both tests. Horizons is primarily review for him so I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

Sonlight: Wow, we're on week 28 already. Milly Molly Mandy is still a big favorite. I think we'd all like to go visit her in her little village and meet her friends. I really love the innocence of the book and am enjoying watching the boys become friends with Milly Molly Mandy. It is fun seeing the boys getting lost in and enjoying literature as much as I do. D-Man also loves the book Then and Now. It's scheduled to read 2 pages/week, but I think we'll be reading the whole book about once/week instead. It's a cute book showing how ordinary things (like a market or a kitchen) have changed over the years. I think it's a great intro to history. Next week will be our last week of formal SL reading for awhile. We'll be taking time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas to do "Christmas School."

Art: I know I've raved over The Way They See It before, but I just can't say enough good things about this book. It is a perfect introduction to Art History and learning about creative expression. It's giving me an opportunity to teach the boys about the benefits of being individuals and how it's okay to express ourselves uniquely. That's a lesson that will be replayed over the years since D-Man and C-Monster are so different in every way and I don't want them to get in the habit of comparing. Last week, we studied a painting about a stormy sky. I'd been waiting for our sky to have something interesting to color (we have a lot of clear, blue sky days). One night, I noticed how beautiful the sunset was. We actually had a few clouds and the sky was filled with red, orange, and purple. I told the boys to look at it and D-Man exclaimed, "Mom, can we go draw it? I'll get the crayons...don't forget the book!" It was a fabulous idea so we doused ourselved in bug spray and spent the next hour coloring the sunset. Okay, C-Monster drew his version of a helicopter racing an airplane through the sky...all with a yellow crayon, but the intent was there. I'm not in a hurry to finish the book or get through all of the projects, so we might spend the next month or so just coloring the sky.

Well, that's the jist of the last 4 weeks or so. I'll definitely be posting more as we get closer to Christmas. I'm eager to share how Christmas school goes for us.

Homeschool Conversations pt. 1

This was a conversation that occurred this morning:

D-Man: (while finishing his geography) Mom, can we do my word problems book next...PLEASE?

Mom: Sure. If if that's what you want to do...

D-Man: How many pages can I do? Can I do a lot?

Mom (who has planned for D-Man to do 1 page/day): How about 2 pages? That's a lot, right?

D-Man: No, how about 5 pages because I'm 5? Can I please do 5 pages? That would be 10 problems. (He continues talking to himself) Unless I do 20 problems...then I would only have to do 5 more pages.

Mom: Okay, you can do 5 pages (as she wonders what we're going to do when he finishes this book).

D-Man: GREAT!

And Still...More Read-Alouds

Here are my reviews of the latest books we're reading for school:

The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook

This has been a surprise hit in our house. We are 4 chapters into the book and the boys love it. They really like that Milly-Molly-Mandy lives with her extended family on the farm. The book takes us back to a simpler time. This book is a much easier read aloud than the Uncle Wiggily Storybook so C-Monster gets into it more. When it's on the schedule, we're supposed to read one chapter, but I never read less than 3. The stories are short compared to what we've been reading lately.

What's Bigger Than a Blue Whale?

I love books by Robert E. Wells. He can weave some pretty complicated concepts into a picture book for kids. This one covers big objects from a Blue Whale to the Universe. When we read about the size of Antares compared to our sun, D-Man and I discussed the different stages of a star's lifespan. We've read 5 of his books in our house now and I'd highly recommend all of them.

Stories from Africa

This book contains 6 stories about the mission field in Africa. Although this book is perfect for the age group and a gentle introduction to missionaries, I was disappointed that most of the stories weren't more about Africa. They do take place in Africa and contain aspects of life that are different from the United States, but I'd hoped that it would have been more detailed. One reason that this is important to me is that D-Man is fascinated with Africa. It was the first continent he could recognize on a map and he asks questions about it all of the time. All-in-all, we enjoyed the book and had some good discussions about people who don't know who Jesus is.

