When Homeschooling gets YUCKY!

So today, we got outside to enjoy some cooler temps. It was also a good nature day. Apparently TOO good. Lovely had a BLAST filling her bug jar with little caterpillars.

There were so many of them that she now thinks we have the COOLEST yard! I mean, look how cute they are....and what a great learning tool, right? Nature at our finger tips. I just kept seeing them...stepping on them. Then, look in the background of the picture - notice some brown spots? Sure, we've had a hot summer....but are brown patches really just caused by the heat?

Umm, no. They can also be caused by these:

These guys are not just normal, cute, pre-butterfly caterpillars. They are Army Worms. They will become a moth, an until then, they and about 1,000 more of their buddies will eat your lawn when it is dark or VERY shady (if we saw this many during the day, currently as I type this, thousands more are out now eating our yard) from the root up. Sometimes the infestation can be so large, it looks like your yard is moving with all the feasting. We saw hundreds in the shade, so this homeschool teacher, in fantastic educator fashion, went running for the hills...EWWW! Yuck! I felt like we're being watched, since so many more were in hiding till nightfall. EEK!

Lovely is so excited though. How do I tell her that her 1000 best friends are NOT wanted? LOL

Visitors Welcome!!

We had some visitors today to our little school. It was so nice to share some time with them!!

I Love Home school!!

One reason I LOVE Homeschooling!

You can't do this in a standard PE class or at regular recess!!!

What a way to both exercise AND take a break? Awesome.

Some "Woesy", Some "Rosey"

We've been having a good couple of days so far. Monday was a rough day though. It took us WAY longer than normal to get through our work. In fact, our days have been getting longer and longer each day. If all our activities were enriching or captivating, then that would be a great thing! But, it was more that skills and worksheets were taking longer and longer. Doable, but a growing concern on my radar. I like getting to the application of learning as well!

Lovely loves learning, but dislikes writing it all out. She prefers drawing what she's learned, telling me, or doing an activity. She definitely is the child I know - one who learns from MANY methods of learning. She likes the worksheets (she loves her math ones) but I'm figuring out the writing slows her down (she writes pretty well, but she does lots of phonics, grammar, and reading comprehension - so the writing adds up and I think tires her out). She starts out excited, but then wears out as she sees the next review sheet coming. I asked for some tips from another co-op mom that is doing similar learning styles, and she suggested that some of the language arts work could be given orally - so I can give her a break on the constant writing. I tried it today, and it worked like a charm. I could even leave Lovely for longer periods doing independent work vs me having to be her constant cheerleader. I wanted to share that in case it helped anyone.  I'm lucky she loves doing this (and changing from mainstream school) but I was worried the way things were going, she could get frustrated, blame me, or become unhappy. I'm thrilled things went well today, and we could do enrichment activities and had time for some presentations of other methods!!

(BTW, I'm always ready for tips teacher friends!)

Below are some pics from the last few days. We also did a weekend trip to the zoo (for the 1st time in a few years). It was great for Lovely's science unit on animals! It was also an Educator's Day, so there were lots of learning presentations and information! We're loving our homeschool adventure so far - (yep - like my tagline - the woesy and rosey and all lol).

Getting our calendar set up.

All it needs is the month and year!

working on some telling time skills with out hands on clock and a little brainpopjr.com

working on her history  - map skills and coloring page for Ancient Egypt

doing a floor puzzle on sea animals

At the zoo - checking out the flamingos - and what affects their coloring.

Lovely was our map reader - good map reading skills!

Wow - gorillas like water!

Checking out the elephants before they went to eat.

cute statue.

another cute statue!

The Komodo Dragon sees you....

Look carefully - this is basically a large, fancy version of the flying city pigeon! Who knew!!

Hi Timone!

One of the best reasons to home school - bonding together!!

How are things in your school?

"Fix it Now!"

To give a backstory to this picture. Many nights, after bedtime, Hubby and I will find picture messages left for us outside Lovely's door. She'll draw signs like a door covered by the line (A la the Ghostbuster's red circle and line - what is that called?) to imply "don't come in" or "don't disturb my toys" etc. Or she'll draw pictures of how she felt that day, or what she did, or what she needs. It can be on paper or her ancient Magna Doodle. Sometimes she'll phonically spell words and we'll have to figure out what she wrote.

