Our Upcoming School Year

Now that I'm done with all the planning I can go ahead and post what our school year is going to look like come Fall.

I have 36 weeks of school scheduled, that is 180 days, not counting what we do during the summer.
This year I decided to start school later than we did last year. We'll be starting the last week of August and we'll be done by the third week in May.
That way the kids will get to enjoy playing with their friends all summer and instead of being done with school a whole month before the other kids are done, they'll be done only two weeks before them.

Will there be days we don't do much? Sure, but since we do school year round I don't feel guilty if we have a day here and there were not much gets done.

Here's the planned lineup for our upcoming year(A7):

Five in a Row
As I said before, FIAR includes Reading, Social Studies, Language Arts, Art & Science.
Here is our FIAR book list for next year:

• Madeline in London(not a FIAR book)
  
• Gramma's Walk
• Night of the Moonjellies
• How to make a Cherry Pie and see the USA(not a FIAR book)
  
• The Story about Ping
• Babar: To Duet or not to Duet
• Finest Horse in Town
• Ox Cart Man(not a FIAR book)
• Zarafa: The Giraffe that Walked to the King(instead of TGTWTP)
• The Thanksgiving Door(FAIR recommended)
• Tree of Cranes(FAIR recommended)
• Christmas in the Big Woods(not a FIAR book)
• Owl Moon
• Make Way for Ducklings
• The Duchess Bakes a Cake
• Madeline and the Cats of Rome(not a FIAR book)
  
• Follow the Drinking Gourd/Who Owns the Sun/Slavery Unit Study
• Little Ninos Pizzeria
  
• They Were Strong and Good
• Mrs. Katz and Tush
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit
• Down, Down the Mountain
• Wee Gillis(extra book)
  
• All Those Secrets of the World(extra book)

The extra books are in case A7 doesn't like one of the books we are rowing. There is a good chance we will still row these books at some point during the summer.

Unit Studies
We have a few unit studies to break the year up.

• Reptiles and Amphibians
  
• Autumn
  
• Christopher Columbus
  
• Winter
• Martin Luther King Jr
• Wake Up Groundhog(Groundhog Day)
  
• President's Day
  
• Puerto Rico
  
• Dinosaurs

Math
We'll continue using Math U See (Alpha & Beta).

Language Arts
Since we are done with Reading Made Easy we are moving on to:
Language Lessons for the Very Young Vol 1- I love this workbook, it uses such a gentle approach to lang arts, it only takes about 5 mins a lesson. It has 180 lessons, one for every school day. We'll be doing two lessons a day, three days a week for 30 weeks, that equals 180!!

Handwriting
We'll be using Handwriting without Tears' Printing Power.

Science
Science Experiments in a Bag 1 & 2- I'll pick a few to go along with our FIAR lessons.

Art (1/week)
How to Teach Art to Children, Grades 1-6 & Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters

Bible
We'll be doing lapbooks of different bible stories.

Music
piano, piano, piano & 1 composer per semester(Beethoven & Tchaikovsky)

We are also doing Home Economics for Home Schoolers 1 and
Health, Hygiene & Nutrition 1-2(1/week)

I know it looks like a lot but we won't be doing all of this every day, plus using the workbox system will help get all of this under control.

Next post, X4's upcoming school year!

Home from Camp

A7 will be coming home today from camp. I've been able to see pics from camp at their website and it looks like she is having the time of her life! We'll be there around 6 since they have a parents program at 6:30.
X4 really misses his sister, he's being playing with the neighbor girl all week!
They have picture cds available for purchase, I may be able to post some of them here...

Here is a pic from the first day of camp, they are making funny faces! I bought A7 a disposable camera so she could take her own pics, that should be interesting. Hopefully she didn't take them all the first day!

Off to Camp!

A7 is on her way to Camp today, by the time you read this post we'll probably be in the car on the way to Camp Hebron! I've heard a lot of great things about this place.

