Summer learning begins... with Spelling!

There will be lots of tree-climbing, too!

Now that our Grace-girl has officially completed first grade and we've taken a few weeks off, I'm busy planning for our summer work (don't tell her it's work) and even thinking ahead to fall.  Our main shortfall this year was that we didn't focus much on spelling, though we did make major strides in reading and grammar, which will ultimately help with spelling.  This summer instead of working on "writing" we are going to have some spelling fun!  She'll also get some printing practice in there without realizing it, just to keep us going before cursive starts in the fall.

During the school year we run a fairly classical school, but in the summer I prefer a more organic, Charlotte Mason approach.  We do a lot of gardening, bike riding, hiking and natural observances of the world around us.  We do still accomplish some formal education in the midst of that as I absolutely hate the idea of having to re-teach something we've already learned!  If you add it all up it looks like a lot of school time, but most of this is organic learning time for our whole family.  I imagine we will actually sit down for "school" less than 2 hours a week.

• Bible Study- The girls and I read a Bible story every morning, discuss, and pray together.  We also work on a new memory work passage every month or so (45 minutes/week).  When Matt is home he joins us or leads us.  Prayer and worship time are also regular moments in our day.
• Grammar- One lesson per week from our First Language Lessons book, plus review of the first grade memory work (20 minutes/week) so we don't forget!
• Spelling- One or two lessons per week which will mostly be a review of first grade (20 minutes/week).  See below.  I might just find a cheap summer supplement book to work through to have an end point in sight.  I think this will be a good school activity to take camping.
• Reading- Our wonderful library's summer reading program will serve as an inspiration and motivation for summer reading (90 minutes/week).   We will also be attending a few of the summer reading program activities (there are many) and regular weekly (or bi-montly) Storytime for Baby Rain.  Our library reading fuels our decisions for other subjects of study and can sometimes lead us to a unit study tangent.
• Math- we'll be starting Singapore Math in the fall, so we are mostly reviewing and solidifying skills over the summer with a focus on problem solving, critical thinking, measurement and integrating science.  We'll do some flash card work but we also like to include lots of fun games as part of our math time (90 minutes/week).  Some of our favorite math-oriented games are Monopoly, Rummikub and Catan games (Catan Kids, Settlers of Catan and Starship Catan).
• Science- One weekly nature study using our Anna Comstock (Handbook of Nature Study) and library books (45 minutes). Includes writing practice, drawing and observation in her nature journal.
• Classical Conversations- It's important to not completely forget everything we learned last year, so we will review cycle 1 memory work during the summer (about 60 minutes/week of mostly auditory practice in the car) but we'll wait to start cycle 2 until we get to September.
• Art/Music- These occur naturally at our house as we lead worship at church and work with several instruments.  June is a motivated student of drawing and will no doubt fill her time easily with art projects and fun craft projects as the motivation and occasion arrives.  

In my quest for more spelling practice, I looked for some free online resources and I've listed some interesting-looking ones below.  Do you have others you like to use and want to share?

Zaner-Bloser- nice printable worksheets to practice writing words.

TLS- lots of different worksheets on many topics, among which are spelling.  Fun!

Grade Spelling- this is a fun interactive site for spelling practice.  Not a pressure-cooker, just fun activities and age appropriate spelling word lists.


Enjoy your summer!  Enjoy learning!  And don't forget to do both at the same time!

Mommy Don't Go! How to Say Goodbye...

It's always hard to say goodbye to Mommy.  When I began going to the gym in the evenings last fall we ran into some separation anxiety with our little Baby Rain.  I recently began to work outside the home (just a few nights a week) which meant my absence was felt not just during bedtime, but also during dinner and the hour beyond.

While Grace-girl, almost 7, is now old enough to understand reason (she still misses her Mama, sometimes, and has always been a fairly sensitive child), Baby Rain is not quite 3 and still has strong feelings about the subject!  So this mama did what any good mama would do.  I requested a bunch of books from the local library.  Your library has them too!  Search under "separation anxiety" or ask your children's librarian for suggestions.  Most books in this category are geared towards the first day of school, but I've found that these are equally helpful for little ones as they don't really know the difference between "school" and "playing at someone's house."  Books about loss are also good for this category (Think: Knuffle Bunny and Have You Seen Duck?, a current favorite at our house).

