Tuesday - We had a great day on Tuesday... we did everything we wanted to get accomplished. I think I'm only going to be able to update every week instead of every day. I just don't have enough time. So... I'll be back Friday to update for this week.
Monday - Today we had a fabulous trip to Garden of the Gods... if you EVER get a chance to come to Colorado Springs... you have to go there. It is free!! And it is absolutely beautiful. These pictures are pretty good, but they aren't anything like seeing it in person. Our house is open... just call! When we got home, we were all very tired, but I was determined to start spanish today. We did everything we had planned, and it made me feel really good to hear him counting to five in spanish to his daddy tonight. We'll be doing numbers for the next two weeks, then we move onto something else. Hopefully, he'll be able to count to ten by the time we're done, and we're going to try to always talk to him in spanish as much as we can (we don't know that much). We did take a little time to read some books today. We read Transformers, Tractors & Trucks, Emergency, and The Lion King. I'm excited about tomorrow because he doesn't have school anymore, so he'll be here all day. I'm making a slide show of today's pictures because there are so many. The slideshow is on the main page. www.chaplainwife.blogspot.com go check it out.
Memorization: phone number and address, AWANA verse
Bible: Read and discuss story
Language Arts: 100 EZ Lessons 32,33,34,35 and 36, do letter work for t and r
Science: Talk about our nature walk to Garden of the Gods
Art: Do handprint color mixing. (we didn't do this last week, so we're repeating)
Reading:
Books to Read: Transformers, Eels, Tractors & Trucks, Emergency, Winnie-the-Pooh, Thomas & Percy and the Dragon, Stories from "High Five" magazine, Ruby Bridges, Track Stars, Rosa Parks, Look & Learn Body, The Lion King (and DVD), Each Peach Pear Plum, And to Think I Saw it On Mulberry Street, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Horton Hatches the Egg, Yertle the Turtle, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Munschworks Grand Treasury (15 different stories)
Price and Daddy Books:
The Horse and His Boy
Outings/Other Activities:
Monday (Field Trip to Garden of the Gods), Wednesday (Bible Study and lunch with church playgroup), Thursday (Gymnastics), Saturday (Gymnastics), Sunday (Church and AWANA)
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Weekly Report, Week Two
Wednesday: We don't have any pictures from today, but we didn't have bible study because it is Spring Break, so we went to the park with some friends, then we came home and he did his reading words and read his story. We did have time to read Arkansas this morning during breakfast. I do have a picture of the reading words, but I'm not adding it until I have more pictures to download. Wednesday's are our slowest days, and tomorrow we get to do art... yay!!
Tuesday: We read Amelia Bedelia, Ants, and Baby's Book of Animals. We didn't have time to read a lot today because we had to get to our "outing" today. Price liked the Ant book, and neither of us liked Amelia Bedelia very much. It was crazy! We went to a Spring Break show at the library in Fountain. It was fantastic even though we didn't get to stay the whole time. Wesley was a little crazy... I had to chase him around the whole time, but Price laughed as loud as he could! I loved seeing him enjoying something so much! Our science experiment today was "fog in a bottle". It kind of stunk because it didn't work. I'm sure I did something wrong, and Price didn't seem to care that it didn't work. Maybe we'll try it again later this week. We got new books today that were going to be part of his Kindergarten curriculum, but one of them seems super easy, so I let him do a page today. We're going to go slowly and just do two pages a week. When K starts, we'll do two pages a day, four days a week. This is Book A, and we also bought Book B today. The only one left is Book C, and then he will move to the numbered books.. i.e. Book 1, Book 2, etc...