Last night we found yet another message. But this time - there was no confusion in the meaning. It was propped up on a roll of toilet paper, guarded by her horse. It even had her face drawn in demanding style. She still drew a picture just in case. Can you figure out what she wants?

 

HAHA! I was just impressed she had correct spelling and punctuation. Now, we just need to add a capital F and some manners. *wink*

Small Successes - "We've started Homeschooling!" Edition!

I can't believe it is finally here. And while I can't report many successes around my home here, I can report we got the ball rolling and are figuring out our homeschooling routine on this page.

1. We had our first day. It was a GREAT first day, one I didn't plan on, and one she never would have had in mainstream schooling. So, it was such a win/win for me!

2. We are following our tentative schedule. So far, so good - but I am learning how to be flexible - and the joy in that flexibility. We've done things on different days, or broken up the schedule. I love that so far, we are both liking this. I'd actually use the word love. I know the tough days are coming - so I cling to days like yesterday. Here are some pictures of what we did:

a little teaching game (idea from the teaching manual) to teach double consonant words that end in "ed" and "ing" When cut up, I could mix up the parts and Lovely had to construct the words and consonants.

cut up and ready to go!

Building words

She actually enjoyed it!

3. I made it out, alone, with all 3 kids on a field trip to a local indoor/outdoor history museum this past Monday. They had a Home School Day and opened their doors for free. We explored both the lives of early peoples (which fit great in her ancient history work), pioneer life (which brings to life some of our reading books on Little House) and some fun trivia to see (a fancy 1930s mansion and a exhibit on summer Olympic sports which will be great to revisit when we look at Greece). It was a great trip!!!

Learning to use an early drill.

Lovely using the drill with an arrow head tip

Looking at pioneer artifacts like a slate, and yarn making materials.

The girls heading to a Victorian playhouse for children. Cool! It had real rooms and was built just as a house was at the time!

Another playhouse for children on the grounds - what fun for them!!! Rooms and all!

enjoying the portico of the mansion

Looking at the fountains on the grounds of the 1930s mansion.

So strong!

bike race anyone?

Houston - we have a rower!

He did great! Just hung out!

It's been a great start! Thanks for the advice, prayers, and ideas!!!!!

How are your successes?

I stole this....

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, 
and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. 
~George Bernard Shaw

Isn't that awesome? I stole it from Otherwise Educating and it is perfect. It's how I feel about how the US education system is being run - testing, social promotion, raises for teachers who only get scores to rise, etc. It fuels my fire for what I'm trying to do.  

Just wanted to share :)

Where I've been....

Well, perhaps the lack of updates is that we have jumped in, head first, to home schooling. So far, SO good.

Lovely reports home school is "harder" than her old school, but that she likes it. We seem to be getting by any barriers thus far with our relationship intact. We've had two field trips already, with another scheduled to help showcase her ancient history study of Sumer and Egypt in the next week or so, and we LOVE the library. We're starting to branch from just covering the core subjects as we find a routine and pace, and working on doing more with copy work and narration and "Writing with Ease."

Her math focus has been word problems with addition and subtraction, and while she is good with figuring out the problems with manipulatives after making the problem - making sure she is confident in figuring out what they ask is something we're working on - way more than the chapter in her book (ok, that was not good sentence structure - haha!). In grammar she is working on words ending in 'ed' and 'ing'. I have a game for us to do tomorrow to help bring the lesson alive and put words together to understand them better.

We played catch up this week with narration in history and science (we did the core work last week, but I didn't want to press her too much as we established our new relationship) and as I said above, we'll start doing more with general reading and writing too with narration and copy work.

I'll try and take some pics to record some of her school work (drawings, games, etc) so she has a feel of them being shown somewhere lol (and for me to remember them long after I've run out of storage room in her notebooks).

Oye - I'm up too late! I did some pumping so I could freeze some more milk and got caught up in looking for online sites for math and grammar, as well as blogs! This teacher needs to head to bed.  Also, sorry for the "listy" feel of this entry. When I have the brain power I'd love to do a better flowing narrative. Until then, this article my friend K sent me puts a lot of my feelings into flowing words:

Deciding to Home School

Have you started yet? Any stories from the front?