Some Favorite Books at Our House:

The first two are not specifically related to "school" but rather are simply how little ones cope with missing Mommy.  For the record, there are GREAT books about kiddos missing Daddy or other caregivers.  These just really hit home for my kids and me since I'm their primary caregiver.  

• Owl Babies has been in my arsenal for awhile.  This book was a favorite with both girls at the toddler stage.  It really helps them grasp the idea that Mommy always comes back.  We do have to learn to wait and be patient and maybe even worry a little, but every kid who's read this book can repeat Bill's special line, "I want my Mommy!"  Some of the illustrations are dark (owls are nocturnal, afterall), but never scary.  My favorite picture is the one at the end when the baby owls dance around on their branch.  Pure elation!  Mama has returned!

• Piglet and Mama was/is another fave for both my girls.  In this case, Mama appears to be lost, but in the end she was looking for piglet the whole time.  In this sweet story, Piglet meets several other animals around the farm who offer her an activity to share with their own little ones, but each time it simply says, "But Piglet wanted her Mama."  For some reason I always inextricably insert a "No thank you" before piglet asserts her desire for Mommy.  No need to be rude, after all!  The playful illustrations add a lightness to the story rather than a scary element for the sensitive crowd.  The simplicity is winsome and not tiring at all.

• Llama Llama Misses Mama is a sweet story I found in my recent search for books about this topic.  I do love that sweet, passionate little llama.  Who doesn't?  The illustrations in this book are so exquisite that you can almost taste the tears running down little Llama's face when, finally, "it was all too much for little Llama" and he breaks down crying at the snack table at his new preschool.  All is well in the end, of course, when his new friends gather round him and the teacher reminds him that his mama will come back at the end of the day.  The scene of their reunion is a mess of tossed crayons and joyful exuberance.  Love it.  And in the end Llama Llama decides he loves Mama AND school.  

These last two I like because they give you an action point- they remind you that you can DO something about missing Mommy.  These are better for kids who are a bit older (stories are longer), perhaps more school-age, but still apply to little ones as well.

• The Kissing Hand is a classic book about little raccoon who is heading off to his first day of school.  Of course, Raccoon school is at night!  Again, the illustrations are beautiful and the story poignant.  Mama gives little Raccoon a special kiss that will remind him of her throughout his night at school.  This is a sweet story that also allows reciprocation for little Raccoon to give Mama a special kiss of her own so she won't miss him too much, either.  And off he scampers to school.

• The Kiss Box is about a mother who has to go away for awhile and how she soothes the concerns of her little bear.  Finally the little bear decides to make a box to store the kisses in that she will send when she is away.  This is a strategy that has worked in my family, too.  Only I like to cut out tiny paper hearts and fill the kiss boxes with both real kisses and the paper reminders.

Now that you know how to help your little one cope with separation- how do you deal with it?  Come visit me at my other blog for help with that one!

Summer School and Flowers, too!

Summer School on the deck

Don't freak out.  We don't force school all summer long. Grace-girl really wanted to learn about plants and flowers and how they work.  I knew she was ready for an in-depth study that was more than pretty pictures and fun books from the library.  We've planted seeds, watched them grow, learned basic plant stuff and now we were ready to tackle flowers and pollination.  SO I put together a lapbook, of course!

We had several books from the library about plants and flowers and especially about bees and pollination.  But the best resource I used was Anna Comstock's The Handbook of Nature Study.  This one book has been my go-to resource for so many science questions (you can see it on my patio table in the picture above).  We could have spent days reading about flowers and pollination and different types of asexual reproduction, but we moved on to completing the lapbook.

Lapbook with closed elements

I didn't find a free lapbook I loved for this topic, so I took things from many places.

Lapbook with open elements

This place has tons of great mini-book and foldy fun stuff for lapbooks.  Great for making up your own stuff, which is what I wound up doing for some of this lapbook.

Sunflower Growth Mini-book.  1 inch per day.  Wow.

