Retooling the Workboxes

A few posts ago I made a comment on how X5 is doing great with the workbox system but A7 isn't. I decided to go right to the source and ask her why she didn't like them and if there was any way I could make it better for her.

She likes how X5 has his boxes but not how she has them, you may remember his look like this,
and hers looked like this...No more! I don't have the room for another rack like X5 has, but I do have room for something like this...This is the Iris 6-Drawer Mobile Chest, found it at Office Max and it is a perfect workbox! I like the clear one better. This is what her station looks like now...
You can't take the drawers out but we came up with "move the label" system. At the beginning of school the numbers are in the middle of the drawer, once she is done with that box she moves the label to the right of the drawer as you can see in the above pic.

There are only 6 drawers but that's okay. Anything extra I can just add to her schedule strip, things like free reading, read aloud, games etc. Those kinds of things don't need to be inside a box.

She loved it! She knew exactly what to do this morning, hardly needed my help. Needles to say, today we had a great school day. Yes, they do exist!

School Week 5

This week we are rowing the book Gramma's Walk.
Donnie's Gramma gets around in a wheelchair, but through the magic of imagination, the two of them walk to the beach; listen, feel, and smell the sea; identify prints in the sand; and admire the wildlife.

Social Studies: handicapped, imagination

Language arts: compound words, backtracking

Science: the senses, the beach

X5 will be working on a Disney Cars lapbook, it will look something like this.

We are going to take a break from Reading made easy, X5 doesn't know all of his letters yet, he only recognizes about half. I was advised to just play alphabet games with him. To find letter games on the internet for him to play, since he loves playing on his computer.

I was told about Starfall.com, a website perfect for what his needs are right now. So we'll do that for a while and come back to RME when he is truly ready.
A7 was almost 6 yrs old when we started RME, X5 just turned 5 so it makes sense to wait a bit more.
He is doing great in everything else so we'll continue with math, handwriting, games and the activities we have for his boxes!

In the Beginning

This Friday after school we are going to Lancaster, Pa to the Sight and Sound Theater to see...

In the Beginning!


Our show starts at 4:15, which means we have to be there by 3-3:30.
We are so excited to see this show, we got a special homeschoolers discount $10 a ticket!

Update: Here's a few pics from our day there!Entrance of the Millennium Theater.

We were not allowed to take any pics during the performance, but I took these while inside the theater. It was beautiful and it smelled, I kid you not, like cinnamon cookies!
It was a long drive there, about 2.5 hrs. But the kids did very good in the car. We got home around 9pm. I was exhausted!! The kids and I agreed that we have to come back and bring Daddy with us to see next years show Joseph!

Change in Plans... Again!

"teach to the oldest and let it trickle down."

This is the advice I was given for my situation with X5 and A7. The beauty of homeschooling is that if what you planned doesn't work, you can go ahead and try something else. I'm going to follow A7's plan for our FIAR books. That way they are both going to be rowing the same book but the activities will be age appropriate. I will continue to start school with X5 and do Reading made easy, after that A7 will join us for our story and activities.

We all learned as we go, parents included. Homeschooling two kids is not something I'm used to doing, there is much to learn, just like that first year of homeschooling. So for us this will be like that first year all over again!

Week 4 Art Project

Now that I have a plan for art this year and a curriculum to follow, other than the FIAR art lessons of course. I'm going to start posting our art projects every Wednesday!
This will be a great way for me to document what we do for art every week.

There are 7 units in this book, we are probably going to cover four of them this year.
This week we are on unit 1: Learning about lines

• Diagonal
• Vertical
  
• Horizontal

Here's a few pics of A7's lines art project for this week.

Assorted color construction paper strips.

Horizontal lines

Vertical lines

Diagonal lines

We had a lot of fun with this and I have plenty of strips left over for later use.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Homeschool

So here I am homeschooling a kindergartner and a second grader. The first two weeks everything seemed to be going fairly smooth. They were both doing the same unit study so they were both doing the same activities. The only difference, X5 was doing K activities and A7 was doing 2nd grade activities, which is the beauty of unit studies.