She has been looking forward to this day for a whole year! She'll be there for four days, Sunday to Wednesday, which I feel is a perfect amount of time for a 7 year old to be away from home.
She'll get to do lots of activities, meet new friends and probably get to go to the pool every day if the weather is nice!

While she's away at Camp the boy and I will have our own adventure!!! Hopefully lots of pool time!

Father's Day

Since A7 and I are not going to be around much on Sunday we are celebrating Father's Day today!!
We are taking Daddy to his favorite place to eat for father's day...Hoss'!!

To all you fathers out there Happy Father's Day!!

What is a Unit Study

What is a unit study?
It is defined as an in-depth study of a topic (space, trees, cars, etc.) that takes into account many areas of the topic, such as geography, science, history, art, etc. It is a complete immersion into the topic so that the student will see things as a "whole" instead of bits and pieces learned throughout their education. Instead of learning about whales in the third grade, the oceans in the fourth grade, explorers in the fifth grade, and sea life in the sixth grade, for example, the student learns about all of these during a unit study of the ocean. He/She is exposed to the geography, spelling and vocabulary, and plant and animal life of the ocean. In learning these things, the student will develop and sharpen skills like reading, writing, researching, and so on. by Amanda Bennett

This is what we do for school every week, we select a book, we read it or "row it" five days in a row, or in our case four days in a row, we skip Wednesdays. We learn about geography, language arts, science, math, arts, history etc, from that one book.

If we read a book that takes place in Japan or China, then we learn about that country. First we look the country up in the world map then we look at the flag, as the child gets older then you can do a lot more.

Language arts can be done by doing copywork, looking up new words and their meanings, things like similes, compound words, metaphors, you get the idea.

For science, a book like Madeline talks about how Madeline needed to get her appendix out. So we study the human body and look at a persons appendix. For other books its an animal or land types like plains, mountains etc. Things like the seasons or the senses.

We learn about every day math and of course art, either how the illustrator chooses how to draw a story or different uses of colors, drawing techniques etc.

Books like They Were Strong and Good talks about the Civil War, Who Owns the Sun talks about slavery, Paul Reverse's Ride talks about the American Revolution and All the Secrets of the World talks about World War I or II (not sure which).

I just purchased How to make a Cherry Pie and see the USA, this book will be used as a mini USA geography unit study. All of that from a children s book.

This is what's working for us right now, I can't see us using workbooks or textbooks to learn this stuff. I'm so grateful that we found Five in a Row!!

Lesson Plans Update

I'm pretty close to being done with next years school lesson plans. Having everything in its own folder really helps, I am able to see everything we are doing at a glance. There are so many cool resources online and every time I find something that can go along with one of our lessons all I have to do is pretty much just print it and drop it in the folder.


I recently purchased Science experiments in a bag, e-books 1 & 2. There are 25 experiments in each e-book. I'm looking through each book to see which experiments I can do along with what lesson. So far I've found 4 e-bags that will go with our lessons. The experiments are safe for elementary age kids. They are very easy to assemble since it uses things most people already have in their homes.

These are great go alongs that really make our mini unit studies fun!

The Giraffe that walked to Paris

The giraffe that walked to Paris is a Five in a Row book. It is one of the most difficult books to find because it's out of print and if you want to buy it used you have to pay over a hundred $ for it. Today, as I was browsing the internet for this book I found a different book that came out last week. The tittle of this book is; Zarafa: The Giraffe Who Walked to the King.

It is the same story as giraffe that walked to Paris.

Synopsis:

Zarafa is a beautiful and gentle giraffe . . . so wonderful, in fact, that the ruler of Egypt offers her as a gift to the king of France But how to get her there? Why, she sails up the Nile by felucca, crosses the sea by brigantine, and, yes, walks the last five hundred miles to Paris. People love it. And they love her, meeting and greeting her along the way, cheering her on. Afterward, the grateful French king places Zarafa in his own royal garden, where all of Paris comes to visit and love her. Judith St. George brings this amazing but true journey to life with help from the whimsical art of Britt Spencer.

This book is The Giraffe that walked to Paris.