The Gods Must Be Angry

We are about halfway through this book and it is sparking a lot of discussions. It is about a boy who knocks the head off of an idol in his house and how his family is faced with questions about the "power" of the idol. I was worried that D-Man wouldn't be mature enough for this story, but he was ready for it. It is a good introduction to different religions. It goes well with Stories from Around the World which contains stories based off of different world religions.

Well, those are our newest books. We don't have many more books to read in this core. So far, I've been very happy with Sonlight's book selections.

A Great School Day

I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago, but didn't get around to publishing it. I really wanted to share one of our great days, so here it is.

We had a great schoolday today. Not everyday is a great schoolday. Most days are good; occasionally, we'll have a not-so-good day, but today was a great day. Here's how it went:



Geography: I asked D-Man whether he wanted to start with math or spelling, but he really wanted to do geography. I caved. We got out the globe and reviewed what it was and where we live. He also identified North and South America. Then he and C-Monster spent another 15 minutes looking at the globe and asking me questions. They were particularly interested in the poles.


Once we were done with the globe, I introduced to D-Man to a map. Of course, he knows what a map is, but we compared it to a globe and talked about the advantages of a map. To finish it off, D-Man colored the map in his workbook.


Math: Once we finished geography, D-Man asked to do his new math book (Singpore PM 1A). First, I got out some addition flashcards and quizzed him on his 0, 1, and 2 math facts to 12. This was the first time we'd worked on math facts. Until now, I've just relied on all of the practice in Horizons K. D-Man did really well. He knew all of the problems and only had to think about the 2's above 6. Tomorrow, we'll review what we did today and also do the subtraction problems in that grouping. My goal is for him to have all of his addition and subtraction math facts to 10 memorized by the end of PM 1A. After D-Man was finished, C-Monster wanted a turn, so I helped him do the flashcards up to 1+5. Actually, he wouldn't let me help him, but he did let me remind him to use his fingers. Once flashcards were over, D-Man quickly did Review 2 in his workbook. It was mostly word problems which were really easy for him.


Spelling: Monday's are easy review days. We started with learning a few new spelling rules and reviewing the ones we learned last week. None of these rules were new to D-Man, but the cards and the exact wording were. He's still working on the exact wording of the rules, but the cards are perfect for him. He's a visual learner so having a picture cue for each rule is good for him. We, then, learned 4 new phonograms. When we learn new phonograms, D-Man looks at the phonogram, repeats the sounds after me and writes it on his whiteboard. We do this a couple of times. The next step is for me to quiz the phonograms by telling him the sounds for him to write on the whiteboard without seeing the card. The last step is for D-Man to read the phonograms from the cards. This gives him a good introduction to the new phonograms. Our last spelling task today was to review the words D-Man missed on his spelling test Friday. This was a good time for us to discuss his mistakes and talk about the correct spelling of the words. He misspelled 'bread' and 'hair,' but got 'floor' right the first time. Tomorrow, I'll quiz bread and hair again to see if he remembers what we talked about today.


Developing the Early Learner: The last thing we did was finish DEL 2. These books are intended to identify strenths and weaknesses in motor, visual, auditory, and comprehension skills. They are one of his favorite school activities. Today, we did the last 3 pages of the book. He finished them well. Of course, we had to look at the next workbook in the series and he "had" to work on one of the mazes in the middle of the book. The activities are designed to be worked in order, but he did the maze correctly anyway.

Sonlight Read-Alouds: After some recess and rest time, we dove into our Sonlight read-alouds. Today we got to read an Uncle Wiggily story, a poem from Animals, Animals, and a few pages from our science book, What's Under the Sea? SL RA's are the icing of our schoolday. D-Man and C-Monster look forward to cuddling on the couch to read with me. I don't mind it myself. D-Man is always full of questions about our readings. Today, he wanted to know a lot more about oil rigs. I answered the questions that I knew and told him that we'd look up his other ones later. Although our science books are pretty simple, they create lots of bunny trails for us to explore.

More than what we did, I enjoyed our attitudes. Everyone was excited about learning and having fun doing it.

