All About Spelling

Lily (10) recently started doing All About Spelling and so far it's working well.

She's a terrible speller (the poor thing) and after looking at many different programs I decided on AAS. Being that it's hands-on (letter tiles) with constant review of what she needs (index box system) I knew this would work very well for her.

We started with Level 1 and have been doing about a 'Step' a day. We are now almost through Level 1 (It's been 3 weeks now).

I just received my order of the next 3 Levels. :) Yep, the next three. See, I knew we needed Level 2 really soon. And then there was a sale on Level 4 so I wanted to buy that one too. So I might as well get Level 3 also. Right? To save on shipping. :)

Well, back to how Lily is doing. She really likes it. She likes spelling words with the tiles. She doesn't even mind spelling the words on paper too (and she hates writing). She's flying through the first level because the words are so easy, again she is 10. But I'm glad that I started with Level 1 for a couple of reasons. First, Lily's confidence about spelling is up because she is flying right through this first Level. Second, the review of all the letter sounds and the rules. For instances the letter o. Did you know that it makes 4 different sounds? As in - odd, open, to, and oven. I hadn't realized that. Then again, I never sat down to try and figure that one out. Anyhow, I'm glad that Lily is learning to memorize all the sounds associated with a letter and not just the basic sounds we all know.

In yesterdays lesson she learned how to tell whether or not to use the letter 'k' or 'c' in different words. Like 'kit' and 'cut'. It depends on the letter following it.

Oh, and I don't get a fight when it's spelling time now! That's a huge plus in my book.

When Lily is done with Level 1, I might start Jasmine in it. Of course we would go really slow. But I think she would be ready for it. She already can spell some what (3 letter words). She can read the Bob books, so I think she's ready for this. In fact, I believe that it will be fun for her because of the letter tiles. She's already trying to help Lily. Of course so is 'Rosie', but her idea of help and our idea of it are two different things. :)

New shoes...and a new BUG?

Here's my Lily...

Do you like her fancy new shoes? Hey, they even match her shirt!

She made those herself. Well, with a little help from her Grandmother! It was her history project for the week from Days of Knights and Damsels.

Here's a pic of Granddaughter and Grandmother...





and finally...

A very strange looking bug that I'm told "Just fell from the sky".

Anyone know what type of bug this is? Jasmine keeps telling us it's a caterpillar. :)

Just some thoughts...

I just finished reading The Latin-Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell.

Here are a couple thoughts....

First, I decided while reading the book that I would drop Wordly Wise 3000 from Lily's schedule. The book pointed out that if they are learning Latin they really don't need an additional vocabulary curriculum. Well, duh. Just wish I had thought of that before. Lily never really liked doing Wordly Wise anyhow and I don't think she was really learning the vocabulary. So, that was an easy decision.

My next thought was this - Self-Education. For Me!

I'm really looking forward to starting down this path. I have already requested How to Read a Book, and The Well-Educated Mind from the library. Those should be in within the week. Then I'm going to move onto A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning and A Student's Guide to the Core Curriculum (My library system has those as well. Yeah!).

I'm excited. Now I just hope that once I start reading the Great Books that I don't get overwhelmed right away and give up.

You know, I really need a Grammar/Writing course. Hmm. Are there any adults that go through the Classical Writing series? Or are there any other good adult programs. Maybe (and I know this sounds funny), but maybe I should do copywork from the Great Books. That seems so silly though. If kids can learn that way though then I should be able to, right?

Ah, well. I don't really need to worry about that right now. It's not like I have the extra money to run out buy something for myself. *pouts* No fair!

Our timeline book

I'm so excited about our timeline! What can I say, I'm one of those people that gets all excited over anything that I work hard to create. Yeah!

So of course I have to post pictures of my work. :)

When thinking about doing a timeline I decided that a book would work best for us. I decided that I liked the notebook timeline from Homeschool In The Woods the best. They have a whole page that shows pictures and gives directions on how to make many different types of timelines. The one I made is about have way down the page, number 2 under Creating a timeline notebook. I printed each time period on different colored cardstock. I also added the time period to the top right corner of each page. It took me awhile to figure out how to do this. :) But in the end, I made mine using Excel. I made four pages, one for each time period, and printed each sheet separately changing the date each time. Yeah!

Here's a few pics.

Here's a page from the Middle Ages printed on blue cardstock!

*warning - the enlarged photos are really large, not sure how to fix it*

And a page from Ancient Times printed on tan cardstock.

