New friends

Forgot to add this in my last post... Jimmy & Caleb have made some new friends. They are neighborhood boys who live down the street. One is going into 3rd grade and the other is going into 1st grade. The 3rd grader is here more often than his younger brother. It's been quite the experience for me. I am learning how to set ground rules & (more importantly) stick to them! I am also learning how to arrange my schedule to allow me to be outside with them, supervising. The first few playtimes really messed up our household schedule. These boys don't have chores or school work, so it took some time for them to understand that Jimmy & Caleb can't always go outside to play on a whim. I'm not sure they understand WHY yet, but at least we're getting somewhere with this.

The challenge will probably be next week. This week, we're at VBS in the morning, so no amount of doorbell ringing will get my boys outside. Next week, however, we'll have school & chores in the morning, so any doorbell ringing will be a major interruption. I am so not looking forward to being the bad guy if/when I have to say "no, you can't play outside yet, you have to finish school/chores/etc." I'm really hoping that this won't affect Jimmy's current love of our school lessons.

I am also hoping to meet these boys' parents sometime soon. I'm a little surprised that they haven't come to meet me, since they're all playing at my house. This is all very new to me!

Summer session - week 2

This week went really well. Still more flexibility, which was pretty nice. We finally got our history timeline on the wall. I put the post-it notes of the key events from last week's & this week's planned lessons on our timeline & we read stories about each of the events. The boys loved it! We still have a few more stories to read before we're completely caught up, but I am very happy with our progress.

Jimmy begged me to read more from the "atom book" (aka Chemistry). He really loves it! We read this week's chapter while the boys took their bath. We didn't do the experiment yet. Again, flexibility. The experiment should be a lot of fun - making "molecules" using marshmellows & toothpicks. =)

We did the catechism lesson (aka the story around a few of the catechism Q&A's) at bedtime Monday night. Beginning around Thursday afternoon, Jimmy has been asking for another catechism story. Guess he likes this, too!

For handwriting, Jimmy is working with his math handwriting sheets (the optional work from Saxon Math K - handwriting practice for numbers plus a short & easy activity like "color two pennies" that has the side benefit of teaching him to read directions). This week, I added copywork - copying some of his easy early readers into his kindergarten-lined notebook. He copied all of the book "I See" and several lines from one of his Berenstein Bear books. He liked both activities a lot, but copying an entire book seemed like a little too much for the hyper little guy to sit through.

We added a German review to the lesson plan, a la BBC's Muzzy. Watching an educational movie is a great way to do school in the summer, isn't it?

This week, the boys & I are at our church's VBS (vacation Bible school). We might catch up on some of the unfinished school stuff from this week, but I think we'll mostly just veg. VBS week is always a little rough on this mama, since I'm also teaching one of the classes.

Summer session - week 1

This week did not go quite as planned. But then again, I suppose that is the point. I did say "it's summer," right? LOL! Randy was away on the Dominican Republic mission trip until Friday. On the one hand, it was nice having the added structure to our days to a) keep us busy and b) keep the boys from completely driving me crazy. They were much better behaved on the days we had school.

We started off reading our chemistry lesson on Monday. Jimmy & Caleb loved the pictures & can't wait until we can read the next lesson. I posted our very first vocabulary words on brand new cork board (which I am also using to post our morning schedule - brush teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast, exercise, do chores, have school, have lunch, then naps). Our first vocab words are atoms, molecules, and observations. Way cool, huh? Jimmy even gives definitions in his own words, which somewhat mangle the real definition but show that he is learning. Atoms, for example are "the things that gives things their taste." =)

On Tuesday, we had our chemistry experiment. We had three different objects to observe. (Back to the vocab words!) First, we thought about the objects before looking at them. I kept each object hidden until we were finished with this step. Jimmy described them using words (which Mommy Secretary recorded for him) & drew a picture from memory. Then I brought out the object. He compared his memory descriptions & drawing to the real thing. I recorded any new observations & he drew a new picture while looking at it. Jimmy & Caleb got to use toy magnifying glasses for the observe step, which I think was their favorite part. They used those magnifying glasses throughout the rest of the week, too! Our three objects were 1) a Scotch tape dispenser, 2) Cheerios, and 3) Jimmy's harmonica.

The rest of the week gets rather fuzzy. We reviewed the catechism Q&A on Wednesday, read the catechism story & reviewed the Q&A on Thursday, and spent Friday (the time driving loops around the airport waiting for Randy) reviewing the Q&A. I also spent that airport loop driving going over some of the history lesson I had planned, but I didn't really get past creation. The catechism story discussed a little about evolution vs. creationism, which made a great starting point. So instead of talking about creation, the first sin, & the flood, we really kind of stuck with creation vs. evolution. I explained that some people don't believe the Bible & that therefore there are people who believe that God did not create the world. We had a good opportunity to talk about that with a book about dinosaurs that talked about them being extinct millions of years before humans lived. It was a very good discussion, so I'm ok with being off track with this. We'll make it up next week. Really, the main goal I have for the summer is to plot these events on a timeline, which can be done rather quickly. (And, it should be noted, cannot be done in the car while driving around Newark airport.)