Simple wheel book describing a plant life-cycle

Grace-girl loves sequencing, so I just had to turn this mini-book into a sequencing activity.

The Itsy-Bitsy Seedling accordion fold

 And I wanted to find a way to use some pressed flowers from our own garden.

A math/measuring mini-book

 It is really amazing how much a five year old can memorize and retain.  She loved this project and actually learned and remembered the inner-workings of a flower and the purpose for each part.

The back of the lapbook.  She assembled this by herself.

 My favorite little element from this lapbook was a special poem that Grace-girl wrote a couple months ago.  (She narrated, I wrote).  I kept it and did this little petal-fold piece to surprise her.  She loved it.

"The Seed"

When the walls grow and sprout

The little people come about

And when the walls get all tattered and torn

and fall off

Then the people find another home.

A Homeschool Day in the Life...

I've been reading quite a few "Day in the Life" blogs by fellow homeschooling moms (and a few dads).  While I'm tempted to share a "perfect" day in my life as a homeschooling mom, I suddenly realize there is no such thing.  My best intentions are often dashed by the wayside of the freight train called Real Life.  And no two days really look the same.  So here goes- a random day in my homeschool life with two girls, 5 and 18 months, though a fairly typical Thursday.

Thursday-

4:30 am- Baby-Rain wakes up and snuggles up in bed with me and Daddy
5:30 am- Daddy gets up with baby - I roll over with a pillow over my head
6:30 am- I get up so my husband can get ready for work.
7:00 am- Dad leaves for work.  I pour my second cup of coffee.  Read books with baby, try to get caught up on chores.
7:30-8:00 am- Grace-Girl rolls out of bed.  Not literally, as it is a six foot drop to the floor.  Blurry-eyed, wanting to snuggle on the couch.  All.  Day.  Long.
8:15 am- We girls manage to sit down for breakfast.  No one in this family does well without food.
8:30 am- Bible Reading and Calendar- we rotate a few different kids' devotional books.  We also work on our memory verse, which is posted by our calendar, here in the kitchen.  We review the season, month, year, days of the week, day of the month... etc.  Then we talk about our daily schedule.  I do all this while my older daughter eats because she is incredibly SLOW and I get tired of waiting for her to finish.
9:15 am- Chores- This includes getting dressed, tidying up room, brushing hair and teeth, etc.  But we also include things like, "be a cheerful helper."  Many tears are shed at our house over hair brushing.  Note to self: it grows back.  Cut it off.
10:00 am- Toddler Storytime at our local library is the one activity we do that centers around my younger daughter.  As a homeschool family we easily haul 25 books a week from the library (the kids are still pretty young- I'm sure this number will rise). I go online to order most of what I want to bring home, then we pick out a few at the library.
11:00 am- As I'm checking out the pile of books we're hauling home and re-connecting with a friend I haven't seen in awhile, Baby Rain is methodically pulling books off the reserve shelf and removing the name labels from each book.
11:20 am- Thankful for the rice cakes I keep in the van for moments like this 7 minute ride from the library to the house.  It seems more like an hour with all that screeching.
11:45 am- Lunch. Usually left-overs.  Baby fell asleep in the car, so she's down for her nap.
12:10 pm- Read a bunch of new library books with Grace-girl.  This is one of my favorite things about Thursdays!
1:00 pm- Quiet Time.  We monitor TV time carefully at our house (we don't actually have a television, just our computer)- but today Grace-girl gets about an hour of Backyardigans while I catch up on napping and an episode of Downton Abbey on my Kindle Fire.  That's right.  I'm being completely honest, here.
2:00 pm- Impromptu reading lesson with Grace-girl.  Reviewing digraphs and blends (sh, th, ch, wh)
2:15 pm- Baby-rain wakes up- snack-time.
2:30 pm- Piano lesson with me.  Finding middle "c," learning about octaves and playing a tune by ear (Mary Had a Little Lamb).
2:40 pm- music lessons evolve into dancing around the living room with some latin dance cd (thanks, Dora)
3:00 pm- Get Outside.  We pull weeds and jump on the trampoline until daddy gets home, and to heck with the mess in the house.  The girls like to get as dirty as possible, so I let them.
4:30 pm- Daddy gets home- girls head to the bathtub- we all prepare for our evening.
5:30 pm- Dinner
7:00 pm- Baby Rain in bed
8:00 pm- Grace-girl in bed
*whew*  Each day is a little different, but somehow we find a rhythm through it all.  And it's usually not the one I thought it would be when I planned our schedule in August.  Enjoy the things that make your family special!  And guard your quiet time.  :)

Is my Kindle a book?

