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Archive for the ‘Homeschooling’ Category

While I’m busy working on lesson plans, I stumbled onto  this funny vid!  The song I Will Survive redone about homeschooling.  Just had to share it!

While each day is unique in itself it helps to have a pattern or routine to follow.  Over time I’ve found that fixed schedule just does not work well for our family.  What I do like is a routine, then no mater what time you get started your day still has a flow to it.  When something happens to interrupt your day, just start back with the next to do on the list.  And interruptions DO happen don’t they.  It can be anything from someone dropping buy to visit, an unexpected appointment, illness or a fussy toddler.  I find these things so much easier to work around if I’m not worrying about the “schedule”.

Our routine might get some tweaking this year.  But this is basically how it’s been working for us.

Get up, dressed and have breakfast.  After breakfast we do morning chores.  This is washing the breakfast dishes, starting some laundry and getting the table reading for lessons.

Dh does Bible study with the kids.  Then we do map time.  This is something dh started doing with them last year.  We have different maps on our living room walls.  He started teaching 1 country at a time last year, adding a new 1 each day.  The children now know a large number of countries, all the continents, oceans and provinces/territories of Canada.  These get reviewed every day, they love seeing who can get the answer first.

After that we head out to the table and start math.  This is followed by our LA activities, copy work, spelling, grammar.  Then we will take a snack break while I read our FIAR (Five in a Row) title.  After that we’ll do the FIAR activity for the day.  Then read about what ever country we are currently studying and do an activity with that.  I have been using Galloping The Globe along side FIAR and it’s a wonderful complement to each other.

We take a break for lunch and after that read our science or history section.  Then do any activity or copy work relating to that.

That is about the end of our formal lessons.  Most of the time we are finished by noon or just after.  The afternoon is saved for crafts and nature studies.  We also have family reading times in the evening.  We are currently working our way through the Little House On The Prairie set.

It’s important to have plans and goals, they give you a target to aim for and help keep you on track.  Each year before I start planning out our lessons I stop and think about what goals each child needs.  I also talk to each child and find out what goals they have for themselves.  I will try to help them meet these as much as I’m able.

A few of the goals we will be working on are…

Dd8 will be working on memorizing her multiplication facts, neater hand writing and learning cursive.  She also would like to learn to sew.

Dd6 will be working on phonics and reading fluency.   She also would like to practice knitting more.

Dd4 (5 this fall) is learning to read.

Dd3 & ds1 are to play and have lots of learning fun.

I try to keep our goals in mind as I pick out curriculum and put our lesson plans together.  I will be doing a detailed post soon on how I keep our records and lesson plans.  I’d hoped to have it written up by now but a summer flu bug has hit our house.

Basically I have a planning binder that I’ve put together.  Here I keep a paper copy of all my lesson plans, reading logs etc.  I also use Homeschool Tracker + to keep records and grades from the work we have completed.

One problem I’ve always had is how to organize all the work sheets, activities etc that we do.  Last year I finally found a system that works great for us.  I stumbled upon a blogger that used a milk crate filing system.  The folders were organized by date and in each folder that weeks lessons were placed.

There is a little more to it then that, but I will explain how I do it very soon.  I’m hoping to start setting up this years file system this week.

Normally we school year round.  This year I decided to take a summer break.    We needed the extra time to work on the gardens, renovations and just enjoy the summer.  Last year was an unusually cold summer, so there wasn’t nearly as much work in the gardens to do.

I’ve been looking over our curriculum and thinking about making some changes.  Most of what we have been using works very well for us.  We love unit studies and hands on learning.  One area that has been tricky is spelling.  We’ve tried spelling workbooks such as spelling workout and CLP spelling books.  We just aren’t fans of workbooks and I don’t find the children learn much from them.  I’ve also tried the Natural Speller.  Its a great  book but just doesn’t suit our needs right now.

I recently stumbled on to All About Spelling.  I think this will be a much better fit for our family!  Its hands on, using letter tiles to build words.  We use Math U See and the hands on method had worked very well for us.  All About Spelling teaches the phonograms in a logical order using site, sound and touch.

I’m also going to try using this as a reading curriculum.  They have made some lovely readers that match up with the phonics lessons.

I’ve enjoyed reading all their samples online and browsing through the videos in their forum.  I ordered the first few levels and reader.  They should be in this week and I can’t wait to see them.  I’ll do an updated post on what we think of the materials once it arrives.

On one of our trips out a bossy little seagull stopped to say hello.  Hubby got some nice shots of him.

This weeks CurrClick freebie is a nature writing notebook.   Each page has a nice area to draw a picture, a story starter and area to finish the story.  After you’ve worked through the package your child will have a fun storybook all about summer!

Grab your copy this week as CurrClick changes the freebie each week.

Handwriting For Reading: Nature

I found some nice Mothers day lapbooks and activities.

Mother’s Day bible printables

Mothers’ Day Lapbook & Notebooking Pages

Are You My Mother? Little Lapbook

Mothers Memories

Last week the nice weather came early.  Temperature climbed up to the low teens!  The day was just to nice to be inside so we headed to the park for a nature walk.

While we were there we found trees that a porcupine had been chewing.   Some deer tracks and one I think is a raccoon track?

Raccoon Track?

Deer Track

Porcupine Damage

Damage to a tree. Another Porcupine perhaps?

Tree Damage

St. Patrick Day is approaching, what fun activities do you have planned?   CurrClick has some great freebies up right now.

Notebooking is a big part of our lessons.  It really brings facts alive for children.  Little ones just love putting together a journal of what they’ve learned.  Check out these free notebooking pages! St. Patrick’s Day Notebooking Pages

Shamrocks and Shillelaghs is a free ebook by Teachers Book Bag.  It gives the history of many Irish and St. Patrick’s day symbols.   Also included are some poems, calendar cards and activities.

St. Patrick: The World’s Greatest Missionary is a great little book.  It’s full of stories about St. Patrick, picture studies, map and copywork.  And a recipe for Irish Soda bread to!

If these aren’t quite what your looking for  CurrClick also has these books on sale at a great price.

St. Patrick’s Day Lapbook with Study Guide

Celebrating St Patrick & St Patrick’s Day [BUNDLE]

Connect The Thoughts – Saint Patrick’s Day Creative Writing/History Unit

Recorded Class! – St. Patrick’s Day

March Book Bag, 2009