All in all, it was a good week. I'm glad that we have our morning schedule to help us get into a comfortable routine (definitely see better behavior from the boys when we stick to the schedule), but I'm also glad that we're not sticking to it when it doesn't make sense.

Planning stage

We've got a lot of catching up to do! At the end of May, I attended a homeschool conference. I had a great time & learned a lot of useful things. I also found some treasures - like a spiral-bound kindergarten-lined notebook (I've been looking for those for months!) & a chemistry curriculum for Jimmy's age group. I found a neat looking phonics curriculum but also found a very cool tool that I could use to teach phonics & reading to Jimmy for free! So we'll try the free one first. =) I highly recommend a conference to homeschooling parents! It is a veritable wealth of useful stuff. Just go armed with the ability to say "No, thanks!" There's a lot of stuff out there, but it isn't all going to be useful for your kids or your family.

So, after the conference, I sat down with what I had learned & the materials I had decided to try to use. I did a rough plan for the next school year as well as a plan for the summer. We had nearly two months of no school, and I realized that the boys do MUCH better with a routine. School definitely helps the routine. Plus, having some lessons ensures that the boys get my attention directly on them for a while - positive attention. With everything on my plate, I don't always remember that. Back to the plan... I have decided to make our summer session 10 weeks long & our regular school year plan 26 weeks. We'll be doing a chapter from our new catechism book through both sessions - there are 36 lessons. Our chemistry book has 10 lessons & 10 experiments - perfect for our 10 week summer session. Our FIAR book has 21 books, so there will be room for either additional books or unit studies (I'll plan the details as we get closer to the start of the regular session). Math grade 1 has 130 lessons, so 26 weeks of 5 lessons per week. (I haven't looked yet to see if we'll be skipping any of the more monotonous lessons - anything skipped will just allow us some flexibility to skip a few days of school here or there.) We'll be able to repeat the letter-of-the-week during the 26 week school year. We'll also add a few other things here & there.

So the plan - this summer: 10 weeks, skipping over the two weeks of VBS. We'll do a short lesson each day, doubling up as needed to allow flexibility to go to the park, go to the beach, do chores, or just plain veg. It is summer, after all! But the overall plan is to do one day of the chemistry lesson, 1 day of the chemistry experiment, 1 day for German review (i.e. watching the Muzzy DVD), 1 day for the catechism story (reviewing the catechism questions throughout the week - great for the car!), and 1 day for history. We will be doing a general overview of history, broken up into 10 segments: creation-flood, flood-exodus, exodus-Jesus, life of Jesus, the early church, the medival era, the renaissance era, the reformation, pilgrims/US constitution, and today. My goal is to develop a timeline that we can then build on in future years.

For the regular school year, Jimmy & Caleb will share lessons in letter of the week (Bible story & memory verse) & arts. Caleb will have B4FIAR lessons with his own book & discussion time. He'll also work on letter recognition (name & basic phonics sounds) with the phonics game I learned at the homeschool conference. Jimmy will have his FIAR lesson, his math Grade 1 lesson, handwriting (based on the LotW and/or copy work using some easy reader books), sight word work/phonics lessons (also using the nifty phonics game), & catechism story/Q&A memorization. Depending on how the summer session goes, I may include Caleb in the catechism work as well.

I've got all of the basics worked out. The only thing left is to decide what order to do the FIAR/B4FIAR books and what additional books or unit studies we'll do during the year.

So exciting!!

Grandfather's Journey

This was our last week of the school year!!! Yay!!!

We read Grandfather's Journey this week. A boy tells the story of his grandfather, who lived in Japan until he was a young man. He then moved to California & traveled over the United States. He moves back to Japan for the final season of his life so that his daughter (the storyteller's mother) can grow up in her father's country. For geography, we had already studied Japan during last week's lessons. This week, we focused on the travel aspect - the 3 weeks it took to get to the US from Japan by boat. We "traveled" the ocean using our fingers on the globe. Then our fingers took a walking tour of the US. We reviewed both the Japanese & US flags. We listened to more Japanese music as we did our lessons during the week. On Thursday, we look a field trip to an Asian grocery store, checking out all of the different foods there. Jimmy & Caleb were most impressed by the candies (of course) & got suitably terrified by the blue crabs. (You should have seen it - Jimmy was nearly about to lean on the barrel when one moved. I think he invented teleportation! One moment he was next to the barrel, the next moment, halfway down the aisle.)

We also got to talk about similies - there were a lot of those in the story. Jimmy came up of a few on his own to help learn how they can be used. We discussed the different types of land & water (mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans) that the grandfather saw during his travels. Finally, we looked at the illustrations, which were very reminiscent of a photograph album. The pictures all looked like formal portraits.

For math, we had our last two tests. First, Jimmy covered designs using tangrams. Before the last test, we also had lessons on some, some more stories & dominoes. Then our very last K-level math test - naming the days of the week, counting by 1's to 100, and identifying the penny, nickel, & dime. He passed with flying colors!

Jimmy had his last German school class of the year. He was really sad that it was over, although he still has a picnic next week & his graduation at the end of the month. It will be nice to have our weekends back, though!

That's it for this blog until our summer classes start up. Thanks for reading!

