Our School Year So Far....

Well then.

Just a little update.

We are cruising right along, and are on our 75th day of school already!  We are about 15 or so days ahead of our local district.  We've tossed aside our school work on those un-seasonly warm days we had so we could get out and enjoy the day.  We've canned a couple of days where the going just got rough, or when everyone needed a break. But we'll stay ahead through the holidays, and hopefully have some snowy days to enjoy in the next few months.

So here's what we've been up to.

I still have the least amount of Chase pictures.  He does Journal, Math, Spanish and part of Language Arts on his own, Science and Art with Indigo, Social Studies with Indigo and Riley, and everything else intermittently as scheduled.  He recently got into the Harry Potter series and read all 7 books in 5 weeks' time (which counts me dragging my feet on getting to the library every time he needed the next book!), and is now reading the other works by JK Rowling.  We didn't see him for long periods of time, as he went off to devour the books any chance he got.  Band and lessons continue at the middle school.  December is going to be heavy on indoor physical education, with Pilates DVD's and strength training, and a new Writing Course begins for he and sis.

Chase does his work seated on his bed, which is temporarily in the girls' room while the boys' room gets a makeover. 

Indy is also elusive, and in not so many pics!  While she needs a bit more prompting to stay on task than her big brother, she also completes her work in similar fashion as listed above.  With the room updates, we are trying to incorporate nook space so that she can do her work without distraction of youngers, but the problem is - she can easily distract herself!  She also picked up the Harry Potter books at the same time, but doesn't stop to read as much as Chase does.  She is currently waiting for a library trip to get Book 4.  Band, orchestra, violin lessons and drum lessons continue at the middle school.  

We found small space to work in, as the homeschool room was piled up with the furniture and boxes from the boys' room.  Please ignore bouncing monkey on the chair in the background!

Making meatballs with a sister!

Next is our "1st Grader."  In quotes because almost nothing Riley does is 1st Grade level, except apparently her spelling!  Her most recent reading assessment puts her word recognition, phonemic awareness and oral vocabulary in mid-12th grade, and she maxed out on everything else, except for spelling.  She spells like an end-of-1st grader.  Which gives you an idea of just how differentiated her learning needs to be!  The spelling I am not worried about, it will come with time and I suspect a great deal of it has to do with her confidence and desire to have it always be right.  She also picked up Harry Potter at the same time as Indigo, and they fought over the first book.  They finished it at the same time, and although the other kids moved on, Riley lost interest somewhere in the middle of the 2nd book (perhaps because a certain sister kept hiding it...).  But that may also have been because she picked up another series, and I guarantee she'll be back at Book 2 soon.  We dabble in multiple math resources, but can't stay for long in any one because she already has the concepts down, and I really don't want to waste her time.  I've just recently gotten a 3rd Grade Grammar workbook to go through, and I had a difficult time picking the level.  She gets the concepts and terms easily, but higher level work wants her to be writing more than she can handle at age 6, motor-wise, attention-wise, and even content-wise.  She loves doing History with her big sibs, and her science goes in spurts.  She'd rather be doing the experiments all day and I just don't have the time for that!  Art is interspersed with other subjects, and phys. ed. is not an issue as she is outdoors a whole lot! 

 She can also work under pressure...

She's covering her answers so RJ can't copy... how sweet!