Art and Airplanes

My parents recently visited us. When my parents drive here from Oregon, you never know when they'll arrive or what they'll visit along the way. For the boys, they never know what cool presents Grandma and Grandpa will buy at their stops. This trip, my parents visited several Oregon trail sights. They bought us several Oregon Trail books and a map. They also bought the boys some models of a stagecoach, covered wagon, and windmill. They also visited an Air Museum somewhere in Kansas. There they bought D-Man and C-Monster a couple of wooden airplanes to paint and put together. Well, we didn't get to it while they were visiting, but the day they left, the boys were excited to do the project. Shawn set up the paints and we let the boys go.

C-Monster chose the faster color-wash method

D-Man was deep in concentration creating some detail on his plane.

The finished project

They even made for some pretty sturdy toys.

Lunch at Sonic

Friday, we got to go to Sonic for lunch. Those of you who know me, know that this is a big deal for me to take the boys out to lunch. We rarely eat fast food. However, Sonic is great for a reward because they have fun drinks for kids (and Mom) plus the boys can get something besides chicken nuggets. Oh, and the boys love that they can get bananas instead of french fries.

The treat was for D-Man finishing up Horizons K this week. It took us less than 4 months to complete it, but the last 15 lessons seemed to drag on. This is mostly because we received Singapore PM 1A in the mail and D-Man was really exicted about it. We started to use Singapore as our primary math each day and Horizons K was relegated to a supplement. We did a little at a time until we got to lesson 150. That's when D-Man decided he was going to finish it. He worked on it during his rest times and finished it in 3 days. His motivation was that I wouldn't let him start Horizons 1 until Horizons K was completely finished. He's been chomping at the bit to do Horizons 1. So, we'll get to start it today, too.

Singapore PM will still be our main math program; Horizons 1 will be a supplement. Horizons presents a wider range of topics and LOTS of practice problems. We'll also be starting Challenging Word Problems (CWP) 1 soon. The CWP books have gone out of print, so I had the bindings cut off, put each page in page protecters, and put them in a binder. My idea of a non-consumable workbook. D-Man loves word problems, so CWP will be more of a fun, bonus activity on Fridays.

Weekly Report: Weeks 14 & 15

It is really hard to keep up with weekly reports when family's visiting. I really didn't have much time on my computer. However, I was thankful that D-Man was able to spend a lot of time with my family while they were visiting. That is definitely a perk of homeschooling. We completed full school days the whole time they were here (which only takes about 2 hours/day) and D-Man got to be at home instead of school for 8 hours during the weekdays. My family couldn't have picked a better week and a half for visiting San Antonio. We had a hot, dry summer. At the beginning of September, everything here was brown and, seemingly, dead. However, it started to rain in September and we've had a good bit since. The rain made everthing around here green again. It also brought some beautifully cool weather. Well, cool for us anyway. Granted, we had some wicked humidity, but at least it wasn't hot.


Back to school...

Math: As you may have read in my previous post, D-Man finished up Horizons K math. Yeah! We started Horizons 1 on Friday. He told me that it will be his favorite math book. He likes the color of Horizons and is really looking forward to problems with numbers over 100. We won't get to that until the second half of Horizons 1, so he'll probably want to rush through the first half. He is still enjoying Singapore math and I like how it's teaching him to think about the numbers and regrouping addition and subtraction problems. We have settled into doing 1 lesson of Singapore/day. I really like this pace. The concepts are still easy for him, but he's really thinking about the problems and different ways of attacking them. That's the beauty of Singapore Math. I have a feeling well go a little faster through the shapes and measurement sections, but slow right back down when we start 1B.