Monday: We didn't have colored eggs for breakfast this morning. We worked on our phone number and address. He repeated them after me, but then he said they were too hard and he wouldn't know them later. We'll probably work on them again next week if he doesn't have them by the end of the week. We read Atlantis, The Last Empire which took longer than I thought, but we're going to watch the movie tonight, so I wanted to finish it. Price really liked it. Then we cut out letter A words and glued them on our A project page. We tried the rice again this week because Price said if we would just push the rice harder, then it would stick. He was right, and our A looks really good. He did his word reading for today, and then we all took a break for lunch and read more books. We read Animal Parade, Atlantis Squarepantis,
All the Ways I Love You, and Ten Apples up on Top. We read the first chapter in our new Winnie-the-Pooh book, and I think I liked it a lot more than Price. It was probably too long, so we're only going to read half of the chapter tomorrow unless he asks to keep going. We're completely done today, and it went well. He's finished with his two-day-a-week preschool here on base, so he's just going to be mine from now on! Pictures will be added at the end of the post everyday, and then I'll make another slideshow when the week is over.
All the Ways I Love You, and Ten Apples up on Top. We read the first chapter in our new Winnie-the-Pooh book, and I think I liked it a lot more than Price. It was probably too long, so we're only going to read half of the chapter tomorrow unless he asks to keep going. We're completely done today, and it went well. He's finished with his two-day-a-week preschool here on base, so he's just going to be mine from now on! Pictures will be added at the end of the post everyday, and then I'll make another slideshow when the week is over.
Memorization: done
Bible: Creation Completed story,
Language Arts: 100 EZ Lessons 28,29,30,31 and do letter work for a and e
Science: Make fog in a bottle
Art: Do handprint color mixing.
History/Geography: Look up our country, state, and city on the map. Learn the name of our continent, and find it on the map
Reading:
Books to Read:
Neil Armstrong
Adventures of Harold & His Friends
John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed)
Price and Daddy Books:
The Horse and His Boy
Outings/Other Activities:
Tuesday (Playgroup Activity at Fountain Library), Wednesday (Bible Study), Thursday (Gymnastics), Friday (Lunch and Playtime with Home School Group), Saturday (Gymnastics), Sunday (Church and AWANA)
Science: Make fog in a bottle
Art: Do handprint color mixing.
History/Geography: Look up our country, state, and city on the map. Learn the name of our continent, and find it on the map
Reading:
Books to Read:
Neil Armstrong
Adventures of Harold & His Friends
John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed)
Price and Daddy Books:
The Horse and His Boy
Outings/Other Activities:
Tuesday (Playgroup Activity at Fountain Library), Wednesday (Bible Study), Thursday (Gymnastics), Friday (Lunch and Playtime with Home School Group), Saturday (Gymnastics), Sunday (Church and AWANA)
Kindergarten Curriculum
I use the word Curriculum loosely of course. We aren't going to be using any curriculum for Kindergarten (except Math). Everything else will be put together and taken from different places. But after all that rambling I realized that it is still a curriculum, so just begin reading here... Sorry for that!
We will begin Kindergarten after our Pre-K is over and we take a two week break. Our last week of Pre-K will be July 7-11. We will take two weeks off, and maybe make a lap book of something (maybe Star Wars or Spiderman) I'll let him pick. We'll just get lots of information and pictures of whatever we choose, and make a lapbook. Just do lots of reading about whatever subject he picks.
So Kindergarten begins July 28th. We're going to try to touch on every subject, but I'm going to try to be as flexible as possible. Just read as many books as we can, and work on Price learning to read better.
Price's goals for Kindergarten (as determined by me, of course):
1. Price able to read easy reader books aloud to us when we are done with our year.
2. Introduce him to all the subjects, and do a little of all of them throughout our year.
3. Teach him our house rules, (that I blatantly stole from someone else) and have him understand why we have those rules.
4. Continue to read the bible daily, and show/teach him how to pray on his own. We've let him say "memorized" prayers for too long, and I want to change this.
Mommas goals for Kindergarten (hey... I need to learn and grow also!):
1. Stay flexible and don't let my "plan" get in the way of learning.
2. Make learning a fun and memorable experience.
3. Work on my personal goals and take time for me.
4. Read as much as I can about the Trivium, Charlotte Mason, and Classical homeschooling (I know they are similar, but I want the find the best fit for us).
Those are achievable goals, I think... So how are we going to accomplish them. We are going to try to do school for 36 weeks. Some of these things don't last that long, so there will be plenty of time to spend on something that he doesn't get.