A Pair of Red Clogs

This week's FIAR book was A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno. I personally loved the illustrations in the book. The little girl in the book gets a new pair of clogs but very quickly ruins them. She tries to hide the broken clogs from her mom while still trying to get her mom to buy her new ones. She learns a very important lesson in both taking care of her possessions as well as not lying to her parents. My little Destructor of All Things could really use a lesson like this - we still refer to Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel a lot when discussing how to take care of our stuff. This will certainly be added to that mommy rant. =)

So, obviously, we discussed stewardship during the week - taking care of our things. The book is set in Japan, so we also looked up Japan on the globe & found a picture of the Japanese flag in our flag book. (Our flag-making attempts have been pretty pitiful, so I gave up on them.) We listened to two different Japanese music albums in the background while we worked - traditional Japanese music & traditional Geisha music. I really liked both. We also studied a cool little quirk in the illustrations - all of the flashbacks have a lot of yellow in the pictures. (The story is about a grandmother who is about to send her granddaughter a new pair of clogs; she remembers when she was the little girl who broke her clogs.) We talked about flashbacks. Jimmy quickly learned that new vocabulary word - he started telling me a whole bunch of flashback stories. "Mommy, flashing back to yesterday, I had a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for lunch. Can I have pasta today instead?"

For math lessons, we worked with tangrams (covering blank patterns where Jimmy had to decide which pieces would cover the design & how), had a test to copy geoboard designs (lines on a paper grid to transfer to the rubber bands on the geoboard), acting out some, some more stories with teddy bear counters (5 bears jumped in the pool, then 2 more bears jumped in the pool), and - the most fun - weighed containers of "mystery items" on our balance. I used Crystal Light tubes (the kind that hold the 2 quart mixes) & put things like coins, socks, crayons, and cotton balls in them. Jimmy weighed them first holding one in each hand and then put them on the balance to see if he guessed correctly which was heavier. We went a little farther than the Saxon guide & put the containers in order from least heavy to heaviest. Jimmy had a lot of fun with this lesson.

This week's letter was Y. Jimmy memorized the Bible verse & practiced handwriting. He really loved this one, since "Y" is the last letter in "Jimmy."

Jimmy had his German lesson - next week is the last one! He is going to be so sad when it's over.

The Story About Ping

This week, we read The Story About Ping. This is a cute little story about a little duck who, trying to avoid getting a spanking (he was last to get on the boat), leaves his master & his big family. He soon finds out that it might be worth taking the punishment by someone who cares about him than to be out in the big scary world all by himself. He sees all sorts of strange sights, including fishing birds. Their necks are tied off so they cannot eat the fish they catch; they rely on their masters to feed them little bits of fish as a reward for their work. We were pleasantly surprised that the TV show, The Amazing Race, had those same fishing birds on the China leg of their race - aired right before we started this week! God has great timing! The book is set in China on the Yangtze River. We looked up China on the globe & found the Yangtze. We listened to Chinese music in the background while we worked. Besides the geography and the study on punishment vs. being alone, we had a great time talking about the opening line - "Once upon a time..." Jimmy learned that this phrase means that the story is fictional. He wrote some of his own little stories starting with "once upon a time" and had great fun. I used it a few times to help him tell me when he was making up a story or telling me something that actually happened. (He's got a great imagination & sometimes tells make-believe stories as if they were true. Thankfully, it's usually pretty easy to tell when a 5 year old says it...)

For math this week, we had a test on Monday - telling shortest & longest & measuring a strip of paper using linking cubes. Then we "bought" items using pennies, nickels, & dimes (trying to find many different combinations of coins for each amount). We did this lesson twice to help drive it home. We ended the week playing dominoes (work on identifying & matching doubles).

Our letter this week was X. Jimmy memorized the Bible verse & practiced his handwriting, as usual. He's getting good at this stuff!

Jimmy skipped German school this week so that we could attend AG-Field Day at Rutgers, my alma mater. We saw the animals on the farm, lots of plants at the plant sale, a shark & a flounder at the Marine Science building, and lots of other cool things. Jimmy & Caleb were both too chicken to touch the shark, but they'll be totally into it in a few years, I'm sure. The day was stinky hot, but we all survived.

Italy

We read Papa Piccolo for this week & a half. It's been crazy, schedule-wise, so I didn't want to push this through. We enjoyed our lazy trip through Venice with Piccolo. First, as we do with all of our non-American settings, we got out the globe. Jimmy learned how to find Italy on the map (he liked the boot but wondered why it was that shape) & then made an Italian flag. For our next reading, we did vocabulatory work - Jimmy asked me what all of the unfamiliar words were. He didn't have to ask about many of them. The boy surprises me with the words he already knows (I called him on several, and he was ready with answers). Finally, we talked about peripherial vision. I even made him learn how to say it - too precious! Anyway, I had him stare at a fixed point while I wiggled my fingers next to him temple. He understood why Piccolo saw the kittens as little blurs when he saw them "out of the corner of his eye." I had planned for him to listen to some Italian children's songs, but he absolutely hated them. We had a much better time listening to the Russian music, so I'll be trying my best to find classic/traditional music to represent new cultures instead of children's songs.

Our letter this week was W. Jimmy did fabulous on handwriting, and the Bible verse came very easily to him this week. He didn't do so well on reading his copy words, tho, but that was mainly because Mean Mommy had him write crazy words like "worm" - should have known better!