LA: Wow, we're on list H-1 already. Even though we go half-pace, SWR is going fast for me. For me, not for D-Man. He got a 100% and 90% on his list G tests, so he's understanding the material. We played the "bears" game (the board game from the phonogram fun packet) with my family and it was hilarious. D-Man loved it since he got to tell Grandma and Aunt Katrina the answers. They did pretty well and we all had a lot of fun. We started reviewing the spelling rule cards a couple of weeks ago. I thought it would be a little much for him, but it seems to be clicking in his brain. One of the rules is "A-Y usually says /A/ at the end of a base word. When a word ends with A says /ah/." I don't expect mastery on the rules yet, but D-Man's getting it. He asked me what 'ta' said yesterday morning after seeing it on TV. I asked him what he thought and he brought up the rule. I explained that 'ta' isn't a word, but that it would say /ah/ at the end. He says, "so tray (looking at Little-J's highchair) would end in A-Y, right? Because it says /A/." I told him he was correct and he was pretty happy with himself for getting it right. Can you see why I love SWR?

Sonlight: While my family was here, I was thankful that our core has a light schedule. We were able to complete our reading with no trouble. However, now that everyone is gone, we're zooming through the weeks. It's not really a big deal. We're just going to finish the core at our own pace and then re-read our favorites until it's time to start the next core. I also got some additional books from the library to help us slow down.

Science: Experiment Saturday's are back! Having a break was nice with all that was going on, but things have slowed down again. I got The Usborne Big Book of Experiments from the library to use as inspiration.

Art: We finally started this on Friday! The book we're using really stresses letting the kids do are their way. This week, I introduced them to their "art" crayons and talked about the different colors. Then, I sent them off to create. I told them to find something colorful and draw it with the crayons. D-Man colored life-like drawings of his new mini monkey erasers and a few of his stuffed animals. He used yellow, gray, and black. C-Monster decided to draw a silver box and then several other drawings using the silver crayon. I had to laugh at their use of color. I'll post some pics later.

Library: We had just a quick run to the library this week as the boys hadn't read a few of their books from last week. I did pick up How Do You Know What Time It Is? by Robert Wells and the Usborne experiment book. If you haven't checked out any of the Robert Wells' books, I'd recommend it. Sonlight has a few in the P4/5 core and we often check out others from the library. They are appealing to 5yos, but are appropriate for teaching older kids too.

Weekly Report-Weeks 12 and 13

Whew, what a crazy couple of weeks. Shawn and I got to go to CO last weekend for my 10 year reunion at USAFA sans children! It was amazing and exhausting. Despite everything (I felt) I needed to do to get ready for the trip and, more importantly, for the kids to be without me, we did some school.

Math: D-Man still loves his new Singapore math book. We did slow down a bit though. We covered finished subtraction and ordinal numbers. He's been solid on his ordinal numbers for a couple of years now so the info wasn't new, but he really liked the activities. We started the three reviews that are in the middle of the book last week. They are quite a bit longer than the regular lessons and packed with activities. It took us two days to finish 1 of the reviews last week. Then, we took a break from Singapore at the end of last week to work on Horizons K. Next week, I'm going to focus more on math facts. D-Man has a lot of them memorized already, but I want to make sure he has them all down cold before we start Singapore PM 1B.

LA: Week before last, we took a break from new words and did a review week. It turned out to be really helpful for both of us. I gave D-Man 2 spelling tests/day covering 20 words/list. He didn't have any trouble with it since they were all review words. I'm going to use the words he missed as review words in the coming weeks. I was pleasantly surprised by how much he's retained. Last week, we finished up List F. He didn't do as well on this test as he'd done on previous ones; however, he often just used the wrong phonogram for a common sound. For instance, he spelled bread, bred. He knows his phonograms very well, but just needs more practice with the week's words. We'll work on it. I'm also very happy with how well he's reading. This morning at church, he sat down and read one of the books in the 2 and 3 yo classroom while he was waiting to be checked into his class. He just sat down and read the whole book sounding out each word that he didn't recognize. It was pretty cool. He also really likes the new readers I bought him. They are called, I Can Read It, by John Holzmann. I got them from Sonlight. I don't require him to read, but I want to have material available in case he wants to. These stories are on the easy side for him (which encourages fluency) and have a pretty good storylines. The other day, he acted out one of the stories with M&Ms during rest time.

