Homeschool Evaluations are Done…..

The kids did well, The Artist did lots of talking as did the Peanut who wasn’t being evaluated. The teacher is great, we have seen the same one every year since The Ark was 6, he is now 12. She made some really great suggestions that we will incorporate:

• Challenge The Ark, he is a bit lazy and will do only what he has to.
• Stop pointing out that Ace is behind in math, it is not positive and probably stresses him out.
• Keep reading to all of the kids, as they will really benefit from it.
• Just keep working at it, homeschooling is difficult, and a process.
• Encourage the Artist to read to herself  daily
• Have the boys read for at least 20-30 minutes daily…..now to find a way to enforce that better.
• Have them write out goals for both long and short term, as they achieve one, cross it off and add a new one. We will start with 25 this fall, to be added to, working our way to 100.
  
• Stop worrying about where we are in the scheme of things and just work…..

A couple of things I mentioned was that I had a light bulb moment when I realized that my sons couldn’t write good paragraphs because they didn’t know how to write good sentences. So we will work on writing good sentences this fall and then good paragraphs next spring.

I have also come to realize that year round school is very difficult for us during the 6-7 weeks the boys are one swim team and in swim lessons. We get home after 11, hungry and tired, then their friends want to play and so do my sons. So our new schedule will be to go with short breaks until Swim Team starts , take off that time and then start back earlier than mid august, Swim Team is officially over Aug. 09 but we are still needing a break so, our new school year will begin on August 16. Giving the kids a break of 19 days to get themselves together for another school year.

As I type this the Artists is trying to read Harold and the Purple Crayon. There is nothing better than seeing the teacher and listening to her suggestions to motivate my kids. So for the next few days I will be cleaning, organizing and tweaking our homeschool schedule as well as tweaking our planning.

The boys meeting with the Teacher.

So today we met with our favorite teacher to go over our school year with the boys. We have always used her and love her so much, she can’t quit until my kids are grown!!!! I’m not sure I’ve told her that yet though

As always she was impressed with how much we did this year. In spite of all the personal chaos going on in our lives for the last 10 months. My personal opinion of our year is both positive and negative. We truly did do a great deal of work, the boys were exposed to a great deal and a few things did stay with them. On the negative side of things, we were very stressed out, didn’t really enjoy our days, forgot much of what we covered and we didn’t have as much to show for everything we did do. After awhile the boys didn’t want to write or color or document anything of what we read for school. We took field trips but didn’t document them at all.

The teacher~ Diane, suggested we go back to writing one or two words on our daily calendar, we talked about how I’m concerned about the boys decoding abilities and she suggested using sequential spelling so we will be switching to this and see if that helps us. A plus is that both boys can do it at the same time. Another suggestion she had was only focusing on a few things this year until we get to some sort of mastery. Giving us a much needed reprieve from trying to do it all and then suffering from major guilt because we didn’t get it all accomplished. So I have some major thinking to do. We are taking off for the month of July to regroup. I’m hoping to take a trip to visit friends in Va and NC in early Aug. providing we have the funds, giving us a much needed break from the stress here. She also suggested covering something only once a month! I’m thinking that poetry might be that once a month thing.  We are supposed to go back to the Ancients in history using MOH this fall but I’m seriously thinking of covering it over a two year period and really taking the time to delve deeper into it. Plus we have so many great fiction books that go with this time period that it would be a shame not to be able to read them.

She told me in front of the boys that the only thing she really requires on a daily basis is reading!!! Yea!!! Diane!!! So with that in mind, the boys won’t be allowed to not read daily and I can use her as my reason. I know evil mom, but we do what we must. Another suggestion was to go back to requiring the boys to write a bit more. She wants the Ark to write at least 1 paragraph with a topic sentence 3 supporting sentences and a closing sentence. At whatever frequency I decide, while Ace is to start learning that process this upcoming year.

So, my tentative plan is focusing on reading, writing, spelling, math on a daily basis, with a much reduced history and science. One thing I’m not sure I’m ready to let go is the boys Latin studies, I really want them to learn it, so that might be on our daily list. Another item I want is daily drawing, I think the boys like to draw and I want to encourage them in it. My only problem is that they don’t want to have any instruction, just draw. I would like to see their drawing improve.ONe thing I did this year was i had a self evaluation and had the boys look at it, the Ark filled his out and it was interesting to see what he felt he did. I think we will do one at the end of each semester to help evaluate us and hopefully keep us on track. Another thing Diane suggested was to make sure I write down our goals so I don’t forget them and freak out mid year. Which I definitely plan to do.

She loved our lapbooks but suggested that we only do a few minibooks and that the boys be able to pick out the minibooks that they want to do, so that they each are invested in what they are learning and giving them each a different look to their work but still learning about the same subject.

So that is the end of the year evaluation. We have some educational videos that we borrowed, I want the boys to watch and then notebook what they feel is important. So in August when we start again I will have a 6th grader, 3rd grader, 1st. grader and a preschooler.  I need to make up certificates for them.

Check back for the schedule….

