Fall 2012

In some way our homeschool is taking a wildly different direction this year and in many ways it is very much the same.

The main differences for this year are:

First, Austin and Nyah are enrolled with My Tech High, an online charter school. They are both required to take 4 courses through My Tech High & it's affiliates. We were able to choose classes based on their interests and abilities, and based on what MyTech High offers.

Austin is doing ALEKS for math, Computer Literacy through e2020, Intro to Robotics through My Tech High, and Beautiful Feet's Medieval History.

Nyah is doing Teaching Textbooks & DreamBox for math (I love love LOVE Teaching Textbooks - first year EVER Nyah and I are not fighting about math), Digital Media Foundations & Brainpop through My Tech High, art classes through our local rec center, and Beautiful Feet's History of the Horse.

Second, our family has joined a new commonwealth school in our area which is in it's first year - Southwest Commonwealth. Our kids are involved in the junior clubs - these are clubs we've previously done in our homeschool community, but are now doing through the commonwealth.  I'm also a co-advisor for one of the clubs, and Kurt & I are participating in a monthly book club for the parents. 

Austin is in Knights of Freedom and will be reading biographies of John Smith, Squanto, and William Bradford. Nyah is in Young Stateswoman and will be reading biographies of Pocahontas and Sacajawea, and Indian Captive: The story of Mary Jemison. Olivia is in Liberty Girls and I will be reading the American Girl Kaya books with her.

Third, I have 2 new students! Olivia is Kindergarten age and Jolie can't stand to be left out. They have been asking for demanding school work of their own. So, we have a circle time where we sing children's songs & do fingerplays, go through the calendar, and record the weather. 

I have them making Alphabet books so I can make sure they recognize all their letters - they are using journals which are half-blank and half-lined. They put letter stickers on the top, practice writing the letters below, and then we look through magazines for the letter, cut & glue them onto the page. We'll move on to using Alpha-Phonics (and maybe Reading the Easy Way) when we finish the alphabet.

For math we are using Progress in Mathematics Kindergarten teacher's guide and workbook - a friend gave it to me and it's easy, with lots of games and hands-on activities. We also do some speech activities, mostly for Olivia, but its good for Jolie, too.

We are learning fairy tales - Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc. Each week I check out 3 or 4 versions of the same story to read together. Then we do an activity- acting it out, making puppets, etc. When we're done working together (and I need to work with Austin & Nyah) they spend time with busy-bags and other activities I have set aside for them to do during school time.

However, overall our homeschool looks very much the same as it always has- we get up, have breakfast, have devotional, and get started with school work. Monday through Thursday are spent working on the subjects I've listed above. On Fridays we have devotional, go over grammar, play madlibs, go over Scouts & Faith in God, do our composer study and nature study lessons, have end of the week meetings, email our weekly reports to MyTech High, and end with a picnic lunch at the park with homeschool friends.

Other resources for this year:

Devotional- We are using this Book of Mormon study guide, The 21 Rules of this House, and Prudence & the Millers (which I'm having to pre-read and edit this more than the other Miller books we've used).  

Poetry - The Random House Book of Poetry for Children

Grammar - Simply Grammar and MadLibs

Composer Study - A coloring book of Great Composers: Bach to Berlioz. In the past we've used & loved Harmony Fine Arts art & music plans, but Austin & Nyah both have art tied in with their beautiful feet history guides, so we're trying something different this year. We focus on one composer each month - the coloring book include a short biography of the composers which we read together, we listen to cd's of the composer's music from the library, and that's it.

Nature Study - We are doing the challenges on the Handbook of Nature Study Blog. I'm hopeful I'll be better at posting the challenges on the blog this year.

And that's an over view of our school this year. If you have questions about anything - how we do something or whatever - ask away!

We are studying the art of Ancient Rome right now with our Harmony Fine Art plans. This week the link for Trajan's column didn't take us to a very good picture. I was a little annoyed because searching the web for pictures with my kids standing over my shoulder is always a little risky- who knows what will come up! Then Austin remembered we already had some pictures from one of Kurt's trips last year. After a quick search through my inbox we found these:

Later Kurt showed the kids a video he had taken of the whole column. The kids are fascinated by the different scenes and all the details. To learn more visit here.