After Lily gets some of her timeline figures in the book I'll post more pics!

Getting Organized Part 2

After creating the daily folders, I know need to create a weekly schedule.

In my last post Getting Organized Part 1 I mentioned that we were using an excel form from donnayoung.com that we really liked. But, I wanted to come up with something that would help Lily stay even more focused. Lily is my motor mouth and she distracts herself (and every thing distracts her) so easily. So I decided that it would be nice to have some sort of daily schedule to put into each of her folders. Good idea huh? Well, I couldn't find anything I wanted online. You know what that means...do it yourself. I created this very basic chart that I could just change each week, print off, cut up and place in her daily folders. Yeah. (Oh yeah, I've been printing it on colored paper for a splash of color.)



See, a very basic form but it's really helping. This system works even better if I gather all of her books and set them in a pile next to her. :) The only thing that may be an issue is that I don't have a copy of her 'weekly schedule'. I kinda do, I have the copy on the computer. Currently I've been looking in her daily folder to see what exactly she needs to do. So I might create another form for myself. I'm thinking maybe a 2 child weekly form so that I can schedule some stuff for Jasmine all on the same form. There's a form over at donnayoung.com that looks like it might work. It's called Planner for Two Children.

I must say that I love her site. :) I also printed off a yearly calendar from her that I put in my binder. I highlighted our planned 'vacations' and then I just mark an X on each day that she's present. Tuh-dah, our fancy attendance form.

I then printed off *surprise* another form from her site. :) This one lists subjects across the top and dates down the side. Then after she completes a subject I put a check in the box for that date. This is a great visual for me. I can just glance at it and easily see how we're doing or if we're behind on doing a subject (like art).

This year-at-a-glance form at Smooth Stones Academy looks like it might be nice to create. Hmm, I think I'm realizing that I like seeing stuff in bright colors.

I suppose that's good for now.

Have a great day.

Getting Organized Part 1

I haven't exactly figured out how to organize our homeschool. So far I have tried something different each year. Let's see here...

For the first year I used The Homeschool Planbook. Which probably would have worked wonderfully except that I filled out the planner for the whole year, at the beginning. Yep, you guessed it. I set myself up for failure. As soon as we got behind in one thing it messed everything up. Then I would start feeling bad, and that voice in my head would start commenting about me not being a good enough homeschooler...blah blah blah.

So then I switched to just scheduling one week at a time. Which helped a lot. I used this lovely excel form for donnayoung.org. I really liked this form. I would type out Lily's schedule for the week and print it out. Then I would tape it up so that it was right there and easy to get to. Then when Lily when finish a subject she would put a check mark in the little box.

This was a great improvement on keeping Lily focused, but not perfect. Also, I was trying to type up the schedule on Sunday evenings. This process meant that I would pull out each book and see what she needed to do next and the page numbers then key it in. As you can see, it was still a lot of work for me to do each week. This was also the time that I made any copies that we needed for the week.

And that brings us to now. We have only been using this new method for almost 2 weeks now. But so far it has been working wonderfully! But before I tell you what I do....I must tell you where I got my info. :) I have visited many blogs and websites (and I mean MANY) and I took a little from here, and a little from there. So I will try to give credit as I go along.

The first thing I realized that I needed (from many ladies over on the WTM board) was to continue making a weekly schedule each week BUT have a master schedule for each subject first to pull the information from.

I hope I'm making sense! :)

So to make up my Subject schedules I used a blank schedule form from Core Foundations and typed in our lesson plans. I then printed it off and put it my teacher binder. (I put colored dividers in the binder for each subject).

Here's an example of our Latin schedule keyed into the blank schedule.

Phew! It took me forever to figure out how to post that image. Anywho...

Next I decided to create daily folders. So Lily would have one folder for each day of the week and in each folder she would have all the worksheets/handouts that she needed that day. Yeah! And it's working. Lily is staying focused, she doesn't have to get up (and distracted) quite as often. I got this great idea from Trivium Academy. I plan on getting this desktop organizer for the daily folders.

Your Business Math update

Lily loves it!!!

She just completed the first month of business of her very own 'pet store'. It is so exciting to see her enjoy doing this. We only do it on Fridays, the rest of the week she works on Saxon. But here she is, learning new math concepts and she doesn't even mind. And dare I say she's having fun...

Are there any other similar math products out there? I would love to add in something hands-on like this every year. If you know of something, please let me know.