What is the perfect gift for the king who has everything? In this fact-based picture book, the unusual present is a giraffe. In 1826 the pasha of Egypt offers to ship a giraffe to France as a gesture of peace and friendship. Travel arrangements are made and passage secured for the animal, her attendants and the three cows necessary to provide her with milk during the journey. The logistics become a bit sticky when the long-necked creature arrives in Marseilles. The only conceivable way to transport her to see the king in Paris is to walk--which she does. A zoo becomes the giraffe's eventual home and all of France enjoys seeing her there for many years.

You see!! It is the same story! So, since I don't have over a hundred $ to spend on the first book I went ahead and spent $12 on the new book.
Which means come next school year we are finally going to be rowing The Giraffe that walked to Paris, we'll just be using a different book, but the same story!!

Learn About China Kit

Next fall we are going to be rowing the book The Story about Ping, which is set in China. I found this kit ($13) that comes from China to your door. It looks fun and like something my kids will love.
What a great resource! These are the kinds of things that make learning beyond fun!
Here is the link!

What Your Packet Will Contain

• Chinese papercut
• Chinese knot
• Red packet with currency
• Chinese flag
• Postcards
• Bookmark
• Red scarf worn by young Communist students
• An informational brochure about the things in your packet
• Honeycomb lantern
• Stickers

It's June!

So here we are are in June already, school is done for most of the homeschooled kids around us and the public school kids will be done next week. My niece is already with us, she was done with school June 1st.
It's so nice to see all the kids in our backyard in the evening, running around, playing. it is a true sign of summer! The pool will be open full time next Tuesday, last day of school. We haven't gotten our pool pass yet. I think this year we'll just get one for A7 since X4 still going in for free.
Last year we just didn't go as much and it was money wasted. This summer looks just as busy with Camp and day camps and friends over.

Monday we started our review month. A7 has been working for about an hour a day on her handwriting, reading and unknown number!
She's reading for about 15 minutes a day. She also started her journal. There is a question for everyday of the year that she has to answer in a complete sentence, with no help from me. She has to figure out how to spell the words she wants to use, then when we go over it together I show her the proper spelling and she rewrites the word or words she misspelled.

It doesn't take long at all for her to do all this and she is becoming familiar with getting her own work from her workbox folder system.

X4 on the other hand wants nothing to do with it. I have lots of fun stuff for him to do in his boxes but he will not go near them. He's done a few of the name practice and number practice ones, but will not even look at any others. Maybe I have to change it around or make it look simpler..who knows. No worries, we have plenty of time with him.

I 've been getting stuff ready for A7 for the Fall. I'm assembling, if you will, what she'll need for her lapbooks and for language arts. Everything else is already taken care of!
I already have most of his lapbooks set up... and lots of games in between! Iam really trying to start with a clean slate with X4. After teaching A7 for two years I don't want to assume that all of the things that worked with her will work with him. A lot of people tell me just how different teaching their boys was from the girls.

That is all for now!!

Movie Night

Last night our Small Group decided to have a movie night as a nice break. We went to see Night at the Museum 2. When we got there, there was like two whole rows of people from our Church, it was so much fun!
By the time everybody was there I think we had like six rows full of our people!

It's so nice to be able to do things like that. We have a downtown movie theater that's pretty much consider a family theater because they only show family friendly movies. On Thursday nights they only charge $3 a person. It's a great deal if you have little kids and don't get to go to the movies as much.

The movie was fun, really funny for the kids! A_7 kept laughing through the whole movie. She got to sit with one of her best buds!


X_4 got to sit right between his posse..ha ha! But he ended up in Daddy's lap by the middle of the movie.
By the end he was back with his little friends.
We are now waiting for the theater to show Disney's Up! So we can all go see it as a family.

Summer Plans & Beyond

Starting in June the kids are going to be spending about an hour, three to four days a week , reviewing some of the things they learned in school this past year.