Our Subjects and what we'll be using:
Bible
When we start in July, we won't be having AWANA, but we'll have his old book, so we'll probably review some of those verses. We'll be using Beginnings I for our bible study this year. We'll take two weeks on each lesson, and it has daily activities to do. Sometimes it is songs to sing, and sometimes it is an activity. We can get this free online weekly, or pay money for the actual book.
Math
We'll be using the Kindergarten math from Bob Jones Press. I'm getting the student workbook and the teacher's book. I've looked through the student book, and it starts out basic enough (with shapes and stuff) that I think he'll be fine. It is only 32 weeks, so we will have a little flexibility to work longer if we need.
Phonics/Spelling/Grammar
We'll do Explode the Code books A, B, and C (I don't know how long they will take because I don't know how fast he will go through them). Then we're going to start Language Lessons for Little Ones Vol. 2. I just ordered it, so I'm waiting for it to come in. There is a 3rd volume if we need it to finish the year. I'm hoping this will help him in whatever ways he's needing when we finish 100 EZ lessons.
Handwriting
I'm not pushing handwriting. There will be some writing included in his Phonics and Grammar, so I'm not doing anything extra.
Language Arts
We'll be reading stories from the places we study in Galloping the Globe, and we'll be "trying" to read some easy readers. Just LOTS AND LOTS of reading.
Poetry
I'm still trying to decide about this. It will be my next project. I'm leaning towards Harp and Laurel Wreath, but have heard mixed reviews about it. Plus I saw some pretty good children's poetry books at our library, so I might just use those.
Foreign Language
We'll be using Teach Them Spanish K. It seems like a really good book. It begins with Pre-school and goes all the way to 5th or 6th grade. Hopefully we'll have a different one by then, but this seems to be great for now. He'll learn his numbers, colors, animals, food, transportation, parts of the face, and I can't remember what else. Everything is taught in a game format, so I don't think he'll even know that he's learning. I remember the colors at least from college (it is sad that I have 21 hours of Spanish from college, and can barely remember the colors! Pathetic, huh?) Anyway... so he knows a few of his colors, and thanks to Dora and Diego, he knows some of his numbers. I'm just going to try to make this as much fun as possible, and have fun learning along with him.
History
We're going to use Galloping the Globe. It is a geography unit study. It picks a different country/continent every lesson, and gives a lot of information about it. We're going to use it for Science and language arts also.
Science
Galloping the Globe and adding in a few experiments that I think will be fun. I'm not sure what kind of science is in GtG because I haven't seen the actual book, but I'm ordering it soon.
Art
We're going to spend the first 18 weeks, going over general stuff. We'll work on drawing basic shapes, then there are a lot of books called Kids Can Draw... (Animals of the World) and other things like that. So after he is good at drawing and painting the basic shapes, then we'll move onto these books. After the first 18 weeks, then we're going to start using Artistic Pursuits (I'm not very good with adding links right now because it takes a while... so just do a search for any books I mention, and I'm sure you'll be able to find them). AP looks like a great book and the good news is that there are three books that should last from K-3rd grade. We're going to go as slowly as we need to get through them. It suggests doing one lesson every week, but there are 32 lessons in each book, so we have almost one whole year extra. We'll be taking it very slowly. AP not only teaches different techniques, it also teaches them some art history. Not anything too in-depth, but if there is something that interests us in the book, then we'll get more books from the library to tell us more about it.
Music
I found an awesome book... well... I think it's awesome. I haven't actually looked at it, but I'm ready to order it. It's called Themes to Remember. It has three books, and you use those three books and follow their six year plan for music. It is mostly music appreciation, so once he gets big enough to decide what kind of instrument he wants to play, we'll have to find someone to teach him lessons (unless he wants to play the trumpet... I already know that).
Virtue Training Focus
Our Virtues for this year are Respect, Obedience, and Honesty. We'll review last year's virtues Kindness, Helpfulness, and Cooperation the first 9 weeks, then we'll spend 9 weeks on each of the new ones. We'll read as many books about these virtues as we can. We'll try for a few a week (if we can find that many).