Writing Tales

We started Writing Tales I about a month ago. So far so good. It's easy to do/teach. Lily gets done with the daily lessons pretty quickly. Which is a good thing (for her at least, she likes to take ALL day to do school). I need to work with her on....creating more. No....oh heck, well her stories have just been short and to the point. I want her to get into it more, spend more time on her story. Lily is a talker. She NEVER runs out of things to say or talk about. I just need her to apply this to her writing too. Not totally though!!!! Oh man, the story would never end then. =) Hey, she's a jabber box.

Any ideas on how to get her to output more?

Well, we are only on lesson 5 so I suppose she will get better as she gets more practice. I really shouldn't worry about it yet, huh?

Latin for Children

We finally started Latin for Children Primer A last week and we really enjoyed it. I bought it a couple months ago and kept meaning to start it. But....I was scared. Silly, I know. But it's true. I finally told Lily, "We are going to sit down and do Latin, no ifs, ands or buts about it!" So we did.....and I was AMAZED at how easy it was.

I had thought, that I would have to listen to the CD once, trying to remember the pronunciation. Then, teach the lesson. Boy was I (very happily) wrong! The first page 'Memory Work' of each chapter is completely chanted on the CD. AND the chant is catchy enough that you remember it.

I have been doing my own set of worksheets along with Lily. I figured that doing it this way I will be able to learn it too. Lily really enjoys having me do it all right along with her.

I even hear Jasmine doing the chants throughout the day. =o) She will also ask me for aqua when she's wanting some water. Or when she just wants to use the 'fun' new word she learned.

Down the road we want to learn Hindi. How do I decide how long to wait? A year? More? Oh, I just don't know about this. Eventually we'll also add in Spanish. Those are the plans in my head anyhow. =)

School books....

We got our state refund back last week. Yeah! So I purchased some new books. =)

Writing Tales I - I can't wait to get and start this. I wanted to start it at the beginning of the year but we didn't have the funds for it. So, yeah!

Your Business Math - Pet Store - This was a new find for me. I'm so excited to get this. I'm not sure how soon we'll start it yet but probably pretty soon. I downloaded the ebook version so now I need to print it all out and put it in a binder.

Ok, some more books too but those were the highlights.

Next week I'm planning on purchasing Latin for Children A. We haven't started Latin at all yet so it'll be interesting to see how it goes! Lily is excited about getting this though! That makes me happy! She told me a couple weeks ago that she wants to learn the language the Romans spoke. =o) She's really been enjoying history!

On that note... I think we're going to add in Hindi next year for the whole family. I would like to add it now but I figured it would be better to wait since Lil is starting Latin now. So, Jasmine and India will be learning Hindi first and then Latin later. I actually prefer it that way for them anyways. They are, after all, my little Indians! =)

Anyhow, I'm pretty excited. It always feels like christmas when I get a shipment of school books. Oh My Nerd! ha ha ha

Living Math

The past couple of days I have been researching living math books. I'm trying to find as many 'lists' as I can. I originally was looking with Jasmine in mind. A gentle way to learn math at a young age. But now I see I can add them in for Lily too. She doesn't normally like math so I think she would really enjoy this. (I would just add them with Saxon, not replace it).

Here are some sites I found so far....

Living Math! - This is an awesome site! They have so much info. They have the books arranged by concept and topic. They also have a Living Math Through History list.

CM, Children and Lots of Grace (blog)

http://charlottemason.tripod.com/CMmath1.html

Homeschool Math

OurLosBanos.com

MathStart

I also came across Your Business Math series for ages 8-12. You can also get it at Lulu.com.

'You own a store. You want a profit. You do the Math!'

Oh, I'm so excited that I found this. Lily will just LOVE it. There are 3 'businesses' in the series - book store, sports store, and a pet store.

I'll definitely be getting the pet store for Lily! Man, I'm so excited - cause I believe that Lily will be excited about it!

*adds this to my already long list of things I want for school* phff

Signing Time

Signing Time is a huge hit in my house! Jasmine (3) is totally in love with the series and we are all learning so much.

Love it! Love it! Love it!

Lily usually signs when she wants to ask me something and not have anyone else hear. =)

Jasmine signs for fun. Right now she makes up her own signs for words that she hasn't learned yet. It's pretty funny to watch.

Rosie likes to try and sign along with us. =) She waves her hands around in the air. She does this a lot when we sing/sign the ABCs.

And Mom (me), actually has fun watching and listening to the videos as well.