Making the Earth's layers with play dough

My last post was focused on preschool/Kinder level stuff and RJ, so no need to go into it again.  Our biggest development is that he's gotten "diagnosed" with Sensory Processing Disorder, and I use quotes because SPD isn't a recognized diagnosis in the DSM yet.  He gets weekly services, and the occupational therapy he's receiving is teaching us a lot.  The goal is for RJ to learn what he's feeling, and how he can regulate himself to be able to function in socially acceptable ways.  We are (supposed to be) incorporating 15 minutes of "Heavy Work" into every 2 hour period, in an attempt to keep him as even-keeled as possible.  When I do it, we generally have great days.  It's new to us, and with the chaos of a now-mobile baby, I admit, we are only hitting it about 40% right now.  I also learn things about him all the time.  He is very visual.  More than most, even.  I'm a visual learner, but it's my preference, I can still learn in other ways.  He struggles greatly with this.  Since much of the preschool and Kinder material out there includes visuals, I am finding that I have to be picky.  If the pictures don't match up completely and literally, the lesson just won't work.  For instance, a Rhyming Workbook has some pictures like this:  a pan frying an egg, and the word was "Cook."  He could not, even after multiple prompting, get it that the word was "Cook."  To him, it was "Pan."  Which most certainly did not rhyme with Book!  So I went back to the drawing board with that, stashed a lot of our materials, and scoured the 'net for things that would work for our little guy.  He remains very mechanically-inclined, and grasps math concepts well, so I'm making some math bags for him to be able to work on independently.  He also has fine motor bins as part of his day, and of course, some sensory fun as well.  He learns best when he is in motion, or his hands are busy! 

Magnetic letters spell sight words from the BOB books. 

Cutting and gluing are always a hit. 

A nuts and bolts Fine Motor bin keeps him busy.

He joined his sibs in building some of our many USA map puzzles. 

I found a Beginning Sounds unit that contained all literal pictures, no confusion with the visuals!  It's laminated and the pieces all have Velcro Dots so we can do this again and again. 

And sometimes, he's just the subject of everyone else's fun... 

Phys. Ed. in the rain... 

And last but not least, little Shel is nearly 8 months, crawling all around since the end of 5 months, standing up, cruising on furniture, bouncing down the stairs (accidentally), going after the broom, my kitchen rugs, stereo wires, forgotten LEGO's, any paper she can get her hands on, and cleaning up under the kitchen table since we don't have a dog.  She's a happy little thing, and would prefer for Mom to hold her all day long.  She is a completely awful sleeper, and is just now getting into regular naps... which occur on the couch, my bed, in my arms, the carseat or the stroller... pretty much anywhere but her bed!  

Exploring the dry noodle bin

Exploring the Project Club cardboard pile

Down for the count

Preschool/Kinder - Day in the Life

So, homeschooling is awesome.  It really is.  For all of the ages and levels we're currently doing, and everything we've done so far.  But, if I had to pick an age group to be my most-fun favorite, it'd be 3 to 5 years old.  They are such little, eager sponges at that age and I have a natural ability to take almost anything and put it in terms for them to understand and I very much enjoy doing so.

It took me a bit to realize just how much our little guy, RJ, wanted to be a part of our homeschool.  I've worked out some things for him to do to keep up with our learning, and have other things in place to keep him busy while I work with others.   And some days, when the other kids are other places doing other things, or our online planner has done its job and the other kids are doing what's on the schedule, he and I get to spend some time doing some really cool stuff.  I should establish, before we get into it, that he is already solid on the Kindergarten Readiness checklists, so we don't spend a lot of time on typical preschool things like letters, numbers, and shapes.  Standard things that I try to wrap into his week are Phonics, Letter and Number writing and tracing, and Sight Words.  Plus lots of other great stuff that is specific to him.  Here's a look at a super fun day we had recently.


He likes to start with his sight words, so we did that.  For the first part which I call "Say and Shout," he doesn't need to be seated.  So he can stand, twirl, jump, whatever he feels like doing while we play the game.  "Say and Shout" is easy - we have 10 business-card-sized, cardstock-printed sight words and I show him one at a time.  If he knows it, he shouts it!  If he doesn't, then after 3 seconds, I say it, and then he shouts it.  I started this game with Riley when she was 2 as she had been interested in Indigo's words from school at the time.  It works well because kids that age love to shout the words.  When they have been recognizing a word immediately a bunch of times in a row, it moves to the "I Know It" pile, and we add in a new word.  This is very similar to what public school kindergartners are doing.  Then, we play "Seek and Find" with the same 10 words.  I spread them out face up, and call out each word.  He has to find it and put it in a pile.  Then, when only one is left, he has to tell me which one it is.  If he's not losing interest after that, he can take the stack of 10 sight words and spell them on the white board with the magnetic letters. This day, he was done after Seek and Find, and wanted to build something.

