We're back?

Well, it's been almost a year. I've had a year of sleep deprivation from nighttime nursing, adding a new student, loving a willful 3-year old, running a half marathon and traveling to a lot of sport practices. It's been a great and busy year. S-Baby's 1st birthday is fast approaching and I'm finally getting things settled. We have had an incredibly productive school year and I've learned a lot about teaching two students efficiently. I'm still busy and learning but I just might have time to blog about it.

Where are we? Well, that would take a long time to explain so I'll just go on from here. I've updated the pics and curriculum information on the side and will do an update this week. J-Monster has all but ceased his school-time destruction mode and wants to join us instead. Baby-S is full-on mobile and I'm thankful for baby toys and baby gates.

In short, I'm enjoying homeschooling even more these days and am very happy with the tools I have at my disposal. I am still looking for the cure for a whiny child and would like to spend more time outside or doing science...it's a journey.

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Spelling Word Box

An important part of Spell to Write and Read is doing enrichments. Enrichments are activities designed to reinforce the words and phonograms in interesting ways. One of D-Man's favorites is his box of spelling words. Each week, he writes his words on 3x2.5" cards. Then we file them in a box according to each list. This has turned out to be a great activity. First, he gets to practice spelling the words when he writes them on the cards. Then, we can use the cards in a couple of ways. We use them as flashcards to practice reading the words. This helps D-Man improve his reading fluency. We also arrange them into sentences. This is a sneaky way to introduce grammar gently. When we form sentences, we learn about nouns, verbs, pronouns, and adjectives. Of course, once we form a sentence, he reads it and practices fluency. So much work in a simple activity. I'm sure I'll come up with more ways to use these cards as we go on with the program.

For D-Man, his box is a physical reminder of what he's accomplished so far. He likes to look at and read "his words" and insists that they are filed in order. So far he has 80 words in his box and we add 10 words per week.

Life is Hectic

Yes, homeschooling life can be hectic. It took us an hour to do LA the other day because the littles were into EVERYTHING and trying to persuade D-Man to come play. It was a particularly crazy time because of exterminators, short nap times, and mixed up schedules. I know it will get harder as they get older and I have more to school.

However, as I'm drinking my coffee in front of the computer with my boys snuggled upstairs sleeping, I am watching all of the kids go to school at 7:15 out my front window. 7:15!! That's what time D-Man would have to be out the door. I know some have early risers, but God has blessed me with late sleepers. I can't imagine having to feed and dress 3 kids to drive one to school everyday at 7:15!

Preparing to homeschool

I didn't just wake up a couple of months ago and decide to homeschool. I started thinking about it before D-Man was born. While we lived in North Carolina (2002), I met some amazing hs families. It was my first close-up experience with homeschoolers and it convinced me to do some research. While living in Boston (2004), I became friends with 3 more homeschooling families. They exposed me to different styles of homeschooling. Once I realized the type of education I could provide my children, I was hooked. Since then, I've read every homeschooling book I could find at the library and spent many hours online looking for curriculum.

So here's what I've come up with for K-2nd grade:

Home School Curriculum Plans K-2

My style of schooling is mainly Christian classical with Charlotte Mason and Principle Approach influences. I'll go more in depth on those in a future post.

I've planned my curriculum up to 6th grade. It isn't set in stone, but it gives me a direction. It would be difficult for me to plan one year at a time. I really need to know what we're working on now will be compatible with what I want to do in the 4th grade.

Do I have some form of OCD? Probably...I just wish it would show up when I clean my house now and then.

Our Current SL Reading List

Part of school for us is reading great books. For D-Man's Kindergarten year, I chose to use Sonlight's P4/5 curriculum. Yes, technically it is for preschoolers...sort of. The recommended ages are 4-5 so, even though Daniel is in Kindergarten, he falls into the intended age range. After using this program for the 8 weeks (and making it through 10 weeks of reading), I know I made the right choice. We love the book selections and Daniel is getting a lot out of them. P4/5 is titled Explore God's World. It includes books that discuss different cultures and stories from many countries as well as some great storybooks. It is a gentle intro to reading aloud, geography, science, and social studies. It is the fun part of our schoolday. So here's what we're reading right now:

This is our Bible. It is a children's Bible that includes many of the stories that other children's Bibles omit such as Balaaam's Donkey or the Bronze Snake.

This is our science book for about 15 weeks. So far we covered the year including months, seasons, and holidays and nature. Next up, the science fair section. Dad-this section includes some physics.

Our Mother Goose collection for the year. Considering the ages of the boys, I'll probably be reading from a Mother Goose book for the next 10 years. At least I have a few of them to keep it interesting.

This book is a good example of why I chose to use Sonlight. I would not have picked this book to read to the boys. I'm just not a fan of poetry so it's a good thing that Sonlight thinks poetry is important. The boys love this book. We read some of the poems over and over. I know that they don't understand them all yet, but that'll come with age. The poems are accompanied by beautiful Eric Carle illustrations. I will admit that while poetry isn't my favorite genre, these poems are good and the artwork is breathtaking.