Curriculum Thoughts for 2009/2010

I am taking a much needed break from studying for my classes to talk about some of my thoughts for next year. While I love Sonlight and have used it exclusively since The Ark was in preschool we are taking a bit of a deviance this year and only using part of it. One of the reasons is because I didn’t like Children’s History of the World for younger grades and I switched it to Story of the World by Susan Bauer. Well here we are getting ready to go into our second rotation of history and Sonlight uses SOW but we have done them. So we are going to Mystery of History  with Sonlight Readers and Read Alouds. I had already left Sonlight’s science since I’m not fond of it, we are doing Astronomy, will finish Botany this summer and then go to Zoology 1 this fall. If we get through it on a good pace, we will move onto Zoo 2 next spring.

The Ark has been flying through Saxon math for the last two years but I want him to have a solid foundation in fractions since they are so important in Algebra and I want to wait for his brain to hit the logical thinking stage before we hit algebra, meaning not earlier than 8th grade. While Ace and the Princess have been doing Horizons Math. Ace has the hardest time getting through that work, I guess it is not hands on enough for him so we are switching all three of them to Math U See. I like their newer program, so we will see how it goes. The Ark was complaining a bit until I explained how Algebra is mostly fractions and then he realized that he really needed to get fractions down pat.

The next change is grammar, the kids hate it. So we are going to take a year to do more hands on things with it as well. Starting with reading GrammarLand

We will also do Hands of a Child ‘s  Operation: Grammar and  Mission:Paragraph Island Rescue for lapbooking. For writing we will use Writing Strands for all 3 of them.

I had panned Latin for The Ark since he was still struggling with his dsylexia. We are adding in Ace and will start it back up in the fall.

For Art and Music we are doing Harmony Fine Arts, with Artistic Pursuits and Meet the Great Composers.

Of course we will be doing swim lessons, swim team for the boys,bike riding and hiking this summer, as well as lots of playground time while we are waiting for swim team and swim lessons to be over.

My Daisy girl (Kendra’s nick name from a friend) and The Ark are going to camp in June. I’m helping out with VBS  again in June.

I have some books at my amazon wish list that I want to add into our homeschooling. I will post them as i buy them. I found some really great math stories and will probably get the ones that fit into our ancient history theme.

Ok, enough of an update for now.

Plans for 2009

I know I’ve not been posting much but between schooling, college classes and children. I don’t have a great deal of time. Our plans for next week are:

• Start The Ark on Saxon Math 76
• Finish SOW vol. 3 within 2 weeks, then spend two weeks on a Ohio unit study.
• Get Ace motivated in his schoolwork
• Get back into a routine!!!
• Find time for science again….we are doing Astronomy, we love it but we are lacking time
• Need to find time for our read alouds as well.
  
• I found a new bible study for us here
  
• I’m also planning for our schoolbooks for next school year. I have to buy them with our tax money so planning starts about now.
• So planning for next year is rolling around in my head.
  

I need to get the boys to write out their individual goals for this year as a writing project for them. We are also checking out prices for The Ark to take bagpipe lessons and if we can afford them will be adding them into our life, as well as art lessons for the Princess, who also starts back to swimming monday night for 9 weeks. Kendra is also in the final months of confirmation class. I start my classes on Jan. 12th.

Coming Soon

Thanksgiving Lapbooks will be being made not this week but the two weeks after. I will also be posting what they are thankful for.

More poetry

Haiku~ If I were grown

Then I could be a pastor

I could teach everyone

A Couplet~If I had lots of money

I could buy lots of honey

Free Verse

War…….

I like to play war

with my Playmobil’s

My ships have canons

That make a big “Kaboom”

I attack my enemies

With lots of men

Capturing their captain

the survivors surrender

The Pirate Skeltons seize

the day.

Yes, he was given some help, I would say the sentence he came up with and then make him fill in the blanks.

Noah's story

The Swamp Thing

The swamp thing is a man. He looks scary with his pointy teeth, evil eyes and his slippery scaly green skin. He smells like a dead animal. He feels slimy like a fish. He makes groaning and bubbling noises that are scary. The swamp thing is a very scary looking man.
It all starts when I’m in my tree house near the swamp. I was drawing a picture of the swamp pond. The pond has lily pads, flowers and frogs in it. I saw the water start bubbling. The I saw the swamp man come out of the pond, he had plants on him because he had been underwater so long. I keep drawing and he looks at me. He stops and stares at me. I bring up the rope ladder so he can’t get to me. I decide to wait until he leaves. Next thing I know I hear my iphone ringing. He is trying to find out what is making that noise.

We are working on getting him to write creatively and add in similes. I made a few suggestions to this to correct the negatives. But the majority of this is his work right down to the iphone. We don’t have one but he would love it if we did.

The art lesson/writing

So today I finally got around to teaching the first art lesson in Art Adventures at Home. It was about lines and shapes. Afterwards I had to do some gesture drawings for my art drawing 1 class for college, so I showed Noah the difference between gesture and contour drawings as well as had him do one of each. He thinks it is cool to watch mom do gesture drawings. Then we had to work on his “the thing” story for SL 3 . He actually really got into story telling today. He even drew a picture for the story. We will be working on adding to it, correcting mistakes for awhile I think. When he feels it is done I will post it here for everyone to enjoy. I’m hoping to be able to do his writing and art on saturdays when there is less stress for us. It was nice to see him so excited aobut drawing and writing for a change.