Sonlight: We finished Brer Rabbit way ahead of schedule. We finished week 20 this week and we weren't supposed to finish it until week 33. D-Man really liked that book, so I told him that we'd find more Brer Rabbit stories at the library. We're also going to find a book on tall tales. The boys really enjoy Jim Weiss' tall tale CD, but it only has 4 stories on it. At first, the SL IG seemed kind of choppy, but now I really like the format. Because we've been reading some of the books since the beginning, the characters have become endearing to us. Uncle Wiggily, for example, is like a part of the family. Reading more books at a time and stretching them out over weeks really cements them into our lives. That's really a new concept for me.

Science: Although, we've enjoyed What's Under the Sea?, I haven't organized any experiments for the last three Saturdays. This is just because I've been gone. However, I should be back on top of it by next Saturday.

Geography: That's right, we added geography to our plate last week. We're just going through three small workbooks that teach us 1. how to read a map, 2. land masses and bodies of water (generic terms), and 3. continents and oceans (specific places). I thought D-Man would like it and he does. In fact, he wanted to do 5 pages of the workbook on Tuesday because he's 5. I said no because the workbooks are only 16 pages apiece and I'd like them to last awhile. I will have to find some more geography activities to do, but that shouldn't be hard. We bought a globe on Friday and you'd think it was Christmas in our house. It was just a cheap $15 globe from Target, but the boys were pretty excited. When Shawn got home, Caleb showed him where California was on the globe (we'd previously only identified it on the map in the schoolroom) and told him that he (Caleb) was born there. He calls himself a "California-boy."

Library: We resumed our weekly library trip this week. The boys each picked out one book and I picked up Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book. We were able to have a mini-reading-marathon on Friday, so we read from both the Blue Fairy Book and Yellow Fairy Books. The stories are long, but interesting.

New Read-Alouds

We've started some read-alouds with Sonlight's Exploring God's World so I thought I'd review them. I am still very happy with Sonlight's book choices. This continues to be a great fit for D-Man.

Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm

I cannot say enough about this book and its sequel below. This book actually comes from Sonlight's P3/4 core, but I decided to read it along with The Year at Maple Hill Farm. The same characters appear in both books which thrilled the boys. This book makes me want to pack up and move to Maple Hill Farm. The Provenson's have painted a sweet picture through their animals. Because we visit upstate NY each summer, the boys were able to identify even more with the surroundings. The artwork beautifully shows the character of each animal.

The Year at Maple Hill Farm

This is the companion to the book above. It illustrates each season and month of the year through the goings-on at the farm. Although upstate NY's seasons look very different than ours here in Texas, it fun to see how our familiar animal friends weather the elements. We used both this and the first part of The Berenstain Bear's Big Book of Science and Nature to create our year poster. Because of it's illustrations, my boys will keep pulling these books out again and again. Okay, can you tell that I absolutely love these books? It's sad that the Provensons only wrote two of them.

What's Under the Sea?

It's a given that D-Man will love every science book we read. So, yes, he loves this book. This one is a nice introduction to the ocean at the preschool/Kindergarten level. It doesn't go into a lot of detail, but does include some fun facts. This book is a good "bunny trail" creator. It includes just enough information on each subject to stimulate further research. I have no doubt that D-Man will request some whale books during our next library visit. C-Monster isn't as interested in this book. He really likes to be read to instead of following a bunch of facts on a page. He's an auditory learner, so maybe that's the reason. The eye candy of this book doesn't appeal to him as much.

The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit

We just started this book, but so far it's a hit. The illustrations are breathtaking and help the boys follow the story. Although they are becoming seasoned listeners thanks to Uncle Wiggily, they enjoy being able to follow the story in the pictures. I'm sure that I was read these stories as a child, but I don't remember them. I'm enjoying reading these as much as the boys enjoy listening to them.

