Solar System Part 2

So my last blog was about the many learning resources I'm learning to use in teaching. This is more of the ways I'm finding out that she is in fact learning from those resources.

After writing her many mini reports Charry got to make a model of the Solar System. She was very excited because this meant she finally got to use the clay I had bought on sale after Christmas. I also found a use for another sale item, file folders, and some foam peanuts I'd been wanting to recycle.

I glued and label a spot for the sun on one end of the open folder. Then Charry drew and labeled the paths for the other objects in the solar system. On those paths we glued down foam peanuts to hold the models. Next Charry had to make the models. She tried very hard to use the colors shown in the pictures even though I told her she could do whatever she liked. In the end I was very impressed with her. Saturn in particular showed great ingenuity.

Her model was very nice and she showed a lot of attention to details but as a parent I was even more impressed with her painting of the night sky.

What impressed me was not her artistic skill (which compared to mine are quite extensive) but the fact this wasn't an assignment. She was simply playing with cousins and painted what she had been thinking about. This showed me that our lessons had gone beyond something she had to do for school and become fun.

Solar System Part 1

Charry and I finally wrapped up her unit on space. It was suppose to be 2 weeks but I stretched it to 4 because we were having so much fun. For the first week it was typical science lessons. She read from the text book and filled out worksheets. Then I managed to get a little creative. We used a few other books.

Using "The Magic School Bus" to find examples Charry was able to write some very nice reports on different aspects of the solar system.

I also managed to use other multimedia tools. Including movies, websites and the ever so popular i-pod.

Once I started looking for resources it was amazing how easy they were to find. My favorites were Jelly Telly (adorable Christian children web site with surprisingly concrete science facts)

http://www.jellytelly.com/video/journey-to-the-stars/

and my i-pod apps, because she could use them in the car or where ever we ended up for the day.

This week I loosened my grip on my i-pod. After all one of the ways I justified buying it was because it was "educational." So durring school time I decided to let the girls use this wonderful educational tool. Well, it does more than just educate. I've found it to be a useful tool for keeping Child #2 quiet while I try to work with Child #1. And so while Child #2 may not be getting smarter she is getting quite creative.

Right now one of her favorite things to do is make cartoon characters stand on her head. I for one am trying to encourage this, it cracks me up, and I do love a good laugh. Her "other favorite thing to do" is play fashionista with my Barbie App.

I of course also require her to use the educational apps, Star Fall recently released some that are payed apps, and putting the name star fall on them was all it took for me to shell out the dough, I had been quite content with my free apps until that point. They were definitely worth every penny, even the spendy alphabet app, which is just under $3.

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.