That's it. I haven't figured out any kind of schedule yet because I don't have all the books, so I don't want to estimate how long I think each lesson will last. I think we're going to try to start out doing the same schedule everyday with the weekly things added in depending on what they are, but we'll mix it up if we need to. I'm going to do my best to be flexible with this, but that isn't really my personality when it comes to "organizing" things, but then again.. that is one of my goals.
We will begin Kindergarten after our Pre-K is over and we take a two week break. Our last week of Pre-K will be July 7-11. We will take two weeks off, and maybe make a lap book of something (maybe Star Wars or Spiderman) I'll let him pick. We'll just get lots of information and pictures of whatever we choose, and make a lapbook. Just do lots of reading about whatever subject he picks.
So Kindergarten begins July 28th. We're going to try to touch on every subject, but I'm going to try to be as flexible as possible. Just read as many books as we can, and work on Price learning to read better.
Price's goals for Kindergarten (as determined by me, of course):
1. Price able to read easy reader books aloud to us when we are done with our year.
2. Introduce him to all the subjects, and do a little of all of them throughout our year.
3. Teach him our house rules, (that I blatantly stole from someone else) and have him understand why we have those rules.
4. Continue to read the bible daily, and show/teach him how to pray on his own. We've let him say "memorized" prayers for too long, and I want to change this.
Mommas goals for Kindergarten (hey... I need to learn and grow also!):
1. Stay flexible and don't let my "plan" get in the way of learning.
2. Make learning a fun and memorable experience.
3. Work on my personal goals and take time for me.
4. Read as much as I can about the Trivium, Charlotte Mason, and Classical homeschooling (I know they are similar, but I want the find the best fit for us).
Those are achievable goals, I think... So how are we going to accomplish them. We are going to try to do school for 36 weeks. Some of these things don't last that long, so there will be plenty of time to spend on something that he doesn't get.
Our Subjects and what we'll be using:
Bible
When we start in July, we won't be having AWANA, but we'll have his old book, so we'll probably review some of those verses. We'll be using Beginnings I for our bible study this year. We'll take two weeks on each lesson, and it has daily activities to do. Sometimes it is songs to sing, and sometimes it is an activity. We can get this free online weekly, or pay money for the actual book.
Math
We'll be using the Kindergarten math from Bob Jones Press. I'm getting the student workbook and the teacher's book. I've looked through the student book, and it starts out basic enough (with shapes and stuff) that I think he'll be fine. It is only 32 weeks, so we will have a little flexibility to work longer if we need.
Phonics/Spelling/Grammar
We'll do Explode the Code books A, B, and C (I don't know how long they will take because I don't know how fast he will go through them). Then we're going to start Language Lessons for Little Ones Vol. 2. I just ordered it, so I'm waiting for it to come in. There is a 3rd volume if we need it to finish the year. I'm hoping this will help him in whatever ways he's needing when we finish 100 EZ lessons.
Handwriting
I'm not pushing handwriting. There will be some writing included in his Phonics and Grammar, so I'm not doing anything extra.
Language Arts
We'll be reading stories from the places we study in Galloping the Globe, and we'll be "trying" to read some easy readers. Just LOTS AND LOTS of reading.
Poetry
I'm still trying to decide about this. It will be my next project. I'm leaning towards Harp and Laurel Wreath, but have heard mixed reviews about it. Plus I saw some pretty good children's poetry books at our library, so I might just use those.
Foreign Language
We'll be using Teach Them Spanish K. It seems like a really good book. It begins with Pre-school and goes all the way to 5th or 6th grade. Hopefully we'll have a different one by then, but this seems to be great for now. He'll learn his numbers, colors, animals, food, transportation, parts of the face, and I can't remember what else. Everything is taught in a game format, so I don't think he'll even know that he's learning. I remember the colors at least from college (it is sad that I have 21 hours of Spanish from college, and can barely remember the colors! Pathetic, huh?) Anyway... so he knows a few of his colors, and thanks to Dora and Diego, he knows some of his numbers. I'm just going to try to make this as much fun as possible, and have fun learning along with him.