We had a very full week with math. Even though we had less days of school, we still did all of the scheduled math lessons. We covered half of a shape with rectangle construction paper pieces, we used our tangram pieces again (Jimmy remembered "parallelogram"), and we reviewed nickels & counting by 5's. Counting by 5's is proving to be very difficult. Jimmy is having a little trouble remembering how to get to 20, but once there, he flies through the rest. The lessons are teaching him through games, like paying for items. We worked with nickels twice this week, and I noticed a marked improvement from one lesson to the next.

Besides our failed attempt to listen to Italian children's songs, we had a blast playing with our stash of musical instruments. Jimmy got a harmonica from his Oma for his birthday (which actually works, unlike the dollar store ones the boys got in their stockings this Christmas). Caleb loved playing Jimmy's harmonica, too, which has given me the idea to celebrate his potty training (whenever that's done) with a new harmonica of his own.

Russia

I started last week with a pretty nasty sore throat. I, of course, lost my voice. I tend to lose my voice for 2 weeks at a time, so I cancelled lessons for last week. Thankfully, my voice returned later in the week (much to my grateful surprise), so we were able to hold lessons this week.

This week's FIAR book was Another Celebrated Dancing Bear. There are a lot of good learning opportunities in this book. First, it is set in Russia. We looked up Russia on the map (much easier to find than France) & made a Russian flag. We talked a bit about the Russian teapot (the samovar), Russian cities (Moscow, where the book is set, and St. Petersburg, where one of the characters visits), Russian dancing (we found several great videos on YouTube), and Russian music (we listened to classical Russian songs several times during the week - I may have to play it more often as great soothing background music). On Tuesday, I had planned to discuss some new vocabulary words, but I had forgotten to bring the list with me when we read the book. So, winging it, I asked the boys to point out any new words they didn't know as we read it. This turned out to be a fabulous way to learn new words! They felt more involved in the learning process (being able to ask questions vs. being "lectured" to) and - bonus - they paid much closer attention to the story. We will definitely use this technique in the future. What a fabulous life skill to teach a life-long reader, too! I also liked doing this earlier in the week. We spend the rest of the week's readings pointing out the new words we learned. Caleb especially latched onto "samovar" - he kept pointing out the pictures of the samovar. Jimmy loved "embraced" - I had to be ready to receive a Jimmy-powered hug every time that word came up in the book (and a few other times, too). We also discussed how the illustrator made etchings, and we had a great opportunity to link our math studies of the calendar into the scheduled lessons of the dancing bears in the books. We even talked a little about time management ("if Boris has to be at Max's at 7pm, and it takes 1 hour to get to Max's house, when should he leave his house?"). All in all, this was one of my favorite weeks this school year.

This week's letter was V. It's a very easy letter to write, so we focused a lot on the rather difficult Bible verse (it was in the King James version) & on writing some longer words (like "vegetable"). I saw a huge improvement in Jimmy's writing, which reminded me that he often makes huge leaps in reading & writing after a short break.

In math, we worked a little more with tangrams (learning what a parallelogram is & how to pronounce it), measured length using linking cubes (Jimmy chose to measure the height & width of his rocket ship cup), introduced the nickel, & learned how to count by 5's. We still need some more work on counting by 5's. We ended the week with a math test - acting out addition & subtraction using counting bears. Jimmy aced it. He's really a pro at the hands-on, application-type math.

I got some fabulous feedback from Jimmy's German school teachers last week. They pulled me aside to tell me that he mastered a pretty complicated word ("servielte" - the German word for napkin). They told me that he has an ear for language, picking up nuances very easily & really listening & trying to say things as correctly as possible. I think this has decided me - if we're still in the area next year (and have income), I would really like to keep him going there.

France

The FIAR theme for this week was France. We read Madeline (again, from our aborted attempt last week) along with That Glorious Flight. Both are set in France, although TGF includes a trip to England. We looked up France on the map, made a French flag (out of paper), listened to French children's songs, checked out some new vocabulary (from Madeline - appendix, solemn, disaster; from TGF - "clacketa" which is a sound made by an air vehicle in the book), talked about the process of invention ("try, try again"), learned about roman numerals, and discussed how 12 girls can be grouped in different ways. We also watched the movie version of Madeline, which we discovered was very different from the book. It was a very full week! Jimmy liked reading the two very different books together, but I'd rather try to avoid that in the future for, if nothing else, the sanity of the teacher. =)

Our letter work this week was also combined. We tackled T & U. This worked pretty well, actually - we were able to practice both letters in several words, like "cut" and "tuck." The Bible verses associated with these letters were blessedly short, or we wouldn't have been able to memorize both. Yay!

Math went really well. We played War (Jimmy loooooves it!), added the jack, queen, & king to the game, made an ABBC pattern with our pattern blocks, and introduced tangrams. We had a math test mid-week, where Jimmy was asked to count by 1's to 100 (or beyond) and by 10's to 100. He did fabulously on the 10's, but he had a few stumbles on the 1's. Mostly, he was just having trouble focusing on what he had already counted. We're going to have to work on this a little more so it comes more naturally to him. I also learned that I had forgotten to teach him what to do once you reach 100 - he didn't know what the next number was! Good thing for these little assessments!

