Lesson planning

Getting ready for next year has been a struggle for me. Usually I look forward to lesson planning and organizing next years materials. But this year I've been at a loss. I had so many different ideas but none were working out for me.

I also found myself doing the one thing I always tell others not to do. I was comparing myself to other homeschool moms and my daughter to other kids her age. I want so badly for her to not be behind in anything that I was pushing myself to do more. But since it wasn't my ideas I was having a hard time putting things together.

Then my daughter found a knuffle bunny. And I started remembering why I enjoy homeschooling. Kids can learn all kinds of things and explore at their own pace. With that in mind I relooked over Charry's kindergarden lessons and took a few deep breaths.

Merry's first official year of school will revolve around a bunny's world travels and making learning fun. Hopefully I can work towards a love of learning and keep things simple.

World Studies

So I am a beginner blogger still trying to figure out what to write and why. My current adiance is small, Hi Mel, but I really like free stuff. Next year Merry will be an official kindergardener. With Charry we had fun studying a different continent each month, we started with where we lived and worked our way out from there. Luckily our local library has a big children's reference section and finding early grade school level books was easy. But this book by National Geographics would be the perfect thing to pull it all together.

http://atlasofmyworld.com/books/

I love the idea of having a personalized atlas for each of my kids, or one for the family. I heard about it from "Confession's of a Homeschooler" a blog I regularly visit for ideas. She is doing a give away, and I really want to win.

And Mel, you will like her blog too, look at her cool preschool worksheets.

homeschooling on the go

Lately life has been busier. We haven't had as much home time as I would have liked. That has meant adjustments me. Turns out these adjustments have been working pretty good.

Adjustment number one: Since Charry is ready to go before her sister (usually) I have her do one of the short assignments while she waits. That way she stays out of the way and we have one less thing to do later.

Adjustment number two: Workboxes are not going to work for us, instead I'm keeping the envelopes. The night before (or morning of) I put together 6-12 envelopes for Charry along with the books, papers and other school supplies she will need into a schoolbag. And I put a few workbooks in a bag for Merry to bring. Then we can work on school where ever we end up.

Adjustment number three: The where we end up is almost always my parent. Since we have school with us, I tend to stay later than I had been. This is good and gives my girls a nice change of pace in their day (less hurry, hurry) but has meant less housework time. This is an adjustment in progress.

Phonics

So there is always a lot of talk among early elementary teachers about reading, phonics, and spelling. As a parent I homeschool because I want what is best for my kids but figuring out what is best is really hard. So I'm always really excited when something I do seems to work well.

When it comes to teaching reading I'm of the phonics first school of thought. Instead of starting with stories and emphasizing use of pictures to help recognize words, I focus first on letter sounds and blending sound. Charry did very well with that method so I had some confidence as I started with Merry.

One of my favorite activities is building words with letter flashcards. I use a set from leap frog. Together we sound out the ending sound ("an" and "at" were the ones we started with) then Merry added the beginning sound then read the whole word

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After working on sounding out words we get out my favorite beginning reader books, the "Now I'm Reading " series by Nora Gaydos. Merry started "Fat Cat." It was so exciting to see how proud she was of her new skills.

It has also been exciting for me to find a spelling program with a phonics emphasis. I had been a little wary of the memorize a list of words each week approach that seem to be so prevalent. Because of that I had put off teaching spelling until this year. But this year I found a program called "All About Spelling" it starts of with phonographs and then teaches how the phonographs build words. My favorite part of the program is that it breaks down the lessons into easy to do segment for the teacher. As an atrocious, who regularly depends of spell check I didn't even know where to start and really needed everything spelled out for me. Charry likes starting with the basics and is learning already.

new system worked well

Today was day one of my modified workbox system. Until we have $$ to invest in actual boxes I'm using envelopes. I numbered the envelopes 1-12 and wrote a different assignment in each one.

Charry seemed to like knowing how much she had to finish. And She liked knowing when she finished she would be able to play on the American Girl web site.

I'm not going to try the envelopes with Merry but when we get boxes I will set up her workbox set also. Today she got to go thru the entire alphabet on Starfall while I was working with Charry.

Then we had a proud mother/daughter moment when she read by herself for the very first time. After going thru a beginning reader "Fat Cat" I got out my letter flash cards and she worked on "at" and "an" words. Since all she had to change was the beginning sounds she was able to read the words with confidence.

My favorite lesson with Charry was counting money. I had fun switching between how much the coins added to and how many coins there were. She had no problems but was eager to move from coins to dollar bills.

Happy New Years

This year has not been a good one, and school has been pushed to the back burner so to speak. But January seems like a good time to start anew. I'm excited about starting a new subject, Spelling. For me teaching spelling feels like the impossible task because I can not spell worth beans. But after reading through the first chapter in the teachers guide of "All about Spelling" I have confidence that this should be ok.

In addition to starting a new subject I also hope to try daily boxes, where you put each activity in a box or drawer and the student completes them one at a time. Then if I'm distracted Charry could still go on to the next subject. I don't quite know how to set those up though.

As the new year progresses I'll see want I can learn as I teach.

Advent

I just spent the last hour scouring the web for Christmas themed worksheets. We are going to put aside the regular books for the month and instead work on an unit study. This is my first attempt to teach completely with out workbooks. Of course we will still have addition and subtraction worksheets but the Christmas story problems ought to make things a little fun. Wish me luck!