History
We're going to use Galloping the Globe. It is a geography unit study. It picks a different country/continent every lesson, and gives a lot of information about it. We're going to use it for Science and language arts also.
Science
Galloping the Globe and adding in a few experiments that I think will be fun. I'm not sure what kind of science is in GtG because I haven't seen the actual book, but I'm ordering it soon.
Art
We're going to spend the first 18 weeks, going over general stuff. We'll work on drawing basic shapes, then there are a lot of books called Kids Can Draw... (Animals of the World) and other things like that. So after he is good at drawing and painting the basic shapes, then we'll move onto these books. After the first 18 weeks, then we're going to start using Artistic Pursuits (I'm not very good with adding links right now because it takes a while... so just do a search for any books I mention, and I'm sure you'll be able to find them). AP looks like a great book and the good news is that there are three books that should last from K-3rd grade. We're going to go as slowly as we need to get through them. It suggests doing one lesson every week, but there are 32 lessons in each book, so we have almost one whole year extra. We'll be taking it very slowly. AP not only teaches different techniques, it also teaches them some art history. Not anything too in-depth, but if there is something that interests us in the book, then we'll get more books from the library to tell us more about it.
Music
I found an awesome book... well... I think it's awesome. I haven't actually looked at it, but I'm ready to order it. It's called Themes to Remember. It has three books, and you use those three books and follow their six year plan for music. It is mostly music appreciation, so once he gets big enough to decide what kind of instrument he wants to play, we'll have to find someone to teach him lessons (unless he wants to play the trumpet... I already know that).
Virtue Training Focus
Our Virtues for this year are Respect, Obedience, and Honesty. We'll review last year's virtues Kindness, Helpfulness, and Cooperation the first 9 weeks, then we'll spend 9 weeks on each of the new ones. We'll read as many books about these virtues as we can. We'll try for a few a week (if we can find that many).
That's it. I haven't figured out any kind of schedule yet because I don't have all the books, so I don't want to estimate how long I think each lesson will last. I think we're going to try to start out doing the same schedule everyday with the weekly things added in depending on what they are, but we'll mix it up if we need to. I'm going to do my best to be flexible with this, but that isn't really my personality when it comes to "organizing" things, but then again.. that is one of my goals.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Weekly Report, Week One
Memorization: Name and Birthday (mostly a review)
Bible: Creation of the World story, AWANA verse
Language Arts: 100 EZ Lessons 22(done),23,24,25,26 and do letter work for M and S
Language Arts: 100 EZ Lessons 22(done),23,24,25,26 and do letter work for M and S
Science: Do the "Catch a Rainbow" experiment
Art: Q-Tip Painting "Try to paint a Rainbow"
History/Geography: Talk about where we live and look at it on the map. Talk about where other family members live and look it up on the map.
Reading: I got some letter M and letter S books from the library, so we're going to read those this week, and Price and Daddy are continuing to read The Chronicles of Narnia. They have finished The Magicians Nephew and have only one chapter left in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. So tomorrow they will start The Horse and His Boy.
Books for the Week:
Disney's Monsters, Inc.
Green Eggs and Ham
One Monkey too Many
Mouse in the House
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mess Monsters
If you Take a Mouse to the Movies
Skunks!
Sequoyah
Itsy Bitsy, The Smart Spider
Sally Goes to the Mountains
The Aesop for Children
Books for the Week:
Disney's Monsters, Inc.
Green Eggs and Ham
One Monkey too Many
Mouse in the House
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mess Monsters
If you Take a Mouse to the Movies
Skunks!
