Monday, November 30, 2009

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.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

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.

Monday, November 23, 2009

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...

Sunday, November 22, 2009

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.

Monday, November 2, 2009

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!