Hugs!

hehe - I'm "that" mom...

who I used to see at the library that was returning, then checking out, 20 books or more! Oh yeaaaah!

I always wondered how they could read all that much (and I admired it), but we used to do one visit a week and do a couple of books for the kids. This week alone we've been 3 times, and I still have in our possession about 20 books on the different subject areas, or fun reads, for Lovely.

It's freaking awesome!!

1st Day!! FIRST Grade!!!

**I wrote this Monday night, but got tired before I could finish. Also, a video I was loading would not load. BOO! I finished this up Tuesday evening**

My baby is a FIRST grader. When did THAT happen???

We take a picture on the porch every year (my kidlets attend preK too) so this year was no different as we began the great adventure!

She picked out her own clothes the night before, and got up on her own at 6:30am to get me up for breakfast. We were already dressed and in learning mode by 8am. We did her core work, and then headed to the library about 2.5 - 3 hours later.

We had a GREAT first day, and one on one learning this morning. GREAT. I was concerned how the year would start off, and it went great. It gives me something to cling to when the rough days happen. Everything went well - her favorite subject was Math, and least favorite was handwriting. We got through it with motivators like earning time with the water pistol (on me lol) and stickers. Valiant was great - she just hung out, sang a LOT and loudly (but we don't hear her anymore....I took some video clips for me to watch to hear my tone and style and was shocked at how loud she was HAHA) and Gift slept all morning (he tends to sleep for a long stretch after his breakfast - such a plus at this stage for schooling!).

Here are some pics, and I have 2 video uploads too!

Phonics work

She got a little tired of phonics, but I told her if she could show me a second page with handwriting work - she could attack me with a water fan - I think it worked, I had to run for cover!

I'm getting chased and doused!

Here are two of the video clips I took to see how annoying my voice was, and to see how I came across/delivery style. Lovely is the one who shines to me, but I'm just a proud momma!

The above was us working on her text book with word problems and subtraction on her magnetic board and manipulatives. Below is her working on her workbook for more practice.

(ok, this video seems to not be loading. Bummer)

After we finished her core lessons, we went to the library. There we got some fun books to read that covered our study areas, and she spent time with some friends there. When picking her books, Lovely picked a children's version of Gilgamesh (This one is called The Revenge of Ishtar which I did not realize was the last of a trilogy, so we'll have to get the other two) and sat raptured listening to me read it to her today (Tues), looking at the words, and pictures, and then redrawing them in her journal book. She would not let me turn the page until she finished a quick pencil sketch. 

After the library, we tried to look into getting a family pass at a local fun gym and let Lovely and her sister Val play a while (for "PE" if you will) but the pass was a rip off, so we decided to skip the gym for now, and go get the family pass at the local museum of natural history and science center. It was SO fun. We focused on things she'll be learning about the next few weeks in both history, science, and living books - animals and the rise of civilizations. She even got to take a class on the Food Chain. It fit perfectly without even planning it. I don't think anyone could have had a better 1st day of first grade!!! I certainly could not top it today.  Here are some pics of our first day adventures. 

Here Lovely is with a mink. This was GREAT because we just read in Little House on the Prairie how Pa hunted mink for its prized fur pelt. This was great for her to see.

Want to know about mink too? Read here!

I was trying out the panoramic feature on my camera for this big guy!

HEY!! No sleeping in class!

Oye - I'm too tired still to write captions for all of it. If you have any questions, just ask LOL!! The Gecko Exhibit was great for science/animals/geography, the children's play area was fun, the science experiment room was a great hands on, soapy learning experience (one we'll return to for lessons that match up to later in the year), and the dinosaur fossils were GREAT. We did a lot more, but I'll wait till we go back for specific activities or units to not spoil the fun pictorially!

What a great 1st day. The second day went well too! Any tips for making handwriting more fun?

And, by the way - I'm TREASURING these moments with Lovely. I get to see all the 'lightbulb' moments. Wow. There are no words to describe how this makes me feel. She also gets to see mine as I learn with her. It's great. Tonight as I was purging tons of clothes and clutter from our home, she went to the store with her daddy. She came home and surprised me with white flowers. Daddy said she wanted to get them all on her own for me. We even butted heads today learning! She still wanted to give me flowers? I felt like it was sign we're on the right track. Keep praying!!

I'm pooped. Much love!!