My decision to row beforeFIAR books with X5 seemed logical at the time. That is how I started with A7, nice simple books just right for a kindergartner.

The books that I scheduled for A7 are a bit meatier. Next year for third grade we are rowing books from FIAR Vol 4, so I wanted to finish all of the books from Vols 1-3. I felt very confident that I had a great plan for this new school year.

Now for the reality... rowing two different books is a tricky thing. You see, most of the activities that we do revolve around the book we are reading. Which means each kids is doing two sets of completely different activities, which means they both need me for all of the activities that have to do with the book they are rowing.

The problem is there is only one of me.... cloning is out of the question :)

My Dear Husband came up with a solution... start school with X5 first. FIAR only takes about half an hour, then Reading made easy about 15 mins and last math... 10 minutes!
That gives me about an hour of school with X5, strickly table time without counting the other activities in his boxes.

If I start school with him at 9:15-9:30 we would be done by 10:15-10:30. If A7 starts school at 10 then she can do other things like independent reading, keyboarding or whatever she has in her boxes then once I'm done with X5, A7 and I can row her FIAR book, activities, math & lang arts. That also takes about an hour. While she doing this X5 can be downstairs playing with his Legos, Knights, etc.

By 11:30 she would be done with her table time, that way any other school stuff we are doing like, spanish, Bible, games, crafts or special activities can be done with both of them. No need for a clone!

We eat lunch around 12:30 so that gives us a solid hour for the "other stuff". After lunch they get to do their own kid oriented learning.... more of a unschooling flavor.
Here's hoping my Dh is right!!!

School Week 4

I decided to label the school posts with the school week we are on. We have to do school for 36 weeks or 180 days, Our first week was Roxbury week. Then two weeks of reptiles and amphibians unit study. Now we start our 4th school week. We are now settling into our school routine of a FIAR book, with lapbook, MUS, Language lessons, spanish and any other activities in the boxes.

This week we are rowing the book Madeline in London. I love to start our FIAR journey with Madeline!


Geography: travel from Paris to London, what is there to see in London? Where in the world in England?

Language Arts: Vocabulary words, reading comprehension, copy work

Science: taking care of horses

ps. update post to show pic of lapbook later in the week.



X5 will be rowing The ABC Bunny with a lapbook.

I know I said I would show the activities in the boxes for the week, but that is proving to be a little difficult at the moment. I have a few plans but the thing is Clubs is starting next week and so is COOP and that takes priority right now.

I don't want to overdo it just to show a few pics on the blog.

Workboxes Update

It's been over a week and I can honestly say the workboxes were a great investment! X5 knows exactly what to do during school. He'll look all the boxes over just to see what he's going to be working on, then picks #1 goes at it, then #2 and so on.

Today he worked on all the boxes without a break! He did not want to stop. I have to say he is doing so much better than I expected with this. During the summer he didn't even want to go near them.

Here is A7 at the end of school doing her 15 minutes of reading on her favorite place to read, our couch.
I wanted to do an update on our Art curriculum. I wanted a more hands on, getting dirty type of art stuff and I found this art book: Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters
Featuring more than 150 activities, this guide teaches the styles, works, and techniques of the great masters—Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and more.

I also purchased Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists. These are books about different artists, composers, etc..

We'll be doing art study on Wednesdays, take three to four weeks learning about an artist and his paintings and do one project to go with the study. The plan is to learn about two artists per semester. We are going to start with Michelangelo and Leonardo(DaVinci is where he is from, not his last name, I've been told). Then next semester we'll learn about Picasso and Van Gogh.

In between the artists study we are going to be using How to Teach Art to Children, Grades 1-6. I've had this book for a while but I'm finally going to use it with the kids.

This year I finally have art covered!