A_7 will be practicing her reading, writing and math facts, while X_4 will be practicing his name, numbers, colors and shapes.
I have these really simple phonics readers for A_7 to read this summer plus she'll be finishing her printing book. I also have a practice sheet for her to practice the unknown number that was giving her a little bit of trouble in the last few weeks of math u see.

I have been working on a new system of school for us. More on the organization end of school anyways. It is called the Workbox system. Here is the website where I found out all about it.
I went ahead and purchased the book. It has so many great ideas on how to organize your school so that you get to use all of those wonderful things homeschoolers buy for their kids and never get around to using.
Here is what is going to look like for A_7. She has 10 folders. Everyday she will go through each folder and get her work done that way. Some folders have a "work with mom" label, that means she will need my help with whatever is in that folder. Other folders she'll be able to work on independently. That way I will have more time to spend with X_4 since he is really going to need me for K.
This is what the workbox system really looks like and this is how I'm going to be using it with X_4.

• One wire shoe rack
• Between 6 and 12 clear plastic shoe boxes, which you can find at Walmart or Target for less than a dollar. I'm only using 9 boxes with X_4 for now.
  
• Velcro dots
  
• Schedule cards

Here is the schedule cards for both kids. it pretty much shows which boxes they are to do, when to take a break, or any other activity that is not found in boxes. Things like piano practice, games or computer time.

It also has a log in/log out of school pocket, I'm not sure if we'll even remember to do this, but it's fun to have nonetheless!
I have a few things in the workboxes for the kids to do during the summer, hopefully by the time we start school in the Fall this will be second nature to us!

If you purchase the book, you'll have access to all the downloads to print out the schedule cards and other labels.

Weekend Camp Out

Every year at the end of the Club year, we take the kids to a Camp out. This year we went to Cove Valley camp. We had around 40 kids and 20 adults helping out.

I'm so thankful that so many adults decided to come and help with the kids. We pretty much knew where each kid was at all times, nobody got hurt, although there were a few scrapes here and there.
This was A7 and X4s first time going camping. By the time Saturday evening came around they were both exhausted! They both took a nice nap on Saturday. We had a great time, the weather was gorgeous and the pool was freezing! Didn't keep us from swimming thought!

The food was delicious, we had pancakes, sausages, eggs and bacon for breakfast. For lunch we had spaghetti, sloppy joes, soup and for dinner we had baked chicken breast and mashed potatoes and mac and cheese! There was more than enough food for all and we even had seconds every time!! I'm sure no food was wasted!
On Saturday night we had s'mores, I wasn't around for that...one of my children was taking a nap at the time. The cabins were very nice, they had heat/ac, bathrooms with showers and a nice long table in the middle of the cabin.
Next year, if we do this again we are going back to Cove Valley for our Camp out!!

This Wednesday is the 4-5yr olds picnic. Since the camp out is only for kids 1st thru 6th grade we always have a picnic for the little ones as a way of saying thank you for coming to Clubs.
After this Wednesday we are done with Clubs for the summer!! All of the leaders and helpers so need the break!! See you back in September kids!!!!

Piano Recital

A7 had her last piano recital of the semester last night. This recital was not only for piano but violin, cello and even singing. It was a lot of fun since we knew a lot of the performers.
A7 did a great job, she was the youngest performer there!
We are going to continue to send A7 to piano lessons through out the summer. It will only be 7 sessions, just so that she will continue to practice and not lose everything she's learned so far.
Then in the Fall she will start her regular piano lessons.

Let me see if I can get the video to load...

End of School

We are done with school! Last week was another busy one, making sure everything got done. I decided to get an evaluation even though we don't need to do that for 1st grade. In PA the age a child must start school is 8 years old, anything before that is not really required.

Of course I wanted to know what to look forward to with these evaluations so I went ahead and got one done. A dear friend from Church just happens to be a certified evaluator or whatever the term is so she did it.

She looked at all the curricula we used this year, she looked at all the lapbooks, workbooks and projects we did. She was very pleased with everything! Finally she asked A7 to read from any book she wanted. A7 picked The Runaway Bunny, one of her favorites! She read the whole book!
Once again our evaluator was very happy with what she heard, called her a "fluent reader"!