American Tall Tales CD

This CD has been a surprising favorite. At first, I couldn't figure out when we'd listen to it. D-Man will listen to audiobooks during rest time, but C-Monster naps during that time. They're so used to congregating around me (or Shawn) when we read-aloud that I didn't know what they'd do with a CD. The car was my next thought, but we'd never get through a story with the little amount of driving we do...until, we started to pick up a boy from a local public school three days/week. Finally, an upside to sitting in the pick-up line. D-Man sits in his carseat working in his math book and they both listen to this CD. We've been through it several times now, but they still want to listen to it everyday. It only has 4 stories on it, but Jim Weiss (the narrator) keeps us interested.

Weekly Report Week 11

We had an up-and-down week, school-wise. We did really well in the beginning, but were really busy at the end of the week. I left on Friday for a women's retreat, so I had to get everything set for the weekend. Shawn is a great dad and more-than-capable of taking care of the boys by himself, but I wanted him to focus on having fun with the boys all weekend. So, I tried to help him out as much as I could before I left. Because of that, we didn't get a lot of school done on Thursday or Friday. So here's how we did.



Sonlight: We finished Week 17. We normally do more than a week's worth of reading, but that's not required. D-Man's favorite story of the week was The Hero of Holland. It's about a little boy who prevented a breach in the dyke by using his finger to plug a hole overnight. D-Man was interested that a boy accomplish something so important. He also loves our new science book: What's Under the Sea?


Math: We didn't do as much in Horizons K this week as we usually do. We still got to lesson 131. The exciting development for the week was that we received our new math programs in the mail on Thursday. D-Man was so happy about Singapore math that he begged me to start immediately and completed 14 lessons after dinner. We did another two on Friday. Here's what he's been doing in his new book.

LA: We really focused on SWR this week. The words are getting harder, but D-Man is still enjoying learning them each week. His spelling test was great. Not only did he get 100% on all of his new words, he got 100% on the review section as well. He was so proud of his "200%," that I wouldn't let Shawn tell him that there's no such thing as 200% on a test. Here's a pic of his hard work:


Despite the success this week, I've decided that we're going to have a review this week. We'll cover lists A-E at 40 words/day. That way, I can see what words he's still having trouble with and we can work on them a little more.


Library: We are still reading our books that we checked out two weeks ago. We finished Two Times the Fun but D-Man really liked it, so we're reading it again (and again). It's an okay book, but not worth reading three times when we have plenty of good books to read. Shawn's theory is that D-Man keeps requesting it because the chapters are long.

SWR Binders

A few people have asked about SWR Binder Organization so I decided to post mine here.

I have two binders: The first is my Teacher's Binder. I use this one everyday.

It has 4 tabs so far:

1. Schedules/Procedures. Here I keep the most important stuff. I have my schedule, a dictation guide, a introduce vs. quiz vs. test guide, and different helps that I print off of the yahoo group.

2. Log. This is a log that I keep to help me remember what we've done each day. I have my schedule, but I don't follow it exactly. I figure this log will help out when I start SWR with C-Monster.

3. Enrichments/Game Ideas. This is where I keep any ideas I have or find on good enrichments. The yahoo group is full of them. This way I can keep my favorites organized.

4. Materials. Here I have all of my additional materials. I currently have the McCall-Hardy and McCall-Crabbs books, the Suggested Book List, and my getting started printouts. This will grow when I order the rest of the materials next year.

Up front, I keep two pencil pouches. I have one for pencils and highlighters and a second one to hold our phonogram cards. I tried it all in one pencil pouch, but that didn't work. Then, in the front pocket, I have my own logbook.

The second binder is D-Man's student binder. This doesn't get used too often yet. It really just holds his logbook and tests. Eventually, he'll include more. It has 5 tabs.

1. Phonogram/Spelling Practice. This is just a place where we put any practice sheets that we work on. Realistically, I'll probably chuck all of these at the end of the year.

2. Quizzes/Tests. This is where I file his tests. I don't really put quizzes in here anymore since we do most of those on the white board.