Jasmine likes to watch these over and over but it doesn't seem to bother me. I just sing right along. (and sign a little).

Fun Stuff...

After reviewing the posts that I recently posted about Jasmine's preschool I decided that I had better go back and post about all the fun learning toys they have to play with too. =o) It's not just all workbooks and no fun.

• Play-doh (with alphabet cookie cutters too)
• Puzzles
• Legos
• Lincoln Logs
• Sewing Cards
• Books Galore! (seriously)
• Blocks (building and abc)
• Art supplies (Jasmine loves, scissors, glue stick and construction paper!)
• Matching games
• Chalkboard (they enjoy this)

We have a lot more stuff but that's what popped in my head. These are all educational things that they can play with whenever they want.

I understand that most 3 yr olds are not going to want to sit down and work in workbooks or do worksheets. Jasmine just happens to be little different and loves them. If it weren't for the fact that she was always asking to do them, I probably would not have purchased them yet. Right now 'school' is fun for her and it's kinda like a game. I want to point out that I am following her lead.

As a side note, I'm really curious to see what India will be like when she's 3. Will she be anything like Jasmine? Will she be the complete opposite? I think it will be very interesting to see.

Math already?

The only thing I can say is that Jasmine is my little school nerd! he he *grins* Shhh, don't tell her.

She has been requesting a math program just like Lily's. So for Christmas guess what she got. Yep, a math program. How did you know? Hmm. =o)

Ok, I got her Saxon Math K. I had read about how a lot of people use it for preschool instead of kindergarten so I figured we would give it a shot. It's really hands-on. Lots of manipulatives, pattern blocks, linking cubes, teddy bear counters, a scale and things like that.

We sat down to do our first lesson Jan. 1st and she ended up doing 3 lessons at that time. The beginning ones are so easy. Like counting to 5, playing with pattern blocks...she's been doing both for over a year now. So we have actually sat down for math on 5 different occasions and we are already up to lesson 16. I don't know if she'll do that for much longer though. Pretty soon she'll come across stuff that she doesn't yet know and that may slow her down.

The only part that's hard for her right now is snapping the multi-link cubes together. They're hard. So one evening I just sat down and popped them together and apart, together and apart. It has helped a little bit. So I know they'll get easier to use over time. Right now, I'll just continue helping her 'snap' them together.

Reading...

When Jasmine was right around 3yrs she started sitting down with her sister's chapter books and pretending to read. Then she would bring the book over to me, pointing to a word, and ask "what word is this"? She would do this over and over again.

So I'm like hmm.... I think she may be able to start learning to read.

I decided to purchase Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. And Guess What? She started reading at 3 1/2! We're on lesson 30 something right now, I believe. We actually had to put the book down for awhile, before she was reading. She would sound out the words for me, but she couldn't hear what it was that she was saying. It just wasn't clicking. We waited a few months and tried again and it clicked. Now she has also started reading Bob Books and working on Explode the Code book 1 (ETC). Right now I don't have her writing the words in ETC. She would just get frustrated if she had to do all the writing. Our main goal right now is reading.

We don't work on this stuff every day. Just when she's in the mood for it. Either she tells me she wants to do it. Or I ask if she wants to. If she says no, I simply so 'ok'.

Sonlight PreK

I started researching preschool curriculum. The one that I liked the most was Sonlight's Pre-K (Core B now). I really liked this one because of all the story books that are included it it. Simply put, it's literature based. Read to your child!

While researching this program I came across this yahoo group SL Preschool. I have learned so much about teaching little ones from the ladies on this list. I'm very glad I found it. In the files section there are also 2 different schedules posted for Sonlight PreK. Of course, you have to be a member to have access to these files and they are copyrighted.

I own most of the books now for this program but not all. And we don't sit down and do it everyday. In fact, we're kinda lacking on doing this lately. So I'm hoping to get back into it.

I have all different workbooks that I purchased to go along with this. We've done a page here and there but I would like to start working on it more. (of course only when Jasmine wants too. It's her choice.) Here are some of the workbooks we have:

• Developing the Early Learner (DEL) - we've done about 10pages so far.
• Building Thinking Skills Primary
• Visual Perceptual Skill Building
• Cuisnaire Rods Alphabet book & cuisnaire rods.

Again, we've only worked a little with these right now.

ABC sites (free)

We discovered Starfall.com for Jasmine. She loved that site. It got old after a while though and she stopped going to it. But when we finally went back to it she loved it all over again.