I haven't been posting because I've been too busy with my 2 Kindles.  Yup.  One old fashioned 3rd Gen. that I like to use for reading and the other is my new toy, the Kindle Fire.  My real dilemma goes beyond whether it is morally reprehensible for a true lover of books to own a Kindle (of course it is) or how much to let my kids play with my new Fire (I don't even let my husband play with it). 

Here's my actual problem: 

The nearly 18 month old baby calls my Kindle a book.  She actually calls the Fire "bubbles" because of that silly bubble app she gets to play with sometimes (it's really dumb but super fun, the best kind of app).  But when we have snuggle time (i.e. breastfeeding a toddler) I immediately reach for my "book" (Kindle 3).  The trouble started when she looked at me, questioningly, and said, "bubbles?"   I said, "no honey, that's mommy's...um...book.  No bubbles.  The bubbles are on my other Kindle." 

I understand that there are about 15 things inherently wrong with this whole conversation, knowing, as you do (in my narcissistic reality), that I'm a Charlotte-Mason-inspired,-Classical-Education-fan-with-a-slight-bend-toward-unschooling kind of momma.  If you have no idea what any of that meant, just know that I obsess too much about what matters to me and how I will ever teach it to my kids.

So here is my actual, actual problem:

1) Why am I reading when I should be making eye contact with my child or singing or teaching her the a-b-c's or something useful?  Frankly- because it's about the only chance I have to read these days.

2) Why do I need 2 Kindles?  The answer is actually another question:  Why do I feel a need to explain the difference between the two to my toddler?  The real answer of course is that I don't like major reading on a backlit screen and the old Kindle just doesn't do what the Fire does.

3)  Is it really a book?  I'll leave the answer to this one to the experts.  The debate rages on.

In the meantime, you can follow my reading trends on Goodreads.  There's an android app for that. 

Homeschool kid confesses: I don't like books.

My five year old daughter told me the last week that she doesn't like books.  Seriously?  We read at least an hour every day, what with school reading, bedtime reading and in between reading.  Probably more than an hour a day.  I never thought I'd be seeking advice on how to instill a love of reading in MY kid.  I feel like a dentist who just found a cavity in my own child. I sell children's books for crying out loud.

My first instinct:
PANIC

WHAT?  Of COURSE you love books!  Of COURSE you're just saying that because you don't want to hear me read the books I've picked out, right?  Right?

But she told me she doesn't like reading on her own, either.  *sigh*
more panic.
more mayhem.
more self-inflicted pain and suffering.

Then I decided to get to the bottom of the problem.

"Mom, we just have too many books.  And they're boring.  I like books about how to do things, and science books and stuff."

Ah ha.  Panic over.  She's ready for harder books. And it's time to downsize.
We spend a great deal of time in the non-fiction section of our children's library, but I do still pick up picture books now and then for the four year old we watch a few days a week, for our baby, and for the five year old, too.

I was able to explain that reading is a gateway to independent learning.  That when she is able to read on her own she will be free to learn about things that are interesting to her and she can learn them in her own way.  I explained that most of the books we have we are saving until her baby sister is ready for them.  Said five-year-old is truly beyond most of them.

In the meantime, we took a little break.  I didn't push it.  I skipped the library one week *gasp* and played charades one night instead of bedtime stories.  So what.  Go ahead- put me in homeschool jail.

We finished reading "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" today.  We charged through a couple chapters because she wanted to finish it.  She's excited about our library trip, tomorrow.  She's been reading on her own, more.  Maybe she just needed a break and maybe I'm a good mom for stopping to listen. 

Just curious:
How do you handle disturbing revelations like this?  Do you panic, like me, or are you more gracious?