T Minus One Day and Counting Until...

...it's time to start reaching for our outdoor time target of 4-6 hours per day.  Where do I get this random number of hours?  From my spiritual guide Charlotte Mason.  Just kidding!  I do, however, think her philosophies are so right on in so many ways that I definitely want to follow this one.

"I make a point, says a judicious mother, of sending my children out, weather permitting, for an hour in the winter, and two hours a day in the summer months. That is well; but it is not enough. In the first place, do not send them; if it is anyway possible, take them; for, although the children should be left much to themselves, there is a great deal to be done and a great deal to be prevented during these long hours in the open air. And long hours they should be;  not two, but four, five, or six hours they should have on every tolerably fine day, from April till October. Impossible! Says an overwrought mother who sees her way to no more for her children than a daily hour or so on the pavements of the neighbouring London squares. Let me repeat, that I venture to suggest, not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to me absolutely best for the children; and that, in the faith that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them. A journey of twenty minutes by rail or omnibus, and a luncheon basket, will make a day in the country possible to most town dwellers; and if one day, why not many, even every suitable day?" (Volume 1, p. 43-44)

Thursday is April 1st.  We'll see what I can make happen.  Maybe I should do a running tally on here of how many hours we spend outside.  That might be kind of entertaining...okay, maybe not that entertaining.  I think it would interesting though to see how many hours we can clock outside in a season.

Today we were outside from about 1PM until about 3PM because it was in the low 50s and sunny.  I thought we did pretty good, considering Tom still takes a nap and Red had ballet class that we had to leave for by 430.  We'll get there.  4-6 hours here we come!!!

Neither deceptive nor delicious...

I recently purchased the Deceptively Delicious cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld on the recommendation of one my friends whose children refuse to eat vegetables.  My children don't refuse, but are picky.  And who couldn't use a few more vegetables in their diet, right?

Last night I made the banana bread recipe which includes a 1/2 cup of cauliflower puree.  It should have clued me in when the baking bread had a distinct scent of cauliflower.  The Cobbler and I tried it last night and had a good laugh.  Granted, it wasn't completely horrific if you weren't thinking it was supposed to taste like banana bread.  This morning Red ate it and said, "Why does this not taste like banana?  Next time put banana in it, Mommy."  (Keep in mind that there were TWO bananas in it)  Tom Thumb ate it, but insisted that every piece was doused in honey.  So much for the cookbook.  I wonder how the brownies are with spinach in them...maybe not.

I want to remember this blog post FOREVER!

I just had to link to this blog post by Susan Wise Bauer.  It is brilliant and an excellent reminder to us all to just let our kids be kids and develop at their own pace.

One long tired week...

After spending two days this past week (unfortunately not consecutive) with the stomach flu, I have some perspective.  I hate how it takes getting ill to make you relax about life.  I had literally been flitting here, there, and everywhere trying to get my curriculum choices firmed up for fall.  For a five year old...seriously, how much really should I be worry about this?  I need to CHILL OUT!

Fortunately, my choices are made.  First, for teaching reading we've been using The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise.  Red's on lesson 37 or so.  We skipped the first 26 because they were about the sounds consonants make, which she already knew.  We're learning right now how to read CVC words.  We've gone through short A, short E, and short I.  We're mid way through short O.  I'm trying to do a lesson per day.  We quickly review the previous two lessons and then start a new one.  We don't always make it through a complete new one.  It might take a couple of days.  I tried to sense when she's getting tired or frustrated and quit before we hit a wall.  Then I let her play on http://www.starfall.com/ for 15 or 20 minutes after as a treat.  I'd like to keep doing this until we finish the book...hopefully by the time she turns 6.

I'm going to get Rightstart Level A and B.  That way I can start with A, but if it's going to slow we can switch to B.  Otherwise, I'll already have B for first grade.  I bought the B teacher's manual on eBay, but I'm waiting to hear back from another homeschooling mom about selling me her A set used before I buy it new.  No hurry on this one.  That's what I have to keep telling myself because buying homeschooling stuff is like buying Christmas gifts for me.  I want it now!