Reptiles and Amphibians Unit Study

We are on week two of our unit study, week 3 of school. This week we are reading The Salamander Room.
"Brian's determination to keep a salamander in his room is met with quizzical concern on the part of his mother--"Where will he sleep?. . . where will he play?" Inquiries are answered with imaginative solutions that will be familiar to all those who have tried to convince a parent to let them have a pet."

Today they both got to draw a room for their salamanders.
X5 did such a great job with his drawing, at first he was upset because he had no idea how to draw. I told him to close his eyes and to imagine what he wanted his salamander to have in his room. As he kept mentioning things for the room I kept giving him ideas oh how to draw it. He did a great job, A7's drawing was awesome, she also did some copy work from the book.

We have been doing some math reviews to get her ready for next week when we start MUS. At first there were a lots of tears over this, but today we had a real breakthrough!
I think she now understands what she needs to do to find the answers, she knows how to use the blocks now, a couple more days of reviews should get us over the hump.

X5 is adapting very good to the workbox system. He now knows to get the boxes in order, he knows when to take a break. He is actually looking at the schedule strips to know when he can have computer time. He piles them up as he is done with them.
Some days I have all nine boxes for him, other days only six. I will keep doing it like that for the next few months.

A7 hasn't really used her workboxes yet since were are only working on the unit study. Next week I'll start "training" her on them. I tried over the summer but didn't get very far.

Happy Birthday X5!

X4 is now X5!

We went with a Ben Ten theme this year!

and lots of Ben Ten toys!
He had a great time with all his little friends, after the b-day cake we all went outside for a water gun battle! We were all pretty soaked, except for Nina and Grampa of course!

Happy Birthday Bud!!

1st day of School

Our first day of school went pretty well, if you don't count the yelling, crying and bad attitude, ha ha! We had a rough first 5 minutes, but after(praying) we did okay. X4 got bored very quickly with the coloring we were doing, they both enjoyed the cut & paste of the mural. Today we'll be working on the cut&paste of the animals then pasting them to the mural, that should be fun for them.

Yesterday I got X4 to practice his glue skills, cutting skills, tracing and dot to dot skills as well as some dot painting. He really enjoyed doing all of them!
Which means today we'll be doing some of that as well to keep him interested. I need to remember to put things in between all the fun stuff. I'll be working on that for the next two weeks before we get into some serious learning!

A7 did great yesterday. We need to work on her encouraging her brother a bit more!
She kept interrupting us as well, need to work on that one. I need to keep her busy while I'm working with her brother.

All in all I learned a lot. Please pray that I don't loose it today or the rest of the week, ha ha!

2nd Grade

A7 will be starting the 2nd grade with a Reptiles and Amphibians unit study. I like doing a unit study first because it allows us to ease into school mode. This will take two weeks.

We get to do a big poster of all our reptile and amphibian friends, learn about each of them and do some worksheets. That's it! I'm going to try to have a field trip to find some of them in the wild(backyard). There are math, science and lang arts worksheets. Plus A7 loves to draw, I'm sure she'll be drawing her own reptiles as well.

We won't be starting MUS for a couple of weeks. Like I said before I like to ease into school rather than start everything at the same time.

I found this unit study for free to members at Learningpage.com.

Kindergarten

X4 is starting kindergarten!!! It's going to look a bit different for him than it did for A7. We are going to concentrate on fine motor skills to get him ready for handwriting, he's not quite there yet.

It's going to be hard to keep track of everything I have planned for him, he'll be doing the reptiles & amphibians unit study along with his sister but more the coloring pages and cut and paste part of it. Lots of story time and different activities which will be in his workboxes.

This is going to be a good learning experience for me as well, how to teach my son(God help me) and my daughter at the same time.
I will post throughout the week to see how we are doing. I'm going to use this blog as a journal to see what works with him and what doesn't.

I'll start reading made easy and MUS in two weeks, no need to start everything on the same week.

A New Homeschooling Year

A new school year is under way! I've spent the whole summer planning, gathering materials, books and crafts for this upcoming year. Now the planning is over and it's time to execute!