3. Enrichments. This is where I will file any products from enrichments we do. We haven't had any yet.

4. Books read. I have a log that I made to record all of the books he's read. I don't count Bob Books or Fun Tales, so the only thing we have written down so far is Go, Dog, Go. This list will be very useful soon.

5. Paper. This is just where we keep extra paper for writing. I got a huge ream of paper for him, so we just put about 50 sheets in his notebook for easier access.

He also has a pencil pouch that contain a pencil and his very own red pencil.

There you have it. One last thing that has really helped was copying the Scope and Sequence sheet for D-Man. I place a checkmark next to each step as we start it.

Thankful for Rain!

We've been in a drought for about 2 years so rain showers have been few and far between. The boys have been going through a puddle withdrawal. So, when it started raining, I promised them that we'd be able to play out in the rain. Here they are celebrating God's gift. I'm not sure that the umbrellas served their intended purpose.

Weekly Report Week 10

This was a short week with Labor Day on Monday. We did a little school on that day because we wanted to show Shawn what we do. He's always at work during school. He was impressed with D-Man's grasp of the rules and marking in our spelling program. We weren't taught this way, so it's surprising to see what a 5yo can learn.

Language Arts- We had quite a few silent E words this week so D-Man was happy. We still didn't read our words enough, so that's my goal for next week. He did get a 100% on his spelling test. He was so proud of himself. We finished up the E list. His penmanship wasn't the best during his test, so we're going to focus on that as well. Here's a picture of his test from Friday.

Math- We just finished up lesson 125 (out of 160) so I ordered his new program. I just found out that there aren't any new concepts introduced after lesson 140. This level has all been review for him anyway, so we're going to start Singapore 1A when we get to lesson 140 and use the last 20 lessons as review on Fridays. When we finish Horizons K, we'll start using Horizons 1 as review on Fridays.

Sonlight-Our favorite story this week was St. George and the Dragon. Through St. George, we learned about courage, bravery, and duty. What great virtues for little boys to learn! C-Monster had just decided that day to be a knight for our chruch's Fall Festival, so this story came at a perfect time. He even told me that he wants to be a knight when he grows up. We might have a hard time finding dragons for him to slay. D-Man was captivated by this story, so I'm going to look up more knight stories at the library.

Science- We read two books for science this week. We read the scheduled Year at Maple Hill Farm and added it's companion Animals at Maple Hill Farm. They were both sweet books. The way that the authors captured the personalities of the animals was perfect. The beautiful artwork was a bonus. The only downside is that there are only two books. I wish there were more in the series. After we finished reading about the year, we finally got around to making our year poster. D-Man (like his mom) is a visual learner so I decided that we needed to put our knowledge of the year down on posterboard. I did the writing while D-Man read which seasons and months to put on the poster. Then, he and C-Monster decorated it. Here's our final product:

Besides new math, I also ordered geography and art this week. I can't wait for them to arrive!

Weekly Report-Week 9

We're still trying to figure out our schedule now that public school has started. It doesn't help that D-Man has been sleeping in until at least 8:45. Friday, he didn't wake up until 9:15. He must be going through a growth spurt because he's been going to sleep before 9 (bedtime at 8). He normally wakes up between 7:45 and 8. This has been cutting into our morning, so we aren't finishing math and LA until 12-1. That's fine except that D-Man just doesn't focus well that late. So, we're still working on it.

Here's the rundown:

Math: D-Man learned two exciting new concepts this week. Yes, he really was excited. First, we learned about quarters. I thought this was going to hard, but he got it right away. This was one instance when manipulatives came in handy. He doesn't normally like the clutter of manipulatives, but it does help him to understand a new concept occasionally. In this instance, we paired up a quarter with two dimes and a nickel, two quarters with a half dollar, and four quarters with a dollar. He got it immediately.

The second concept that promted him to bring me his math book on Saturday was learning about 3-D shapes. The book only listed cylindars, spheres, and cones. We got those down and then dove into the rest of our 3-D shapes set. There are 10 in all. They suggested a couple of games in the package, so we played those for a few minutes. Here's a pic of D-Man figuring out which shapes are suitable for tower building and which are not.

