How’s it Going?! {One Month}
Sep 23, 2013
We are beginning our 6th week of homeschool this week and I think it is safe to say we’ve fallen into our groove! I planned for the first month or so to be the time when we ironed out all the kinks and established a good routine with homeschooling that meets the needs of both girls. We are finally there and the past two weeks have been exactly what I hoped homeschooling would be for our family.
{When}
Day one of homeschool we started with a morning routine of wake up, get dressed, do morning chores, eat breakfast followed by a Bible time. This routine was already pretty much established before we started homeschooling so it was very easy to add in our Bible time. We spend some time reading books during this time as well.
One to two days a week, I will keep Little Bug with me about 15-20 minutes extra during our Room Time so that we can work on Hands-On Thinking Skills. This seems to be the best time to fit in our Hands-On Thinking Skills and one or two shorter than normal Room Times for her isn’t a big deal.
Our main formal schooling time, and when we do Ready-Made Preschool, is the hour before Little Bug lays down for her nap and Sweet Pea is already napping. It is nice to have this focused hour with her! I had a minor panic attack the other day thinking “What will I do if Sweet Pea ever extends her naptime to 2pm??” (Right now, SP’s naptime is 1pm and LB’s is 2pm.) I haven’t a clue now, but I know I’ll figure it out if it ever comes to that…
Our Mudpies to Magnets experiments happen at Grams and Gramps’ house. We do our morning routines and schedule up to Room Time and then after Room Time we head to their house for an experiment before lunch. I count it a tremendous blessing that my girls have three sets of grandparents that are so involved in their lives! (My parents, Dave’s parents and my aunt and uncle.)
{What}
And now for more specifics on the curriculum choices of this year…
Bible
Even though we desire the Scriptures and truths that are found within them to be an integral part of every day, it is important to me that I establish a set time with my girls daily to read the Bible together. It truly is a great way to start the day with them and they are loving all of the little lessons and activities we are doing. We are going through the Bible chronologically so we have read the creation story, the story of Adam and Eve, the story of Noah and the flood and the story of The Tower of Babel during this first month. This week we are starting to learn all about the story of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac.
This has been a perfect fit for Little Bug, as I knew it would be! She loves the stories, the crafts, the games and ‘writing’ her letters in these creative, fun ways that don’t require a pencil and paper. I love that my preschooler is engaged in very educational activities that cover everything from phonics to basic math skills to social studies and science. I don’t think I could have picked a better choice for our Core curriculum this year.
And as a cherry on top…after a couple years of pulling resources from multiple avenues and planning my own lessons and spending Sunday night gathering supplies and materials…I am absolutely loving the readiness of Ready-Made Preschool. My routine is to sometime during the weekend, go into the homeschool room, pull the file folder that contains all the activities for the week, sort them by day into our workboxes and then we are ready for another week of Ready-Made Preschool! Takes me half an hour tops!
As I wrote earlier, I have shelved Saxon Math K for now because, in a nutshell, I didn’t feel it was a perfect fit for Little Bug’s PK4 year. You can read about this decision here.
Read Alouds
I’ve been looking forward to the day when I can start reading aloud chapter books to Little Bug. I wasn’t planning on starting this until Kindergarten, but Little Bug found a Magic Tree House book that I had lying around the house (about the Titanic) and she asked me to start reading it to her one day. So I did! I read half of it to her and then Dave read the second half to her. She was glued to the book the entire time, sometimes sitting through 2-3 chapters at a time. It will never cease to amaze me how this ball of energy can quietly sit and listen to a book, and even a chapter book, for the longest time.
It was hard to get both Saxon Math and Hands-On Thinking Skills in when we were trying to do both! When I compared the two, Hands-On Thinking Skills won because it is so hands-on and requires no writing and doesn’t have a “math curriculum feel” to it. The Hands-On Thinking Skills activities Little Bug has done so far, she has excelled in. We’ve worked on Matching Shapes, Shapes that Do Not Match and Combining Shapes. So far, I haven’t really had to teach her the concepts. I just read the directions and she completes the activity no problem! We will work on these activities 1-2 times per week.
I was homeschooled for four years (6th-9th grades, not sure I’ve shared that before!) and I have fond memories of doing experiments with my mom and brother in the same kitchen where my mom now experiments with her two granddaughters! The girls are loving this time and this little book has already been well worth the $15! We do 1-2 experiments a week.
I can’t say enough good about these DVDs. They are absolutely excellent!! Little Bug particularly likes the Letter Factory and Number Land DVD. On the reviews that I read before purchasing these, people were saying their child knew the letter sounds after watching the DVDs just a couple time and…it’s true and quite amazing!! Just after watching Letter Factory, I think it was two times, she started telling me letter sounds by singing some of the songs from the DVD. Amazing DVD. Worth every penny!
{And what about Sweet Pea?}
I’m not doing a formal Learning Time with Sweet Pea until she is around 2.5 years old. Right now, I am just intentionally reading to her every day. My intentional reading time with her is while Little Bug is watching her 30 minute show. This is also the time I am preparing lunch for us, so I typically get Little Bug’s veggie cooking and then Sweet Pea and I go sit in the chair in the playroom and we read 3-5 books together. Sweet Pea’s “problem” was that she wouldn’t sit for the entire book, no matter how short it was! So I started working with her on this. If she squirmed down, I would just say, “No, sit with Mama and let’s finish our story.” and we’d finish the story. That chair has been an important piece to getting her to sit because she likes to sit where her feet reach the foot rest!
While I am in the kitchen getting lunch together, she loves to do puzzles. She quickly learned that this was puzzle time for her and now runs into the kitchen asking for puzzles. We walk to the homeschool room, get a puzzle and I put it on the floor in the kitchen for her to work on. While she works and I am prepping lunch, I am saying things like, “What animal is that?” and “What does the cow say?”.
Sweet Pea also likes to cook. So sometimes she will hold her arms up and say “Cook!” and I will pick her up and let her help me prepare lunch! It is nice to have this special time with Sweet Pea while Little Bug is occupied with educational DVDs.
Sweet Pea loves experiments! She runs in the house and straight to the kitchen and is into these experiments way more than I thought she would be!
I think that about sums up our homeschool six weeks in! After a rough start, we are off to a successful first year I do believe!
- Elaine