We'll be using workboxes to organize our homeschool and this will be our third year using Five in a Row. A7 will be starting 2nd grade and X4 soon to be X5 will be starting Kindergarten!

We'll be starting school the 17th, two weeks before the schools in the area which are starting the 31st. I've been announcing it to the kids every morning this past week, "First day of school next Monday!" They are very excited about it! We should be done by 1 o'clock every day(X4 will be done way earlier than that) which leaves plenty of time for playing with their friends and going to the pool if it gets too hot.

I'll be posting our plans for this week for both kids in the next couple of days.

Our School Room

A lot of the homeschool blogs I follow are blogging about their school rooms, so I thought it would be fun if I blogged about our school room!

We have most or rather all of our school stuff down in our basement, that's where we have the most room. We usually do our crafts or anything that has to do with games like pattern blocks, legos etc. We have craft materials, crayons, markers, color pencils and lots of paper. As well as school materials, glue, pencils, scissors etc. I started this corner while there were still young! I guess I had a feeling we would be homeschooling!The kids have their computer downstairs and we have a nice big world map and a dry erase board! We found the board at Lowe's for less than $10 and cut it in half so it would fit on the wall.
We do our table time(math, copy work, handwriting) upstairs around our kitchen table. We read our Five in a Row book on the couch upstairs as well. All of my curricula is right next to my computer. I have a big bookcase where I have all of the books we read, the curriculum we use and a file cabinet for both kids.

Here is our Five in a Row shelf, with all of the books and manuals. I'm only missing three books... Andy and the Circus, Henry the Castaway and The Giraffe that Walked to Paris(I found a sub for this one though).

I hope you enjoyed taking a look at our school room, even though school happens all over the house!

Spoiled

"Podcasting is a blessing and a curse. I had no idea anybody could preach an entire message where Jesus was the point until I heard Mark Driscoll. But it’s a curse too, because it has seriously spoiled us for appreciating our own pastors..." Jared Wilson

I am living this quote right now. I was part of Roxbury holiness camp this past week. Four days and three night around the Body of Christ from all different BIC churches in the area. That was a fantastic experience and I can't wait to have it again next year.

The other side of Roxbury is the services. There is a service every night during the week and a morning and night service on the weekends. There are also 2 sessions every day during the week. One in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

I was part of the 1:30 session were we talked about how to "be" the Church instead of just "going" to Church. It was a great class were everybody participated and gave their insights on what being the church really looks like.

The night services however were an entirely different story. After being spoiled by podcasts from Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Francis Chan and Matt Chandler it's a little difficult to listen to a speaker preach about anything but Jesus.

I wasn't there the whole 10 days so I'm not sure what was preached earlier in the week, but while I was there there was not enough Jesus... I'm sorry, it just really bothered me.

Now let me explain something, the night services were packed! I mean some people had to sit outside it was so full. What a wonderful opportunity to share with all those people the only reason we were all sitting there, Jesus. What a wonderful opportunity to lead people into repentance and to start a heart transformation that leads to the constant pursue of God.

But that's not what I experienced in the night services I attended. It was more about getting everybody in a high, about making people emotional. Now don't get me wrong, the speakers were good, their messages were good but they were not Jesus centered.

One speaker went a whole hour talking about the Holy Spirit and God and how they want you not to give up on your dreams, but no Jesus, I don't remember him ever mentioning the name of Jesus(except at the end of his prayer), it was crazy! Not only that but he had no Bible verses to back any of it up. Yet when he asked people to come to the front tons of people went up.

Another speaker during the Sunday morning service had a wonderful message that called people to repent and follow Jesus, only two people went up to the front.

I realize that a lot of these christian functions are really big on the "get people emotional" type of thing, but you know what, I can watch Oprah and get emotional. I even cry!
They want big altar calls and they need people to get emotional to get them, I guess talking about Jesus and repentance doesn't get people emotional enough.