Winter Hike

More Nature Study - Book 2

Winter Weather Walk

Winter Bird - Chickadee

We did two challenges this week (and I'm so excited I'm able to blog about them!).  We spent some time learning about the Black Capped Chickadee and had fun doing the Chickadee pastel tutorial at Hodgepodge. 

I only took A and N on our nature walk - O and J had a cold, S was napping. 

Signs of winter - cold! cold! cold! We haven't had much snow, but the temperatures were below freezing on this day.  There were also patches of snow even though it hadn't snowed for over a week.

The wind was really strong and loud- we were in a couple places where the wind was howling and we wondered if there was an animal or vehicle of some kind making the noise, but I think it was only the wind.

We saw crows, robins, and mourning doves, but not any of the smaller birds - everyone else must have been hiding from the wind. We also saw several deer heading over a hill and decided to climb up, hoping we would see them again. We found a deer trail and used this time for a "silent nature walk." Unfortunately, we didn't catch up with the deer.

N was excited to find this heart shaped moss. 

We've been watching our bird feeder for chickadees, but I don't think we've ever seen any in our area. We've seen sparrows, house finches, and a few other birds we are working on identifying.

S *loves* watching the birds come to our bird feeders. She gets excited, demands we all come look, and then knocks on the window so the birds will all fly away at the same time. She also likes the watch the cats that are attracted to the feeders. Anyone else feel guilty about offering a buffet for the cats? So far I'm not aware of any casualties.

Something to think about

Homeschooling: Leap of Faith

Homeschooling helped our family keep its 'groove'

"Somehow I don't think I'll ever say to myself 'I wish I hadn't spent so much time with my kids.' "
Just how I feel :)

Fall 2011 School

We are getting ready to start our new school year . . . in a couple weeks, but I'm feeling excited - our books arrived today, I spent the weekend getting notebooks ready and putting together a schedule - so I thought I'd share our {tentative} plans. 

Curriculum:

Devotional- We are continuing to read the New Testament using Penny Gardner's Storied Scriptures and The Book of Virtues.  I've decided to have A and N start a Scripture Study notebook where they will be making narrations of what we study and keeping any other pertinent papers.  

 Math - Math-U-See Gamma

 Handwriting Without Tears - Finishing up Cursive Handwriting and moving into the Cursive Success

. 

Literature - We will be adding Shakespeare and Plutarch this year, reading from the Milestone's and Ambleside Online's Year 5 suggested reading lists, and from our many poetry books. The plan is to do a lot more concert reading, something I learned about from the Milestone's Academy founder, so I tried to get enough copies of the books for each of us to have our own, or N and I will share. 

Science & Nature Study - Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 and experiment kit from Rainbow Resource, with a little supplementing from the Zoology Coloring Book.  Nature Study will be from the Handbook of Nature Study blog. 

 History & Geography - We will continue with The Story of the World (SOTW) Volume One: Ancient Times. I was able to get a great deal on the curriculum guide with some student pages so we will supplement with some notebook pages and activities, in addition to mapping, keeping a timeline, and narrations.  

Art & Music - We will continue using the Harmony Fine Arts (HFA) & Music lessons for Ancient Art and the Orchestra. On Fridays we will be doing art projects - pastels, watercolors, etc.

 Foreign Language - I am trying to add this in, but I've tried in the past and its always fallen to the side, so we'll see what happens this year.  We used to do a lot of sign language so I thought that would be easy to add to our schedule with Signing Time and Pick Me Up! From Songs for Learning Signs. My husband speaks Brazilian Portuguese so we are going to start learning some songs from Putamayo Kids Brazilian Playground.  They have a Teacher's Guide with song lyrics and translations. 

Preschool for O & J - These two want to do their own school work so much!! They have their own totes, notebooks, and pencil boxes, and are always asking for their own pages of school work. Despite my aversion toworksheet-like school, I decided to give Rod & Staff's ABC books a try.  We'll also be doing math games, art projects, and reading from the Before Five In A Row, Milestone's Year 0, and Ambleside Year 0 booklists. 

Organization:

 For each school subject, A and O have a notebook with tabs inside separating each sub-subject.  For each subject they will have notebook pages to write or draw their narrations on. 

 All their notebooks and other workbooks are kept in their totes. I have a couple more totes where I keep all the current books we are using together. 