She did give me some tips of things I need to show for future evaluations and for when I need to start handing this in to the local school district.

• A book list of both, school required reading books and additional just for fun books.
  
• Curriculum list
• Unit study list
• Field trip list
• calendar showing days we did school(180 days)

It was good to know I don't need to hand in a record of what we did for school every one of those 180 days like I've been doing.

I'll still keep a record of what we do everyday, but it's for me to know what we've covered and when. I don't need to let the district know that stuff.

I'll post soon about what we are doing this week and what my plans are for June and next Fall.

Theology also known as the study of God

"I think any time we gain some new theological knowledge, we should keep it to ourselves for a while. Study it more, read more about it, listen to opposing viewpoints, and just sit on it. See if it sticks. See if it’s more than a passing fad or thought. Don’t be so quick to jump on the train. And don’t be so slow to throw it away if we need to."
Wade Phillips

I agree with Wade on this one...

Summer Plans

We now have two weeks of school left. We are going to be working on zoo animals and whatever else comes with that unit study and hopefully we'll be able to take the kids to the zoo or at least a petting zoo, there is one of those around here!

I want to spend this summer planning for the things we are going to be doing for school come Fall.
I was trying to figure out how I'm going to do this now that X4 is going to be doing some type of preschool/kindergarten type of schooling and of course A7 will be doing 2nd grade stuff.

Since there is only one of me I can't be with both kids at the same time. X4 is going to be needing more of me than A7. The only thing I can do with both at the same time is Five in a row. Everything else is pretty much, one does one thing the other something else.

What am I going to do??...well I just found out about the workbox system. What is the workbox system? I'm going to be spending my summer figuring that out. From what I've been able to see from other blogs this is something that is really going to help our schooling. Mainly the organizational part of school.

I will be blogging about the workbox system throughout the summer. I can't wait!

Change of Plans

This week we were supposed to be rowing the book Who Owns the Sun? We actually read the book on Monday. After reading it I made an executive decision, instead of continuing with the book I decided to finish up the Space unit study we were working on last week.

We had so much stuff last week and not enough time to do it all. Who Owns the Sun is a wonderful book, however the theme of the book (slavery) requires a lot more attention than I was willing to give it. I already have my book list schedule for next year and it includes the book Follow the Drinking Gourd. I think I may do a unit study on slavery and read both books then.

After this week we have two more weeks of school, we'll be doing a zoo animals unit study and hopefully going on a field trip at the end of it.

How to Survive the Economic Meltdown

You can download a free copy of Patrick Morley's book; How to Survive the Economic Meltdown. Free PDF version at www.SurviveTheMeltdown.org.

Space Unit Study

After Easter vacation I knew I would need to do something really fun to get the kids back into school mode. I decided to do a space unit study. We are going to be covering this in depth probably in the third grade. For now I just wanted to get the kids familiarize with the names of the planets, what is a star system and the milky way.
We had a lot of fun creating the solar system plus the kids got to watch Magic School Bus' Space Adventures.

We got to do science and math and took a break from reading and writing.
Well, not really a break from reading since A7s been picking up any and every book she can get her hands on and reading it!
When we first decided to homeschool our kids a lot of veteran homeschoolers told us all about the "book library". How every free space in our home was going to be covered with books. Now I understand. I'm going to have to add a few more book "totes" since I don't really have any room for anymore bookcases. So far I have two book totes in the living room... They are no longer enough! I have book piles all over the living room, bedroom and even the bathroom.


I can just see what my house is going to look like when X4 starts to read! He enjoys having books read to him, and he likes to leaf through them. I'm already working on building a library of books he'll enjoy. Lots of action and mystery type boy books.

I've been told that once your children can read and enjoy reading, your job as their teacher becomes a lot easier....here's hoping!!

The End of Christianity or is IT?