He built this machine out of Tinker Toys, he says it should go in the "newseum," as we've just visited the National Museum of Industrial History, which showcased A LOT of machinery.

We took a snack break and he ate a banana and an apple.  Then he reminded me about the lollipop he got the other day so we got that, too. 

We read and did the activities in this All About Maps book.  This guy LOVES maps.

Then he played with Kinetic Sand as I had to go feed the baby.

Shelby went down for her morning nap, so we did the next page in our Kinder Art Book.  Riley and RJ are doing it together, and it's from www.kinderart.com.  Page 3 is "I Can Make a Pattern" and they get to cut out Red, Yellow, and Blue circles and make a Caterpillar in a pattern.  

Then it was time to paint his wooden rocket ship.  We start with blue, of course.  This also keeps him busy while the rest of us work together.

Riley calls everyone down to explore her ladybug larvae which arrived today.  She reads the book to them and they explore the plastic figures of the stages.  Doing school on the kitchen island allows me to make lunch while we work on stuff.

After lunch, RJ uses this lentil beans kit from www.topscience.org to compare measurements.  And to cover his hands, and pour and dump, and pour and dump.  This is his first time doing the comparing measurements booklet that came with it.  It's cute to see him so excited about finding his answers. 

When we put that away, I could tell he was weary of doing things, and needed a rest, so he got some independent reading time in his room with his new library books.  He does well with this, for the most part, probably because it's an established thing that all the kids do and it's never used as a punishment or in a negative way.  After 30 minutes of independent reading, he got a snack and went outside to dig in the dirt pile.  By then, everyone else was wrapping up their day, and we were done! 

We've started!

Blogging has definitely taken a backseat these last few months, though not for lack of material!!

Last school year ended.  We had a wonderful friend of my Mom's eval Indigo at the elementary level, and picked someone off askpauline.com to come and eval Chase at the secondary level.  Both were amazing!!  It was great to see my mom's friend again, someone I've known and admired for many years, and the evaluator who came out for Chase was a great resource for his upcoming high school years, with information on building his transcript and more.  

The 2nd half of last year saw us getting out with our homeschool group a bit more, and making connections which then led to making friends, which led to getting invited to casual playgroups at parks where we met members from other homeschool groups, so, basically, we met a lot of like-minded homeschoolers in the past 6 months!  It is exciting to finally be connecting with people who are on the same wavelength, and we've made a lot of friends who are homeschooling for the same reasons as us - their kids needed more than the district could offer, they enjoy being home with their children, they want to offer opportunities for their kids during the day that they wouldn't be able to do if in public school all day, they don't want their children to be tied to strict curriculum.  

And so, the schooling ended and we enjoyed our Baby Shelby for most of the summer and instead of starting in July like last year, we waited until August 1st.  This year I'm using Homeschool Planet, an online planner, to help keep track of everyone's schedules and to help the older kids be more independent.  I enter everything in the planner, and I can print a Daily Plan each day and check it off.  The big kids receive a Daily Plan in their email, so it is clear what they are to do each day.  This year, we're doing our core subjects (except science) Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Tuesday is for block science and art, and Thursday is art appreciation, block physical education, health, and after lunch we have Exploration Time - a field trip, hiking, out and about, something fun.  

Chase is an 8th grader, so we are preparing him to potentially begin dual enrollment with college courses next year and also to begin his transcript.  He's taking foreign language and using www.alison.com to take courses like American Civics in addition to his core subjects.  He will continue to participate in trombone lessons and the 7th & 8th Grade Band.

Indigo is a 5th grader, a middle-schooler.  I've begun my push with the district to allow us back in to the communication we were abruptly cut from when we withdrew from the building and became Home Educators.  We're crashing 5th grade orientation since she doesn't know the school layout.  She'll be continuing with violin lessons and Strings, and also beginning percussion in the 5th Grade Band.  She can play by ear, and I suspect music will be a big part of her life always.  