Starfall is an awesome site. It starts with introducing letters and their sounds and works up to learning to read short stories. It's very fun for little ones.

Next we found Letter of the Week. This is a free curriculum teaching letters and their sounds. (they also have other things there too). We didn't follow this to a 'T' but here is what we did:

• I would print off 2-3 letter coloring sheets (for the letter we were on)
• I would tell her what letter it was and what sound it made.
• I would show her the ASL sign for that letter. (sign language)
• I would show her the letter on the keyboard. (she had fun typing it)
• I would pick up some of the recommended books from the library and we would read those throughout the week.
• We would place one of her coloring sheets into her ABC's book. (binder + page protectors, nice and simple but she loved her special book)

Let Preschool Begin...

Once I started teaching Lily, Jasmine had to be right there and involved. I constantly heard "Momma, do you have a worksheet for me"? Jasmine was requesting this at the age of about 2 1/2. At first I was just giving her extra math worksheets (etc.) and letting her draw and scribble all over them. Well, not just scribble. She was constantly trying to write words. Using little symbols and o's as her letters. I also had to start making a copy of Lily's history coloring pages so that Jasmine could do that too.

Eventually I purchased her some Kumon workbooks. First their tracing one, which she absolutely loved and then their cutting workbook.

So that was the beginning of Jasmine's preschool. I will make separate posts about the different things we've done or are doing since then.

FREE History Schedule

I found this goody on the WellTrainedMind boards (which is now a forum, *whispers* go check it out) .


Lunablog.net has free lesson plans that you can download. I think it is so wonderful that she is offering these for free. The lesson plan is called Mosaic Introduction to World History Part 1: Myths, Maps, and Marvels. She has a couple different versions. One using Story of the World: Ancient Times the other using A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. She also gives you a choice of downloading the 'plain' version or the 'prehistory and evolution' version. How awesome is that?!

The only thing that makes me sad, *pouts* is that we're getting ready to start the Middle Ages so I can't use this lesson plan yet. But I am saving it for when it's Jasmine's turn for Ancient History.

The Well-Trained Mind & 4th Grade

This past summer (after year number 1) I read The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. It was a great read and I have definitely learned some new things. So now I have made some changes for our 4th grade year and I think we'll like it much better then the previous year. (my fingers are crossed). Lily now has her own binder set up with dividers for each subject. I like it!

4th Grade Curriculum

Saxon Math 54 - I also purchased the DIVE cd in hopes to free up some time to do preschool with Jasmine. We'll see how it goes.

History Odyssey - Middle Ages - I've changed history a little this year. We're still using SOTW2 as it's one of the spines scheduled in HO. We haven't started this yet, we're still finishing up SOTW1. I'm actually stretching it out a little right now because I haven't been able to purchase everything for the Middle Ages yet. One of the main things I still need to purchase is the Hands & Hearts Middle Ages Kit (and of course the additional student kit for J). I'm looking forward to adding that into our history for some hands-on fun. There are also many other things I am adding to History this year. But that will have to be a separate post for a different day.

Rod & Staff English - Building With Diligence (grade 4) - I am pretty happy with this curriculum choice. I think it works well for us. It takes us about 20min a day. We do some of the written work orally, don't do 'all' the written work. I pick and choose based on what she needs practice on. I feel that it covers things really well. Happy enough with it that I plan on moving on with it in 5th grade.

Veterinary Science Unit Study - Lily LOVES animals and is thinking about being a Veterinarian when she is older. So we did this for fun. We still haven't gone through their whole reading list. That's ok, it'll keep books in her hands for a while. (I hope).

Sonlight Science 4 - Electricity, Magnetism & Astronomy - We're not very far into this as of yet. We are changing it a little.....we're not doing the student pages that it comes with. We both (Lily and I) like notebooking instead. So now after reading a two-page spread or what have you, Lily will draw a picture that relates to what she just read and then write a little something about it. Then she adds it to her science binder. She likes this a lot better.

Spelling Workout D - We have the older 'sports' edition. We are not very far into this yet. So I can't really say much about it right now. So far, so good though.

Getty Dubay Italic Handwriting E - I decided on this book this year due to the fact that Lily has terrible handwriting. I hate saying that...but it's true. Even the pretty cursive was terrible. So, after researching different handwriting programs I figured this might be the best cursive program for her. Again, she's not that far into this yet either but so far, so good.

I guess that's basically it for now. There are more things that I want to add once we get the chance to purchase them.