I have Getty Dubay Italics Book A, but I don't know if I'll even use it this year.  Maybe...I don't know.  I really don't know if Red has the manual dexterity yet to handle writing.  I know her grip is funky so we're working on correcting that.  I'm about to buy her some pencil grips from Amazon that I heard about on the blog Satori Smiles. 

And I think we've discovered that she need breaks between chapter books.  We picked up On the Banks of Plum Creek from the library a week ago.  We made it through 4 chapters over the course of the week before she decided, "I don't want to read that one anymore because Laura got in trouble with Pa."  I don't really think that's the reason.  I think she's just fatigued from the long book.  Maybe her maturity level isn't ready for the story.  I think I'm ready to table the Little House books for now.  Aaaahhh...the beauty of homeschooling.  If something isn't working, you can just stop for a while.

Choosing a math curriculum

Choosing a math curriculum has been one of my biggest struggles so far.  I really wanted to choose a curriculum that gives my children a great math foundation based on actually understanding what they were doing and not just repeating back facts to me that they memorized. 

I initially was very committed to Math U See.  The Cobbler was also very enthusiastic about Math U See because he liked how Steve Demme (the program's founder) teaches the concepts in an easy to understand way on a kid's level on the DVD that accompanies the program.  He also liked the plastic colored manipulative rods that are used with each level too.  I was all on board and ready to buy it until I heard from a couple of users I know that the kindergarten level (Primer) was boring for their children and they could have gotten the same results from a workbook purchased at Wal-Mart. They were, however, very pleased with their kids progress using the Math U See first grade level and beyond.

Then I saw Rightstart Mathematics at a friend's house.  I had read about it online, and my friend gave glowing reviews about how she felt her son was really getting math with this program.  I also liked that there were lots of games to be played and not a lot of writing required in Level A (kindergarten).  Perfect for my little Red!  When I read all the reviews I could find about this program, the only complaints I could find were that it requires a lot of teacher prep (although people using it commented that it wasn't so bad once you got rolling with the program) and if you have a kid who wants "just the facts" and doesn't like games then the program isn't for him.  Well, I'm not afraid of some extra prep if it will help my kid "get it" and Red LOVES games.  No problem here!  The Cobbler was a little hesitant because the main manipulative is an abacus and for some reason that he can't put his finger on he doesn't care for it.  After discussing it more, he decided that for the other reasons I cited earlier that Rightstart would be a good fit for Red too.  As far as Tom Thumb goes, we'll have to cross that bridge when we get there.

I went to a used curricula sale last weeked and was unable to find Rightstart Level A or B.  I did find the Level C lessons and worksheets for $5 (SCORE!) and the math card games book for $7 (Score again!).  Even though I can't use Level C until 2nd grade, I knew I would never find it at that price again.  And I can always sell it on eBay if we don't stick with it.  I'm now on the hunt for the levels I actually need.  There's mixed feeling amongst people who are using it now whether it is worth starting with A or not or if you should just plow into B.  Apparently B reviews everything that is in A just at a more rapid pace.  I guess I'll see what I can find on eBay or amongst my fellow homeschooling friends before I buy new.

Putting Scripture in Our Children's Hearts

Although I'm not planning on using a religious based curriculum (mainly because I want to make sure my children are taught what our family believes, not someone else's interpretation), it is important to me that our children are exposed to Bible stories in our home.  I think this is important not only for their spiritual upbringing, but to also be exposed to great stories with flawed heroes and heroines who have to deal with real problems.  Whether the people rely on God or not is their choice, and we get to see the outcome of their actions.

Charlotte Mason wrote: “Now our objective in this most important part of education is to give the children the knowledge of God. We need not go into the question of intuitive knowledge, but the expressed knowledge attainable by us has its source in the Bible, and perhaps we cannot do a greater indignity to children than to substitute our own or some other benevolent person’s rendering for the fine English, poetic diction and lucid statement of the Bible. Literature at its best is always direct and simple and a normal child of six listens with delight to the tales both of Old and New Testament read to him passage by passage…” (CMSG, p. 99)

I think Miss Mason makes an excellent point in that somewhere along the road we thought we had to dumb down Bible stories for kids to understand them. I have found that is clearly not the case.  I don't plan on reading from the King James version (I know some people do and more power to them!) because I find the language difficult to follow myself, but I think reading from several translations of the Bible will be helpful to their vocabulary and their long term language skills.