Riley, well, we'll call her a 2nd grader for all intensive purposes, but if she were in public school, she'd be a 1st grader.  She works at a 2nd grade level for some subjects as we don't want to miss foundational things, and she works many levels ahead for other subjects.  Our plan with her is to let her be the guide, and slow down when we hit something she struggles with.  She needs to know what it's like to struggle, and have to buckle down and actually study and learn it.  Roger and I both know all too well what its like to have everything come easy, and to not be challenged enough.  

RJ is turning 4 in a few days.  We knew we'd include him, but once again, I underestimated him greatly.  I had a few activities planned for him, some in the Pre-K category, some in the Kinder category.  The first days he banged it all out and demanded more and more and more!  I was scrambling to find things for him to do.  Some of what I had planned was too easy and I had to regroup.  He knows more sight words than I expected.  His math is well ahead.  We did a quick online assessment just so I could get an idea of where to start, and it turns out he scored High Kinder/Low 1st Grade levels for both language arts and math!!  I also didn't expect him to sit for much, and perhaps that will change over time, but he doesn't seem to mind the brain work.  Since I hadn't expected to use so much of my time to work with him, I'll be looking into things he can do on his own that will still build his skills.  I really do love working with that age group, though.  

Can't leave little Shel out - she is almost 4 months and just so darn cute!  She is a really easy going baby and just goes with our flow.  She is often lying on the floor with us while we're learning or sitting in a seat with some toys nearby.  Love our little Shel-bell.  

Here are some pics of our start!

A little piano practice... on our very broken piano! 

RJ does his Sight Word games with Mom

Counting Bears and Dry Erase Markers (the paper is in a plastic sheet) to show and draw numbers 1 through 10

Our fresh little 6 year old gets a Daily Journal this year as she is becoming more confident with her spelling

Riley is so adorable...

Numbering to 100, and the pictures are TRAINS!  Bonus! 

Riley still gets to take the Chapter tests first in Math, and then crumble up the lessons if she gets 100%, if she missed a question, then we do the lessons.  We started off crumbling all the lessons in Chapter 10.

I didn't have my big kids for our official first day, still need to take the all together photo!

Making the cover of our Art Books (www.kinderart.com)

We start by tracing the letter "R," naturally... 

Resorting to centers, as I've gotta go do something else... 

On Wednesday, everyone is here.  The table got covered fast.

He cried when I sent him to go do something else.. so I got out Mighty Minds for him to do nearby.

Wednesday is our block of Story of the World together.  Shelby decided to poop herself instead of learning about the Minoans. 

She chased Indy's notebook for a while...

... and then went after Riley's apple.  

And almost got it!  Hey, the apple-chasing kept her busy and happy!

We dressed her again to distract her temporarily from the apple. 

Here is what Homeschool Planet looks like... yes, I am aware the weather widget is not accurate! 

And here we are Exploring on a fine Thursday afternoon!

The 4th Quarter Push

It's early May, and technically, by the criteria given us by the state, we COULD be done in about 10 days.  Shhhh, don't tell the kids!!  Because we're not done.  We'll school until early June-ish this year, I think, for a few good reasons.  

For starters, being nearly 2 years into this journey, our routine is built, and while free play days are more than awesome, they can sometimes be not-so-awesome, and I'd rather have most of our free play days land squarely in summertime.  For seconds, a lot of our curriculum changes/updates were made/acquired/discovered November to January-ish, so I'd like to push through and be at least close to wrapping them up.  And for last, we're kind of in the middle of stuff.  Cool stuff.  And we need a little more time to make sure to fully enjoy it.  

Kid-Specific Updates:

- Chase is barreling through Algebra, and it is un-fun when he needs help.  Un-fun for me, not him.  It's not difficult stuff, really.  It's just So. Incredibly. Boring.  To me.  Not to him.  His online writing courses have helped him work out a few kinks in his writing mechanics and with our daily writing prompts he is beginning to emerge with his own style.   He enjoys telling stories from a 1st person point of view; some of it sounds like the beginning of a Dragnet episode.  Chase recently performed at the local district Arts Festival with the jazz band.  He continues to love playing trombone, and participates in concert, jazz and community band.  He recently got a bit more added to his daily load, let's just leave it at that...   