Language Arts: We did better with SWR this week. I'm trying to figure out ways for D-Man to read his words more often without using his learning log. He just doesn't like reading out of the learning log. This week, we used his word box. I pulled out all of the action verbs and made a game out of reading the cards. Instead of just reading them out loud to me, he had to act them out. He loved this game! Next time, I'll get C-Monster involved. He can't read all of those words yet, but he'll follow whatever D-Man does. In fact, Little-J will enjoy the show too. My plan is to do something similar with the prepositions, nouns, and pronouns.

D-Man got a 90% on his spelling test for the third week in a row. He misspelled 'your' which wasn't surprising because he misspelled 'you' two weeks ago. We retested 'you' this week and he got it right, but forgot the connection between it and 'your.' He did think about it. He spelled it 'yoor' using the 1st sound of /oo/ instead of the 3rd sound of /ou/. He also got all of his other review words correct which shows me that he's learning from his mistakes. He is really pushing me to try 20 words per week. I think that we'll give it a try when we start list F in two weeks.

Sonlight: We finished up week 16 this week. Nothing real special to report here. Great read-alouds.

Science: We finished up the Berenstain Bear's Book of Science and Nature this week. The last portion was about energy. D-Man was sad we finished it, but happier when I told him we'd start it all over next week. We'll just read it along-side our other science readings. I found this science experiment on the pbskids website. So cool. It ties in matter with energy.

My three little scientists

Library Trip: We made a trip to the library this week. Although, I love Sonlight's P4/5 program for Kindergarten, we need more reading. I consider this our pleasure reading. I'd like the boys to get into a habit of always reading for learning (school) and for pleasure. I have a list of books called 1000 good books. I'd like for us to get through all of these books during our schooling years. The list splits the books up into grade categories. We'll certainly be able to meet my goal for the primary elementary books. I put a few of those books on hold and picked up the books that I'd placed on hold last week. I told each boy that they could pick 1-2 books themselves. D-Man picked up a book and read its title, "Frog's Best Friend." I love to see that.

Comments are now working!

I found out from one of my best friends and my husband that they weren't able to comment on any of my posts. Well, I don't know what was wrong, but it works now. So...comment away. Talk about how beautiful I am, what a great mother I am, or how smart my children are...other comments are welcome as well.

Phonogram Games

Anything is fun if you put it into a board game, right? That's the sentiment at our house. We are a home full of gamers. We play some kind of game every night before bed. Some of the boys' favorites are Sorry, Mancala, Uno, and Connect Four. Therefore, I didn't think twice when I saw a game package on the Spell to Write and Read website. I just put it into my cart. The whole package came with two board games (really one with 2 different board), Phonogram Bingo, and instructions for several other phonogram card games.

These games make reviewing our phonograms too easy. We play the board game a few time/week. C-Monster gets his own pile of phonograms (just the first 26) and the rest of us draw from D-Man's pile of the phonograms he's learned. After finishing a turn, the player draws a card from the pile. If he can correctly say all of the sounds for that phonogram, he gets to keep the card. The person with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

Let's face the fact, D-Man's extremely competitive. With parents like his, it's no wonder where he gets it. Well, we're using it for good in this game. If he wants to win, he needs to know those phonogram sounds. It's really Shawn who's at a disadvantage. It's hard to guess the four sounds of 'ou' if you haven't been taught. This game's helping him too.

Since we've been playing this game, I haven't seen the need to quiz the phonograms very often. I do review and quiz the ones that he hasn't quite mastered, but there aren't many of those at the moment. I love products like this that make learning easy and painless.

What you don't see in these pictures is that minutes after they were taken, D-Man slipped off of the chair and cut the corner of his eye. The game was abandoned while Shawn took him to an urgent care clinic. Fortunately, it looked MUCH worse than it actually was and no stiches were needed. He did have a swollen, black eye along with his nasty cut for a few days, but such is the life of a boy.