Our other little school asides this week were art (Jimmy used regular paints for the first time, making somewhat of a mess because Mommy wasn't *quite* paying attention) & German school. Jimmy really loves his German school. I am so thankful that we have had this opportunity. (Did I mention earlier that we won a free scholarship from a raffle we entered in December?)

Madeline

This week's plan was to read Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. We read it once. (It's meant to be read all week.) It was a little crazy - we were down in the Lansdale area, staying at my inlaw's house so we could visit Grandma Bobbie. My MIL, FIL, and hubby were in VA, finishing emptying Grandma Bobbie & Grandpa Andy's house - it finally sold! Grandma Bobbie has been having a rough time lately trying to recover from her pneumonia, so the boys & I stayed down there to visit & help. Napping wasn't going well, so I skipped out on the lessons for the rest of the week.

What we did do: Read through Madeline once & briefly discussed why she was in the hospital (she had her appendix removed). There is lots more to dig through in that book. For math, we took our first peek at playing cards - ace through 10. Jimmy learned that he could tell the difference between 6 and 9 by counting the number of shapes on the card. He figured out that ace is 1 all on his own. I'm not sure whether to be proud or concerned for future gambling issues... LOL! We read the Bible verse & story for the letter T, but we didn't start handwriting yet.

What we're going to do now: We're going to keep to our original schedule for the rest of the school year (with the possibility of taking an Easter break to visit Aunt Donna). Next week's book, The Glorious Flight, is also set in France, so we'll combine Madeline's studies in with that. We'll work on T along with U, which may actually make for some good handwriting lessons when we get to writing whole words towards the end of the week. For math, we'll just continue on; we had plenty of wiggle room for fitting in lessons at the end of the year, since there were more school days than math lessons for this year.

I think this is a much better option that trying to squeeze everything from this week into 2 or 3 days. There's so much good stuff in this week's lessons. Next week might be a little intense, but Jimmy has been asking for more stuff after we've finished our lessons lately. I love that we can be this flexible.

The Rag Coat

Our FIAR book for this week was The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills. It's a beautiful little book about a little girl whose coal miner father dies. She can't go to school because she doesn't have a coat to wear during the cold winter months, so her mother's quilting friends make her a quilted "rag" coat. When she finally walks into school proudly wearing her new coat, her classmates tease her into tears. She runs away but thinks better of it, returning to school to forgive them. She tells them the stories about each of the rags - they are rags from her classmates! It's a great opportunity to talk about the power of forgiveness, the bond between a father & daughter (even after death), and death. We also used this book as a starting point to make up stories using props (like Minna did with the rags in her coat). Jimmy & Caleb had a blast making up stories about Buzz Lightyear and Woody. LOL! We also talked a little about quilts, making our own out of paper (no stitching, just enough to get an idea of putting pieces together to make something different). We'll be visiting a fabric store later today to see all the different types of fabric that could be used to make a quilt.

In math this week, we reviewed the March calendar (great opportunity to practice reading, since March is our first short-named month). Jimmy had a test early in the week. He had to graph pattern blocks. We hadn't used a graph in a long time, so he was a little rusty. We'll review this assessment during our next test just to be sure. For our practical lessons, we measured strips of contruction paper (unit of measure - linking cubes), made an ABC pattern using pattern blocks, and went through a few counting bear stories (to start addition & subtraction skills). The big math highlight this week was from Caleb - he told a counting bear story of his own! He's definitely ready for some sort of math next year.

Our letter for the week was S. Jimmy memorized our Bible verse very quickly, so we had time to read the accompanying story twice this week. I think I'd like to do that more often - once at the beginning of the week and once later in the week to reinforce what we've just memorized. His handwriting is getting better. S was a little difficult with the extra curvy bit, but his letters were definitely readable. I had him write a few sound-it-out words, too - "can", "Bob", and "skate" (his choice). I pulled out a stage 1 reader for Jimmy to read to us one naptime as well. It's a short little book but there were some challenging sections. Jimmy did very well on the easy stuff, and he patiently plowed through the harder stuff. I did have him run a lap (it's the best way to get him over a mental block), but he was just so thrilled to be reading! I think he's finally ready, but I also think that any formal lessons just won't work for him. He's a tough cookie.

Continuing our slavery unit

This week was pretty relaxed, but we still accomplished quite a bit. Our FIAR book from last week was Who Owns the Sun? We're spending this week expanding on the slavery theme introduced there. I found 3 more age-approapriate books on slavery. We won't row them (rowing a book means reading it every day for 5 days & doing a different activity each day to re-enforce a specific topic). For 3 of the days this week, Jimmy gets to choose one of the books to read together. His first choice was Aunt Harriet's underground railroad in the sky by Faith Ringgold. Today, he chose Fredrick Douglass: the last day of slavery by William Miller. Tomorrow, we'll read our last book, Nettie's trip south by Ann Warren Turner. Along with the books describing a little of what slavery was like, we got a music CD from the library of songs from the Civil War era. Some of them are war songs, but there are several slave songs, such as Follow the Drinking Gourd. We listened to the CD a little today as background music, and I think we'll listen to it again tomorrow.