I wish I was able to explain better how after listening to Pastors like Driscoll, Chandler(podcasts) I get angry and sometimes offended. How I have to wrestle with all of the things they said in my heart and come to the conclusion that I'm sinning, that I need to repent and ask Jesus to transform my heart to be more like His.

That is the goal, that should be the goal, transformation and the pursuing of God through Jesus, not a lot of tears over a sad or moving story.

I'm spoiled, I want more Jesus.

Roxbury

Roxbury Holiness Camp is a very special place for our Church. Every year all of the Brethren in Christ churches in the area get together to celebrate Jesus and each other! It is a 10 day camp with special speakers, concerts, prayer meetings, different sessions throughout the week and night services.

Wednesdays' missions day, were we get to hear from different missionaries and how to pray for them.

Last year I went for the day sessions and went back home in the evening. Dh got to come for the Saturday service and loved it! That day was decided that for the following year we would be a part of the whole Roxbury experience!

Because of my sister's wedding we were not able to be there the whole 10 days, we got a family unit for the last 4 days of camp.This is the family unit we stayed in, the all pretty much look alike. Three sets of bunk beds in a very small room! Dh and I and the boy slept on the bottom while A7 took the top bunk.We brought our mini fridge, a plastic "dresser" for our clothes and a tote for all our snacks. The camp provides breakfast, lunch and dinner, but you know how kids are! We had lots of water in our fridge. We took our dvd player and Dh had to bring the computer even though we had no wireless internet while we were there. We also had a fan to stay cool at night. Every night we had a campfire, let me tell you, hot dogs taste so much better when cooked over a fire!! This is where we hung out most of the time, just talking about what we had heard in the sessions. There was such a sense of community while we were there! Ladies you rock!!

The kids got to hangout in the playground were they had this giant sand box. They had sand all over them every day! A7 got to play in the creek. X4 fell in it of course!X4 and Daddy go to have different adventures together while we were there. They both had a lot of fun. Next year we are hoping to stay a bit longer, Monday thru Sunday hopefully.See you next year Roxbury!

Pics from last week

Last week I did a quick post about my sister's wedding since I was in the middle of getting ready for Roxbury. Now that we are back from Roxbury I can post pics from the wedding and the Amusement Park we took the kids to the day before the wedding.

We took the kids to Knoebels, which is very close to where my sister lives. The kids had a blast, the great thing about Knoebels is that you don't have to pay to get in, you just pay per rides and they have so many kids rides.

At first X4 was a little scared of the rides, but once we found the "car ride" he was really into it! The next day was my sister's wedding. It took place outside in this beautiful park/garden. The funny thing is I used to live in this part of town and I never knew this place was there. It rained the whole time! Here is my sister and my stepfather, she looked so beautiful! Below is a pic of the Mother of the Bride!!Here is the Bride and the Groom shortly before saying "I do".Here are all the cousins!It was a lovely wedding and a super fun reception. Family, friends, great food and a pool!

Congrats again on you marriage Betty and Jeff!

Our Weekend

We are back home. We were gone for my sister's wedding which was beautiful. It was raining the whole time and we were outside, but that made it even more intimate and wonderful.
It was good to see friends and friends' kids I hadn't seen in a long time!

The kids had a fun time with their cousins and in Titi's pool. X4 managed to fall in the pool after he got dressed for the reception. It's not a party if my son doesn't fall in the pool!

Everybody was pretty exhausted by the time we got home. I was expecting to see my dogs happy to see us and one of them was, the other wasn't moving. Well, it turns out while we were away he got hurt somehow(probably trying to get out of the kitchen through the gate). I ended up taking him to the vet hospital at 10 at night. I was there for over an hour. He hurt his back, so he needs to take two different pills and get plenty of rest for the next 5 days...

I'm not sure how that's going to work out with us going to Roxbury this week. I'll probably leave him in his crate while we're away.

It is August! School is just around the corner and I can't wait! After Roxbury I will double check all my school plans, make sure I have everything I need for the Fall and enjoy summer for a couple more weeks.