Schedule:

This is a picture of the planner I've made to keep us on track.  On the left axis are the days of the week, and along the top are the different subjects. As we complete assignments I mark them with a highlighter to show they are done.

Monday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Shakespeare
Chapter book read aloud (RA)
Science
HFA - Art Lesson
Portuguese

Tuesday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Plutarch
RA
Nature Study
SOTW
Sign Language

Wednesday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Shakespeare
RA
Science
HFA - Music Lesson
Portuguese

Thursday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Shakespeare
RA
Nature Study
SOTW/Timeline
Sign Language

Friday
Devotional
Math Games
Handwriting
RA
Art Projects

Each day has the same general pattern -

Day starts around 7am - wake up & do personal scripture study
Get dressed, hair, etc.
Breakfast & clean up
Bedroom chores
Devotional, math, handwriting, personal reading - I work with O & J while A & N do their work
One or two more subjects, depending on time and attention spans
Morning break - we usually head outside to ride bikes or other PE type activity, and then come in for a quick snack
One or two more subjects, depending on time and attention spans
Lunch & Clean up
Family Work - folding laundry or cleaning zones in the house
Finish school work - done by 2pm at the latest
Free afternoons
Dinner & Clean up
Bedtime

Activities:

We are going to be doing swimming lessons for the fall.  A is doing Scouts and First Lego League. N does Acticity Days (a church group for girls 8-11) and possibly an art class. We'll have weekly activities with our homeschool group through September and then we'll do monthly activities through winter.  I'm in charge of our young women's church sports for our ward which will mean weekly games and possibly practices.  I've had talks with a few friends for a fall hiking group, but we'll see if it really happens. I'm trying to cut back on activities, but it doesn't really feel like that's going to happen!!!

May & June 2011 School

In May we ended up doing only 3 weeks of "official" school. Then the weather became nicer, we had some house guests, field trips, birthdays, and even though we completed most of our subjects for the year, school sort of fizzled out. 

 

 Devotional

This is the one subject which we continue to do (most days anyways) by starting out with a prayer, singing songs, memorizing scriptures, and reading our way through the New Testament.  The value for May was Courage and there were many wonderful stories to go with this value in the Book of Virtues.  

Math

We finished Math-U-See Beta!!! A and N have also had some great practice with their math and strategy skills playing dice and card games, and board games like Life and Othello.

Literature

We finished Pilgrim's Progress and they both promptly asked to start reading it again.  We will, but we will probably wait for our full schedule to start up again in the Fall.  They have both been excited about checking books out from the library - Star Wars series, Bionicles series, a few more of the Warriors series and a couple Chronicles of Narnia books for A, and Magic Tree House & other easy-reads for N.  They've also listened to:

Swiss Family Robinson

Pollyanna

Johnny Tremain

Alice in Wonderland (BBC Radio edition)

Thimble Summer

The Sign of the Beaver

The Cricket in Times Square

Half-Magic

And some old favorites too- 

The Lord of the Rings (BBC Radio edition)

Gone Away Lake & Return to Gone Away

Pinocchio

Tales from the Odyssey

The Wind in the Willows (BBC Radio edition)

Homer Price

The BBC Radio editions are actors acting out the books, so the story is somewhat abridged and my kids think they are harder to understand and follow, so we'll be getting the unabridged version from now on.  

 History, Art, & Music

I was going to keep doing this through the summer, however I decided to be realistic and knew we wouldn't really want to do a lot in the summer.  So when we reached the end of week 12 in the Harmony Fine Arts program and it was also the end of the Egyptian Art section I decided to stop us there.  We also stopped The Story of the World: Ancient Times at chapter 12.  We will pick them both back up in the Fall.  History is one subject that has greatly improved this year - the kids are more interested now that I've found resources and methods that work with their learning styles and attention spans.

Science

We finished Exploring Creation with Astronomy- the last couple chapters were about Stars and NASA.  We watched Endeavor launch and a number of the mission videos and interviews.  We also watched the landing of one of Russia's ships, which was a great way for the kids to compare the differences with the space shuttles. To finish up our Astronomy studies we went to Clark Planetarium for a morning.  The kids had a great time trying out all the exhibits.  We will also be watching the launch of Atlantis this coming week. 