Our letter this week is R. Jimmy memorized the Bible verse pretty well, and even read it a little early in the week before he had it memorized. Pretty impressive, since the verse is "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Exodus 20:8" - those are some pretty big words. He's been doing a great job writing, too. I demonstrated writing R and r on Tuesday, and he's done it all on his own since then. I tried something new today. I gave him a word to write ("car") without telling him how it was spelled. We sounded it out together to figure out what letters are in the word. I think he enjoyed the exercise. Might be a good idea to help him learn to read, too.

On the math front, Jimmy was very excited to find out that we're using the geoboard again. We started out the week with a test on ordinal positions. Jimmy passed with flying colors. We are all caught up with tests now, too - he passed all of the tests where he previously had difficulty. We'll have our next test first thing next week. Yesterday's lesson was on relative length - which is longest, which is shortest, put these in height order, etc. Jimmy was disappointed that our lessons are so short. I'm going to have to review next year's curriculum. If it's not long enough, I might want to consider combining lessons. Anyway, back to this week's work. As I said before, we're using the geoboards again. Today's lesson was copying patterns from a paper drawing of goebands on a geoboard. There were 4 different sets to copy, each a little more complicated than the one before. Jimmy did very well, but he had a little trouble with the last pattern. I am learning to not treat each lesson as a test, but to gently show Jimmy where he is making mistakes & how to avoid them. Tomorrow will be more geoboard work. I think it's the same "copy the pattern" stuff, which Jimmy will undoubtedly love.

On Saturday, Jimmy will attend his 4th German Language School class. They are having Fasching, which is a Carnival type thing (you know, Faschnaucht, Mardi Gras, etc). Should be interesting! Which reminds me, time to find a costume for Jimmy. I think I'm supposed to wear one, too. Harumph!

Who Owns the Sun?

We're reading Who Owns the Sun? by Stacy Chbosky this week. It's about a little boy who asks his father who owns different things, like the sun, stars, or wind. The father responds that each thing is too wonderful, precious, and powerful to be owned by anyone. But then the boy finds out that his father is owned, and he is crushed. It's a very beautiful way to describe the horrors of slavery to young children. Jimmy immediately understood a little of what slavery means and how terrible a thing it is.

This week, we've discussed what "slavery" is, talked about how the son feels about his father, and counted how many questions the boy asked his dad. We'll finish up the week with taking a closer look at the illustrations, creating our own artwork, and listening to/discussing slave songs.

We had fun in math this week. We've really backed off on the calendar work, since Jimmy has a very good grasp now. We're still quizzing Jimmy occasionally (like "what day of the week is it today, Jimmy?") and doing occasional formal calendar work. During our lessons, we've worked on numbers 0-20 using number cards. Today, we did some math experiments with colored water, which Jimmy & Caleb LOVED doing. We'll finish up the week with some pattern blocks work and paying for pretend items with dimes.

Our letter this week is Q. Jimmy picked up this week's verse very quickly. It's a short verse, but the reference isn't very easy... First Thessalonians! We'll continue working on writing Q and q & reciting the verse, but we won't be writing any words with Q yet, since we haven't done the letter U yet. Jimmy has already asked for what Q words he wants to write once we get to U.

It's been a crazy time lately, so I might be posting weekly for a while.

Test day

We're continuing to read poetry this week. Jimmy found a favorite poem:

The Pessimist
Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat by food;
Nothing to wear by clothes
To keep one from going nude.

Nothing to breathe but air,
Quick as a flash 'tis gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.

Nothing to comb but hair,
Nowhere to sleep but in bed;
Nothing to weep but tears,
Nothing to bury but dead.

Nothing to sing but songs;
Ah, well, alas! alack!
Nowhere to go but out,
Nowhere to come but back.

Nothing to see but sights,
Nothing to quench but thirst;
Nothing to have but what we've got;
Thus thro' life we are cursed.

Nothing to strike but a gait;
Everything moves that goes.
Nothing at all but common sense
Can ever withstand these woes.

-Ben King (as published in The Best Loved Poems of the American People, selected by Hazel Felleman, 1936)

Jimmy had a math test today. I made 2 linking cube towers - 1 with an AB pattern and 1 with an ABB pattern. For each tower, he had to copy it, extend it, and then make the same pattern with different colors. He passed very easily. We also went back to some of the tests he didn't do so easily. From those, he easily passed all but one. We'll go back to that one again during the next test. It's an easy test, but he has trouble following the directions. He tries to make it more complicated than it needs to be, which is frustrating his teacher!

Jimmy practiced writing his letter P & p. Then he wrote several words that start with P and gave the letter a some extra practice. We finished our letter work by reviewing this week's Bible verse.

Poetry week

We did very light school last week (read a few poems), so this week is all about getting us back into our routine. We didn't get the next book from the library yet (should be in very soon), so we're focusing on poetry again to follow the theme after Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

Today, we read more poems from my favorite poetry book. We re-read some of Jimmy's favorites from last week as well as some new ones. The boys liked the different rhythms & rhyming of the different poetry structures.

After the poetry, which I read while the boys ate their lunch, we re-read the Bible verse story for the letter P. We read it early last week, but I didn't reinforce it over the week. I decided to start anew with our work on the letter P. We re-read the story, which Jimmy seemed to understand much better this time (even though he understood quite a lot last week; it seemed to sink even deeper this week). We reviewed the actual memory verse 3 times, but I haven't yet tested Jimmy to see if he has any of it memorized yet. No handwriting, either - both of those things will start tomorrow.