During the 2010-2011 school year, I'm going to use Penny Gardner's Highlights from the Old Testament and Highlights from the New Testament lists for daily episodic Bible reading.  I'm not exactly sure if we'll do one from the O.T. and one from the N.T. or just do one a day chronologically or alternate O.T. and N.T.  I guess we'll have to see how it goes when the time comes.  I'm hoping that this daily reading will help make God an important part of their daily routine and help them learn about the Bible in the context of history.

2010-2011 Read Alouds

I feel like I've been working on this Read Aloud list FOREVER!  I started two years ago using the Ambleside Online Year 0 Book List.  I printed it as an Excel spreadsheet and started bringing it with me to the library every week.  Red would pick a few books and then I would pick a few books from the list.  She actually ended up liking many of the books on the list.  Even some that I didn't expect.  I really didn't think Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder was going to be a big hit (especially based on my initial look at the illustrations) but amazingly she loved it. 

My Read Aloud plans for this year include working our way through the rest of the Ambleside Online Year 0 List (based on what our library has available), and combining that with the read alouds scheduled in the Sonlight K curriculum and the Hillsdale Academy kindergarten curriculum.  We're also going to include daily Bible episodic readings and poetry from The Real Mother Goose.  I'm going to list them below and then later update this post as we complete them.  I'll also give a review of what we thought.  Aahhhh, this makes me wish I had done this so much sooner.  We have read so many great books over the last couple of years that I wish more folks would read!  Right now, we're reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books.  We read Little House in the Big Woods last year.  We tried reading Farmer Boy, but she just didn't care for it.  I think it might have been because it was about a boy and not a girl.  We didn't even make it half way through it.  We're nearly done with Little House on the Prairie so she's all ready to check out On the Banks of Plum Creek from the library since it's the only one of the books that we don't already own.  So over the summer, I think we'll probably finish the whole series if she wants to.  If she's bored with something, I don't insist that we press on so we'll have to see.  I might dip into the list before September if that happens.  I'm making the read alouds a separate page entry at the top of the page.  It might take me a few days to get all the books listed so please bear with me :-)

Beginning the journey...

I feel like I've been planning this year for years---and I have.  Shortly after Red Ridinghood's birth we started discussing homeschooling as an option.  Our public schools were questionable at best (they have since become chaotic from budget cuts) and private schools were out of our price range unless I returned to work.  Homeschooling was looking pretty good, except would I be able to survive?

That was my mother's number one fear.  Would Red and I be able to tolerate each other every single day of the year?  I thought we could.  I hoped we could.  So after bucking against the pressure and the expectation of sending your children to preschool, I find myself ready to start the kindergarten year.

I have been very open with my friends that I am a homeschooling junkie.  Researching different pedagogies has become a hobby to me.  I think I've looked at pretty much every philosophy in the book at least once.  At this point, I feel quite settled with using Charlotte Mason's ideas about short lessons, living books and lots of outdoor time.  I do feel compelled toward classical education as well since I think it covers so many areas that I feel were missing from my education as a child.  Waldorf has resonated with me too.  I don't agree with some of the more extreme Waldorf ideas (e.g. preventing a child from reading until second grade), but its focus on keeping a child a child, rhythm in the day, nature, play and art are important to me as well. 

My husband, the Cobbler (he picked the name.  The Elves and the Shoemaker is his favorite fairy tale), is very open to all my ideas and pretty much has given me free rein in the education area.  I have relied on him to help me make the math curriculum decision because I was overwhelmed with choices.  He affirmed what my gut was already telling me and the decision was made. 

I'm keeping this blog for record keeping purposes and also as as guideline for when Tom Thumb hits kindergarten age.  I hope that other homeschoolers will also find looking at our journey to be useful.  Now on to writing up the Read Aloud list...