There is an article in Newsweek that talks about the end of Christian America. I read the article of course and what I found was not so much the end of Christianity but the end of political influence, social influence. James Dobson think this is a bad thing and for him it is.
Back when Bush was President organizations like Focus on the Family had a lot of influence, now thanks to Obama they no longer do.
Any religious organization like Focus on the Family whose mission is to change American politics, to change the culture through politics I should say, it's not going to like the fact that more and more politicians don't care about what the religious leaders think anymore.


Greg Boyd is not too worried about this, here is an excerpt of a post talking about this very thing.

I’ve come across two very interesting and insightful essays this week on the demise of American Christianity. I offer my own assessment of this demise.

1. America has never been, and will never be, a “Christian” nation in any significant sense. Among other things, America, like every other fallen, demonically-oppressed nation (see Lk. 4:5-7; 2 Cor. 4:4; I Jn. 5:19; Rev. 13), is incapable of loving its enemies, doing good to those who mistreat it or blessing those who persecute it (Lk. 6:27-35). By applying the term “Christian” to America, we’ve massively watered down its meaning — which undoubedly helps explain why the vast majority of American Christians assume being “Christian” is perfectly compatible with hating and killing your national enemies if and when your earthly Commander and Chief asks you to. The sooner the label “Christian” gets divorced form this country, the better. It provides hope that someday the word “Christian” might actually mean “Christ-like” once again.

2. Related to this, there’s a good bit of research demonstrating that the majority of American’s identify themselves as “Christian” when asked by a pollster, but when asked what this label actually means in terms of core values and lifestyle choices, it becomes apparent that for the majority of them the meaning of “Christian” is basically “American.” I submit that the main problem Kingdom people confront in spreading the Kingdom in America is that a majority of people assume they are already in the Kingdom — they are “Christian” — simply by virtue of being American or because they prayed a certain prayer or go to Church once a year, or whatever. If fewer people are identifying themselves as “Christian,” this is good, for it means there’s one less major illusion that Kingdom people have to confront and work through as they invite these folks into the Kingdom.

3. If Evangelicals lose all their political clout, we may be less tempted to lust after political power, which means we may have one less distraction from actually doing what God called us to do — namely, manifesting God’s reign by how we humbly live, love and serve.

4. As my friend Alan Hirsch demonstrates in his great book, The Forgotten Ways, the Kingdom has always thrived — and really, has only thrived — when it was on the margins of society. The Kingdom is, by its very nature, a “contrast society.” If Christians lose all their power and position in society and become marginalized, this can’t help but be good for the Kingdom. If Christians become persecuted, it likely will be even better. We’d be turning back the clock from the disaster of Constantinian triumphalist Christianity in the direction of Apostolic, servant Christianity.

5. The “Christian” element of American culture was never deeper than the thin veneer of a shared civic religion. A major problem Kingdom people have faced on the mission field of America is that the majority of people mistook the civic religion for the real thing. So it is that so many think that being “Christian” is focused on preserving the civic religion (e.g. fighting for prayer before sports events, keeping the ten commandments on government buildings, holding onto a “Christian” definition of marriage within our government, etc.). Not only this, but this veneer of Christianity causes Jesus followers not to notice the many ways foundational assumptions that permeate American culture are diametrically opposed to the values of the Kingdom. If the civic religion of Christianity were to die, Kingdom people would be less tempted to associate Christianity with symbolic civic functions and would become more aware of how the Kingdom sharply contrasts with foundational aspects of American culture.

6. Finally, and closely related to this, if Jesus followers lose all their position and power and become a minority (or better, revealed to have always been a minority) in American culture, this will expose the idol of American individualism we have bought into for far too long and perhaps help us realize that we need to cling to each other and that the Kingdom is inherently communal. We are called to manifest God’s uniquely beautiful love and bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ by how we share our lives and serve one another (e.g. Jn. 17:20-26; Acts 2: 42-47. 4: 42-45). But its very difficult for many of us to embrace radical Kingdom community when we can get along very well (by American standards of “well”) without it. The demise of Constantinian American Christianity would serve us well by stripping us of the privilege of individualistic living.

I don't know about you but I think this is Good News!