Next, we did math. We updated our workbook calendar. We hadn't done calendar work in a few weeks, but Jimmy remembered everything very well. For the formal lesson, we worked with dimes. Jimmy told me the name of the coin and how much it was worth. Then we counted by tens to one hundred (which Jimmy reminded me could also be one dollar if we were counting money). I gave him 5 dimes & he counted them - 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents, 40 cents, and 50 cents. I asked him to show me 10 cents (1 dime), 20 cents (2 dimes), 30 cents, 40 cents, 50 cents, and 60 cents (trick question, since he didn't have 6 dimes... but he figured it out right away).

As a bonus today, Jimmy & Randy practiced tying shoes. Randy sat on the ottoman with Jimmy in his lap. Jimmy sat on Randy's lap with Elmo in his lap. It was really cute... Randy showed Jimmy how to tie Elmo's shoe & Jimmy practiced (with a LOT of help). Jimmy got Elmo's shoe tied once, but he is having some trouble realizing that he needs a lot more practice. LOL!

Wednesday's lessons

It snowed yesterday, so we took a walk in the mess. Yes, mess. Immediately after snow, it sleeted & rained. It was really rather yucky. Caleb agreed with me. So we walked to the end of the block then turned around back home. Still, it was a perfect day to discuss more about the muted colors Susan Jeffers used to illustrate Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Jimmy volunteered that he would use his "little bit of color" to draw the nativity scene on our front lawn, leaving everything else brown & white. (And yes, our Christmas decorations are still up. I'm considering having an Easter tree.)

We skipped our math lessons today, so we finished up with LotW work. We reviewed the N verse (which Jimmy has memorized already), read the O verse & its explanatory story, and then practiced writing m, N, n, O, & o. Randy helped him with the handwriting part, and he reported that Jimmy's m, N, and n were doing very well, but that Jimmy had some trouble with his first attempts at writing O and o.

Test day!

We started our lessons with another reading of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Usually, I save our discussion for after reading it through once, but today's lesson was on the artwork. So before we started reading the book, we stopped on the first few pages (the title page & the first page with the words of the poem) to look closely at the illustrations. Susan Jeffers, the illustrator, uses only a touch of color in these drawings. In the beginning of the book, Jimmy insisted that more color was always better. But as we read through the book & observed the illustrations, Jimmy noticed that the little bit of color helped to highlight certain things in the pictures. Once we finished the book, he grudgingly admitted that some pictures look nice with only a little bit of color. He still said, though, that he would like using lots and lots and lots of color more than just a little bit of color.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I cut back on the calendar work. Jimmy noticed... and demanded that we fill in the calendar. So I did just the basics of our calendar work, ignoring the normal script from the teacher's manual. That worked. For the lesson portion of math today, we had a test. We used our 0-10 number cards. I spread them out randomly on the coffee table, pointed to each one, and asked Jimmy to tell me what they were. He passed that part with flying colors. The 2nd half of the test didn't go so well. I asked Jimmy to put the numbers in order, which he did... backwards. =( I explained what was wrong & told him that he didn't pass. The teacher's manual allows for re-testing later in the curriculum, so we'll go back to this (as well as a few other minor test errors) later in the school year.

We finished up with LotW work. Jimmy & I worked on his N memory verse, and then Jimmy practiced writing N, n, & m. I added the m because I noticed that he writes pretty funky m's when he writes his name. It's a line with three lines drawn underneath. So we reviewed how to write n & m: a straight half line (from the dotted line to the bottom line) with a hump (or two) from close to the dotted line, up, & straight down. Better, but they all still need some work. I think we'll keep N, n, & m practice while we add O & o. Perhaps a bunch of "no," "on," and "Mom" practice.

Back to school

We took a bit of a break while we traveled around. First, Randy & I went on a youth retreat as chaperones (when did we become responsible adults???). The boys spent the weekend with my inlaws. Then, we went to Virginia to help move Randy's grandparents (they moved to nursing homes near my inlaws) & to help clean out their house before the sale. We spent a few days afterwards at home recovering, and then we headed back to the greater Philly area to celebrate Caleb's 3rd birthday with various parts of the family. Whew. It's good to be home.

Before we started The Whirlwind, Jimmy finished his school week on Katy and the Big Snow. Jimmy drew a picture of a city, just like Virginia Lee Burton did in the middle of Katy. However, Jimmy had been facinated by the firetrucks in the book, so his city was entirely on fire. Boys. On Friday, he practiced counting by 5's, just like VLB did with horses to explain Katy's 55 horsepower engine in the beginning of the book. Since I didn't have 55 horses with us, we used pennies. We did 2 math lessons, including one using a new math material - a geoboard with geobands (a pegged grid used with rubberbands). We finished up the LotW, M, with reviews of the Bible verse & handwriting.

During our travels, we occasionally read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. We read it last year during B4FIAR, so it was an excellent light review week with a tie-in to our winter theme this January. I have to say, the weather has been very good to our winter unit study. Our house has has snow on the ground almost every day (by the time it finally melts, another storm steps up to pile on some more snow), and it was VERY cold in Virginia. Not so good for packing a moving truck, but very good to help re-enforce our winter lessons.