He's also quite talented, and can take notes for history while holding a sleepy baby.  

- Indy struggled with her writing course at first, mostly with confidence issues.  Her improvement is coming slowly, with a lot of work on her end.  Her creativity and love of art shows in numerous ways, and through connections with our history lessons.  She's had a bit of a breakthrough in math, finally making connections with multiplication and division and how to pull the numbers you need out of and into word problems without getting everything mixed up.  Math is definitely not her favorite subject, but she's a trooper.  Indy still enjoys playing violin and practices nearly every day without needing to be prompted.  In fact, we've had to establish that music practice comes AFTER regular academics, and sometimes we still have to shut her down after an hour or so of play if she is supposed to work on something else (like chores, or cleaning her room....).  Her spring concert was fantastic, and we were very proud that she was one of just 10 kids who had memorized a harder song to stand and play at the end.  Attention-span wise, well, she is still out of her seat and very (very) easily distracted.  She and I might design a rewards chart together to work on this.  We've stayed connected with the school so that Indy could still participate in all the extras that 4th graders are privy to, like having a page in the yearbook, and the Ever-Epic 4th Grade Celebrity Shower at the Spring Fair.  

Multi-talented, like her big brother

She is also most likely to stay in her pajamas all day... 

Practice, practice

All that practice pays off!

- Riley has really come a long way in regards to sitting and focusing on her work this year.  Last year's Kinder year for her was much less structured, and not even planned, actually.  She had the desire to do so much that by the end of the year, it just so happened that she had completed everything a public school kinder would have done and a little more, so there was no reason to start her in K this year.  She has more than enough in her portfolio to call it a year this year, but since school is what we do M thru F around here, she's still doing it.  I'd love to get a lit program for her, but haven't yet found a good match to her ability.  For now, I've compiled a list of what they call "gentle" books - books that are for older kids but have content that is safe for younger kids.  We make sure to get these at the library twice a month, but she is also allowed to read through fun series, like the Magic Tree House books that she loves, even though they are written well beneath what she can handle.  We added a science program that she loves.  It's 1st grade level, so the written word is not enough for her, and the workbook we might as well just skip, but she loves the labs and projects, and we always have her pal Google for her to research more information on a topic.  

Spelling words from her list with Bananagrams

Helping Dad is definitely part of school, right? 

Home economics?

 - RJ goes to pre-K on Tuesdays and Thursdays, mostly still to give us a break and let him experience a classroom, just for this year.  It's good data to have, seeing how he does with others in authority and other people his size and age.  He gets these reports, and the teachers are always so amazed at how he knows so much but he's only there 6 hours a week... I find it so amusing that there is this mentality that he could only be learning during the hours he's at school...    He doesn't do much sit-down school here at home, but there are always boundless opportunities for learning.  For instance, when we walk back from school, he likes to see how "many it takes" - so, we end up counting to 65 as we walk.  He plays outside a lot, and rides his new balance bike like he's been doing it since birth.  Since he'll be 4 at the end of summer, I guess we'll have to see what he can handle for the upcoming school year.  I don't know that he'll be ready for a full Kinder year like Riley was at age 4, but he'll surely be ready for something.  With him, I see a lot of maps and mechanical stuff in our homeschool future...

 Here he shows me a map of the train yard on this app that is geared towards adults, it's difficult even for some of us older people in the house to drive the trains, and involves a level of patience that I don't possess, but he loves it. 

- Shelby is like her mama... wants to sleep in every morning!  Alright, at 4 weeks old, we'll give her a pass on doing school... .

And of course, some group activities:

History in the living room, baby and all

Modeling clay statues, like the Nubians

Making pita bread, like the Phoenicians

Don't forget the biggest sibling teaching the next sibling how to mow the yard, household chores are important, too!  At almost-13 and 10 and a half, we've got two totally capable lawn mowers, and one totally capable weed-whacker.  This is called a Parental Milestone, I believe.   

And what else do you do when it's been gloomy and raining for a week straight?  You gear up your kids and send 'em out to play, discover, build, and git muddy!