Nature Study

We have been doing our nature study these month - I haven't been very good at blogging about it.  I did get a few posts in May - Bird Study, Mammal Study, & Wildflowers/Hike.  I don't think I will be posting June's - it too hard to catch up sometimes!

 So what are we doing for the Summer?

We are going to continue with our Devotionals, Math, Handwriting, & Literature.  We also have a summer science focus - this year its rocks & minerals.  We've been growing crystals, cracking geodes, and learning about the rock cycle.  Examining and testing our rock sets and creating our own rock collections. We did a hike to Mt. Timpanogos cave where we say stalactites, stalagmites, and many other formations. We have all enjoyed reading library books with a "rock" theme, though not necessarily non-fiction books, for example The Blue Stone, A Gift From the Sea, Elizabeti's Doll, Rocks in His Head, and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.  I am also planning some fun rock crafts - rock pets will be one. We don't do all subjects, every day, but on days when we are going to be home and don't have much going on.  Its really better for all of us to have some structure. 

We've been on lots of hikes, swimming, biking, playing in the sandbox, going to parks, jumping on the trampoline, watching birds, catching bugs, and eating lots of Popsicles.  We are potty-training the 3 year old with the usual mixed success :) and our baby turned 1 and is learning to walk.  We are using our 4 year old's necessary doctor appointments and MRI's as learning experiences for our older kids, who are curious and concerned and sometimes think they are being left out. 

It's summer and lovely!! We hope you are having a good time too!

Spring Hike - Interesting Discoveries

Identifying plants, butterflies, etc. is time consuming and hard to do with kids hanging on me (and computer equipment!) - some of our discoveries I have identified.  I'm working on the rest and will update as possible.  I'll number them - if you know what anything is, please (pretty please!) leave a comment.

1.  Waterleaf

Waterleaf picked for me by J. 

 2. Yarrow - I think :)

3. Lichen - A is particularly excited about Lichen and was thrilled to find this stick covered with it. Do you want to know "All About Lichen" and learn more than you thought you wanted to know?

4. My friend called this dainty blue and white flower a "Virgin Blue-Eyed Mary," but when I looked it up I didn't find any similar images under that name. 

5. Ranchman's Tiger Moth Caterpillar

6.  Starflower/Prairie Star Flower

7.  Yellow flowers are so hard to identify - there are so many of them! This flower had 7-9 flower heads per stem with 5-7 stems per plant.  I was leaning towards one certain flower, but I've lost my notes and am having a hard time finding what I thought it might be in my book again - Sagebrush Country: A Wildflower Sanctuary. 

8.  I am pretty sure this next flower is not native.  I know its some kind of tulip as I saw it at a local tulip festival, but I don't remember its name. I'm going to blame the tulip eating deer who forage throughout the city for transplanting it, but I kind of have a grudge - tomatoes last year, broccoli & cauliflower the year before.  

9. Forget-Me-Not - maybe :) I almost think it doesn't have the same look as a Forget-Me-Not, but looks enough like it that I'm not sure.

10. Mountain Dandelion

11.  The next flower is a complete mystery - I've never seen a simliar flower.  The flower blooms in the middle of the leaf - it was a remarkable looking plant.  The lower picture shows more of the plant and an unbloomed flower. 



A couple more discoveries without pictures:

Wild Onion - Not blooming yet, but that strong, unique scent is hard to miss.  It smells so wholesome and fortifying (deep breathe, sigh), and they are beautiful when they bloom.

Cactus - Prickly Pear I believe, and not necessarily a new discovery.  We do like to watch for the blooms and my kids love shrieking out warnings - "Watch out for the cactus!"

Bluebirds - I believe they were Mountain Bluebird, but they didn't wait around for me to know for sure.  However, the Western Bluebird isn't commonly known to be in our area so I can somewhat safely assume they were Mountain Bluebirds. Can you ever safely assume anything to do with nature?

Mystery Butterfly/Moth - my daughter tried to catch it as I tried to take a picture - c'est la vie.  It was dark brown, maroon, or black with a white band on the edge of the lower wings, possibly the upper wings too - is that description helpful? No? Well, I've looked at hundreds of pictures and still haven't identified it, and I'm the one who saw it! So don't feel bad.

I think we will use this hike throughout the Spring - Summer - Fall to continue discovering new things as this area changes.