Now that we're back for a while now, it's time to jump back into school. This week's FIAR book is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. FIAR recommends using the edition illustrated by Susan Jeffers. Oh, is this a gorgeous book! Unlike most of the weekly lessons in FIAR, this book is focused on language & art (as opposed to also including social studies, science, & math). It was meant as a light lesson during a review week, but I'm using it instead to allow us time to rejuvenate our art time. I have to confess that art is my homeschooling weekness.

Today's FIAR lesson took an interesting turn today. It started as a simple observation exercise - listen to the rhyming to find the pattern. (Hint: it's an AABA pattern - the 3rd line of each stanza doesn't rhyme with the rest until the last stanza.) The book breaks the lines up for the illustrations, so we used a version I found online for this exercise. Jimmy was confused at first, but by the 2nd stanza, he knew exactly what to look for. I am hoping to continue this lesson into next week, when we read lots of various poetry. Anyway, after we "read" the rhyming pattern, I felt that Jimmy still didn't quite understand rhyming in poetry. He knows when words rhyme, but he didn't seem to understand the concept of a line rhyming with another rhyme. So we wrote our own poetry. Jimmy, Daddy, and I collaborated to write this, er, elegant verse... See if you can tell Jimmy's contribution.

Caleb
Caleb turned three,
Then he has to pee
On a tree.
Not on me!

After FIAR, we worked on math. This was a perfect lesson to follow a break - we reviewed the geoboard. Jimmy had to make 4 different shapes with a geoband on the geoboard. Jimmy made a triangle, a rectangle, a square, and then, because he was being silly, a shoe. LOL! He did very well on his calendar work, even with such a big gap. I think he's ready to stop reviewing the calendar every day. A few times a week should be just fine.

For LotW, we're double teaming this week. While traveling, Jimmy practiced writing N & n, but we didn't do any Bible verse work. Plus, his N & n's weren't very good with all of the distractiongs. So this week, we're splitting the week into N and O. Today, we read the story explaining the N Bible verse, practiced reciting the verse, and practiced writing N & n. Jimmy also asked to review writing M, m, L, l, B, and b. We'll start the letter O work on Wednesday (since he had a headstart on N, it will get the shorter "half" of the week).

Making a picture-graph. Er, pictograph. Whatever that thing is.

We started today's lessons with math. Jimmy finished his calendar work quickly & easily. Then we moved on to making a pictograph (which Jimmy kept calling a picture graph). We brainstormed different winter activites that Jimmy likes to do. Jimmy drew pictures of 12 of those activites on squares of construction paper, which we then graphed according to inside & outside activities. He had 7 outside activities & 5 inside activities. He was a little disappointed that there were 2 squares left empty on the graph, so I had to explain the purpose of a graph to a 4 year old. Needless to say, I rather wasted my time. =)

We moved onto LotW. Jimmy requested that we read the story about the Bible verse again, so I did. Jimmy is really started to grasp the concept of doing things "through Christ who strengthens" us. (If only I could grasp that concept...) The story was very, very easy for him to understand, too - it was about fights between siblings. Man, I love this book! After reviewing the memory verse several times, Jimmy practiced his handwriting. In addition to this week's letter, M, Jimmy also reviewed writing B & D (upper & lower cases of all 3 letters).

We finished up with Katy. Jimmy added today's weather (cloudy at the time he checked) to our weather calendar. Then we read the book. Afterwards, we took a closer look at the illustrations around the border of page 1. Those illustrations give us more information about Katy (such as her bulldozer attachment & a 55 horsepower diesel engine). We read the captions of each little drawing, and then Jimmy recited them from memory. He needed a little help, but I was still impressed with how much he remembered, especially considering that I don't think he understood that I was going to quiz him on it afterward! I guess I just gave my first pop quiz. LOL!

Katy and the Big Snow

We're reading Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton this week. Randy has braved some of the lessons, which the boys have loved. So let me catch you up.

Yesterday, we had school pretty late. The boys & I ran some errands in the morning, so school happened before bedtime. I led them in math (we repeated lesson #49 - introducing January & working with January's blue-blue-white-white color pattern in linking cubes) and Bible verse (just read the verse & accompanying story for the M verse). Then they went off to bed. Randy read Katy as their bedtime story & discussed responsibilities. In the book, Katy is a heavy duty snow plow who has to sit & wait until it is time for her to plow. When the big snowstorm comes, she digs out the city, not stopping until she is done, even when she gets a little tired. They also discussed the jobs of different people mentioned in the story (like the doctor & the fire fighters).

Today, we had school at our normal time - just before lunch. Jimmy went over his calendar work, then had a math evualation. He was given a pile of construction paper shapes & had to sort them 2 different ways. He chose to sort them by color (red, yellow, & purple) first, then by shape (circle, square, rectangle, and triangle). Then Jimmy wrote several big M's and little m's, which looked very nice. We reviewed the Bible verse 3 times. Then we read Katy. Today's FIAR activity was starting a weather chart. Jimmy looked out the window at the grey skies & proclaimed it "Sunny!" Sigh. We'll work on that. Meanwhile, we drew a big cloud in today's square for cloudy. It will be fun to record the weather throughout January.