Sequoyah
Itsy Bitsy, The Smart Spider
Sally Goes to the Mountains
The Aesop for Children
Outings/Other Activities: Monday (Chuck E. Cheese with Playgroup) Wednesday (Bible Study) Thursday (Gymnastics & Maundy Thursday Service) Friday (Good Friday Service) Saturday (Resurrection Celebration with Home school Group) Sunday (Easter)
Monday: We woke up this morning around 7:00. We made green eggs for breakfast, and although he thought they looked "yucky" he did taste them, and ended up eating almost all of them. We read the bible story and did his AWANA verse at breakfast, then did our lesson 22 in 100 EZ lessons. He cut out some M words and glued then on another paper. We tried to glue rice onto a big letter M, but we couldn't get it to stick. I think we'll stop using the rice. He read words today on the board, and seemed to like the new way of doing the lessons a lot. We read Monsters, Inc., Green Eggs and Ham, Mess Monsters, and If You Take A Mouse to the Movies. Price and Daddy have read two chapters of The Horse and His Boy and they'll do chapter three tonight.
Tuesday: I guess I'm going to have to get more books for next week. I thought I had enough books to read a few a day and then be done, but we're more than half way through our books, and we've only done it for two days. He wants me to read books to him ALL the time. I don't want to say no, so we just keep reading. Today during breakfast we went over his letter sounds and read A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mouse in the House. I had to tell him that we couldn't read anymore until after his preschool. So he got dressed and I took him to school. Since Saturday was his birthday, they let him pick snacks today, and he picked pizza. Wesley and I went to school and ate snack with him and then got to stay for playtime also. When we got home we read One Monkey too Many during lunch, and then went over his letter sounds more. He did his word reading on the board, then we did our Rainbow experiment. It didn't work like I thought it would, but I think that's because I didn't use the right kind of dish soap. We still have to read his story and write a couple of letters, and then we'll be done.
Wednesday: We don't have much school planned on Wednesday's because we have bible study from 9:00-11:30. We did our 100 EZ lesson, and read a little. We actually didn't have any more M books to read because we've read them all, so we read a couple of Aesop's Fables that have M words in the title. He seemed to like them because they are all really short, so he wanted me to read a lot of them. We didn't have time, but I'm glad he liked them.
Thursday: Price had school today, and Ron is off. Today is art day, and since we made a rainbow for our science project this week, we did Q-tip painting and tried to paint rainbows. After we finished painting the rainbows, Price painted Darth Vader while I read a few books to him. We read Seven Spunky Monkeys, Skunks!, and Itsy Bitsy, the Smart Spider. After we finished reading he did some word reading on the board. We learned the letter f today. We had fun today.
Friday: Today was a weird one, but I did discover that Price can do school even if he's naked! (long story). We read the last of the S books, Sequoyah, Sid and Sam, Sam and the Firefly, and Sally Goes to the Mountains. He really loves having books read to him, so I'm hoping his love of reading will continue when he starts reading himself. He did much better with his word reading today. He knows the sounds of the letters, and he can say them individually, but when he starts to put them together to "decode" the word, he sometimes can't hear the word. It's hard to explain without sound, but he says c and at, but when he puts them together... he hasn't been able to hear the word cat... Today, it all changed and clicked. He was reading words after the first sounding, and he loved it. He read on just by telling me the two sounds. I think he's really doing great. I have to go back to the library because I didn't get as many books as I thought I got for the letter A. We'll be finished with those books by Tuesday. Overall, this week was great and stressfree, and I can't wait for next week.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Minor Changes
Probably major changes.. Today was the first day that Price has decided that he didn't want to do his lesson. We've all been sick over the weekend, and this week started out with us in bed sick, so we haven't done a lesson at all since Saturday. He was just adament that he didn't want to do the lesson today, so I've decided to bump up our start date for school. We'll be starting school on Monday. I think that by doing our lessons at random times during the day (because of our schedules), he doesn't know when to expect it, and it comes at times when he's doing something else. We have to be somewhere every morning except Monday and Friday, so on those days, we're going to have school. I'll be posting the schedule later, after I've figured it out completely. We won't be doing the math or spanish parts yet. We might sing some of the spanish songs, but we won't do any of the books or games until we start the next school year (I haven't figured out when that will be because of the new schedule we're about to start. I'm going to try to finish all of this in 16 weeks. Take one week off in the middle, and then two weeks off at the end and then begin pre-school. I'll see if I can get that to work. Off to work on the new schedule.
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