This is the little people's version of The Book of Virtues by William Bennett. It takes exerpts of different stories (mostly classic literature) and uses them to illustrate virtues. We haven't read much from it yet, but I think that I'd like to create a mini-study of virtues from this book when we're finished with this core.

This is by far my favorite book in the core. It is a storybook filled with stories of a helpful bunny gentleman. Even though these stories were written 75 years ago, the boys can't get enough Uncle Wiggily stories. They are written in a completely different style than today's children's literature and stretch the boys' listening ability and vocabulary.

We haven't actually started this book yet, we'll start it tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about it, though. I don't really know anything about art so I'll be learning about it along with the boys. D-Man, however, really enjoys art, so I think this book will inspire him. I plan to start an age-appropriate art program with him later this year as well.

This book ranks among D-Man's favorites. He loves the Rabbit and Tiger stories. Unfortuately, outside of few in this book, I haven't been able to find anymore. This book compiles several stories and myths from countries around the world. We'll be rereading many of them when we start our geography curriculum soon.




This book introduced us to the Island of Banilla and all of the people who live there. Everyone on Banilla has a different job and each week we explore one. This week we are covering the pilot which D-Man should like.

Some of these books we'll read throughout the year; others we'll finish and then go on to the next topic. D-Man really enjoys our reading time. I don't require C-Monster to sit with us during our reading-time but he usually does. It is a nice, quiet time for us each day.

Daniel's First Spelling List

Today, we finally got to start spelling. We had to wait until D-Man learned the proper way to form all of his letters. He had picked up some bad habits by trying to figure out how to write by himself, so we learned the proper way to write each letter. I thought that he would fight me, but he didn't have any problems. I think that he likes knowing the "right" way to do it instead of guessing or making it up each time he writes a letter.

I had planned on taking it fairly slow only doing 2-4 letters each day, but D-Man had other ideas. He didn't want to only do two letters the first day, he wanted to do ALL of them. So, we did. He insisted on doing that everyday. I found that it was much easier for him to write on a dry erase board instead of a piece of paper. He doesn't have to put much pressure on a dry-erase marker, so it keeps him from getting tired as he writes. Here was his dry-erase board the first day:

Yes, it is very colorful. I think he did a GREAT job.

I figured that we couldn't just practice letters everyday or he would get bored. Plus, now that he knows how to form them correctly, he will have plenty of opportunity to practice them as we do our spelling words. One of the prinicples that SWR keeps repeating is to get on with it.

I decided that we would only do 10 words/wk this year so that it wouldn't take too long and D-Man wouldn't get tired writing them. The first 10 words were a breeze for him. I didn't know how it would go since he's never spelled before. He can read all of the words easily, but spelling is a different skill. I'm glad that today was easy for him so that he'll be excited to do more later. We wrote them first on a piece of paper so that he wouldn't have to concentrate on his penmanship. Later, we transferred them to his log concentrating more on penmanship. Here is a pic of the words in his log.

If you're wondering why there is a 3 on top of the a in all and the y in my is underlined, that is part of the program. We use marking in our log to remind us how a phonogram sounds in the word. The 3 indicates that it is the third sound of "a" and the line tells us that it is the second vowel sound of "y" (standing in for "I").

This log essentially becomes his textbook for the year. It has reference pages in the back that we are building and his spelling words in the front. We will be reading these words throughout the year to help him gain fluency.

When we do our spelling words each week, he doesn't just copy them. I tell (dictate) the word to him and help him figure out which phonograms to use for the words. He actually had to think about how the word is constructed. I think it is a great method to learn phonics to both encode and decode words.

Now that we have our words for the week, we'll do several enrichment exercises with them and have a test on Friday. I'm very interested to find out how he handles his first test.

Ready, Get Set...

We're all ready for the year. I have everything I need. Here's a picture of all of our materials. This is only the stuff for D-Man's kindergarten. It doesn't include the things that I have for C-Monster. C-Monster just has some storybooks that are on his level and some workbooks just to make him feel included if he wants. For D-Man, we have math, math manipulatives, language arts, phonogram games, Bob books (he's already read through these, but we'll go through them again), Fun Tales (another set of beginner readers), and Sonlight P4/5 "Exploring God's World." I'm definitely relieved that I'm finished making decisions about curriculum and it is all here waiting for us to get started. Looking at all of our materials on the table makes me very excited for the coming year.

A Little Eye Candy...

Okay, it's time for some pictures. I finally replaced our camera's usb cable (the other one mysteriously disappeared) and I can download pics.















Here is our little schoolroom. Right now it get a lot of use even though we haven't officially begun school. The table is a perfect place for coloring and drawing plus the kids are drawn to the books on the shelves. It is right off the playroom, so it is a convenient place to hang out.

A pic from my very first Sonlight box day. For a Sonlighter, this is a special day.

This is our Sonlight core for next year. We have some great titles to read through. D-Man has already gotten Shawn to read some of the science books as bedtime stories. His favorite so far is How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World. Since we are planning on using this core several times, I covered the books with laminate. It is the same stuff that that you would find on library books. I still have to buy our language arts and math programs, but other than that, I'm ready for our first day of Kindergarten.