Homeschool

After my big, bad VBAC post, I thought it’d be nice to have something a bit less controversial, lol.

I am trying to get together some other homeschool mommies to join me at the upcoming Parent Institute that is being offered as part of the Colorado Gifted and Talented Conference.  (Both links are pdf files.)  I wouldn’t mind attending the conference too, actually.  My parents will be in town, and my mom is a gifted teacher, so I thought she might be up for it.  Its not cheap, but some of the sessions look really interesting.

So, if you’re looking for a date for the gifted conference, let me know, lol.  I’m in the market too!  If I don’t make it this year, then I may try again next year  🙂

Our homeschooling path was turned a bit upside down last week. My 4yo daughter has been begging to start school. I was planning on holding off another year, but she was just so excited about the idea. I had a copy of the teacher’s manual for My Father’s World Kindergarten sitting around, so I decided to order the student pages so that we could use it for this year.

OK… It would be an understatement to say that she was thrilled. She was so excited to start that she stopped eating dinner when the UPS man brought the materials to the front door. She begged to start “school” that night. Her enthusiasm has not waned. As I write this, we still have not even been able to take a day off of the curriculum. Today is Sunday, and we still schooled. She refuses to take a day off. We will finish this thing at record pace if we keep on this track, lol.

So anyways, the other unexpected thing that happened is that Matt decided that he wanted to try the 1st Grade Curriculum that My Father’s World offers. He saw how much fun she was having, and he wanted something similar for himself. His reading level is above what MFW expects, so we’ll still be doing Ambleside for history, literature, character training, and several other subjects. We’ll just be adding MFW for Bible and supplementary science, language arts, and who-knows-what-else. I guess I’m flying by the seat of my pants here. I called the kind people at MFW and they suggested that I bump him up to the 2nd/3rd grade curriculum, but he’s still just a 6-year-old in so many other aspects, and I think he’ll really benefit from making the Bible notebook. It just means that we’ll have to supplement their literature and language arts, which is fine since we LOVE Ambleside, and we’re not ready or willing to abandon the Ambleside readings.

Once I started looking into MFW, I saw that they give the kids book baskets each week. You fill the baskets with books about what you’ve been studying, and let the kids have free rein. You use books that are above, below, and at their reading level, and it is up to them to decide what they want to read and how.

We went to the library today, and it was no surprise to see what my children picked. They always run straight for the dinosaur aisle, and pick out as many non-fiction books as they can hold. They are so single-minded about it. I don’t mind, and they know more about dinosaurs than most paleontologists that we’ve met, so I figure it can’t be all bad. After all, learning about dinosaurs teaches great phonics, geology, geography, biology, classification, etc., etc.

I decided to take a lesson from MFW though, and grab some books to make them a book basket. I picked out both fiction and non-fiction. I grabbed the sequel to My Father’s Dragon, a book that Matt loved, for his basket. I also picked some books for birding in Colorado (he loves birding), snakes, strange animals, a book of poetry, a few books with international fairy tales, and a biography of Benjamin Franklin that is on our Ambleside free reading list. For Julia I picked several of the Ambleside Year 0 books – Blueberries for Sal, Little Babaji, and Make Way for Ducklings. Then I also picked out some non-fiction books on sea creatures and bugs, and then a book of easy poetry. I rounded it out with a book on how to draw dinosaurs.

We came home and I filled their baskets. They were so excited. It was really cute. Tonight Julia read Little Babaji and a few of the non-fiction books. Matt read all of his non-fiction books, one of the international fairy tale books, and decided to start the sequel to My Father’s Dragon. I was reminded tonight that it is good to keep balance. Although I would never stop them from reading dinosaur books, I’m really glad that I grabbed the other books. They wouldn’t have picked them off of the shelves themselves today, and yet they were so excited to read them when we came home. Life is all about balance, isn’t it? 🙂

I decided that I wanted to split my blog, so I made a new domain 🙂 I’ve been sitting on it for a while so that I could decide how I want to use it. I ultimately decided that I will use it to record our daily accomplishments as well as my lesson plans/checklist for the day. I have been keeping a paper copy, which is driving me nuts! I do much better in digital format.

I have our recently read books on the sidebar at the new site. If you have a child who is just starting to read, then that may be helpful. I have been wanting to track them, but it didn’t make sense to put them on my sidebar since most of what I talk about here has to do with adult books.

Anyways, if you want to check it out, here is the link:

http://www.mycrazyday.com/

Realistically, I don’t expect anyone to find this interesting except for me, lol. It is not a place for deep thoughts or great wisdom. 😉 We are working through Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books and Ambleside Year 1 on a modified (slow) schedule, so if you are using either program then it might possibly be a help. I also intend to upload a lot of the paperwork and schedules that we are using, so that may end up being a good resource. 🙂

Feel free to let me know if you have any ideas for things that you’d like to see on the new site, and I’ll try to work it in 🙂

I can’t even tell you how much I love this program!

We started our reading program by using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  It sucked the fun out of the room.  We were getting the job done, but it was not enjoyable for anyone.  I decided to back off when my ds said that he didn’t like it, but I was afraid that we were going to have to go back to it and that he’d be miserable.  I am so thankful that a friend recommended Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books.  That simple recommendation helped us to make a wonderful u-turn in our reading lessons.  Hallelujah!

The idea behind TaCtRwCB (how’s that for an abbreviation?) is that you use actual children’s books and not dry readers.  He goes through an entire sample lesson based on a program that has been used in some public schools when they were able to give one-on-one attention.  The elements of each lesson include books that your child knows well, books that they recently learned, word building based on those books, writing small stories, and then introducing a new book.  It uses a mix of phonics and sight-reading to help them build their vocabulary.

The wonderful thing about the skill level of the books is that they start with ones that are repetitive and use words that many kids know.  That means that they can have the accomplishment of reading an entire book from the beginning of the program.  That is so much more satisfying than just reading nonsensical words (“….ab….”, “….ar….”)  Although we’ve officially been doing the program with my 5yo, my 3yo has picked it up just from watching.  She is now able to read as well.  Both of them beg for me to start our lessons for the day, and they are sad when we finish our books.  I wake up in the morning to them asking if the library has any new books on hold for us that they can read.  It is so phenomenal to see the difference between the way that they approached 100 Easy Lessons and the way that they are approaching this method.  They love it, and this is what I dreamed of for our homeschooling experience.

When we retire a book or run out of new books, then I just look at the lists in the back and pick a book that is the appropriate level.  I place them on hold at the library and keep them in a basket next to our couch to become our new book that we introduce at the end of each lesson.  It takes very little planning, and the kids enjoy going through the basket to pick which book they think we should read next.

We do most of our word building with magnetic letters on the fridge.  When there is a word that they are stuck on or that keeps popping up, then we work on it and on the entire word family on the fridge at the end of our lesson.

So yeah, I highly recommend this book.  My son already knew his letter sounds when we started, and my daughter knew some of them, but the book guides you through it even if you’re not to that point yet.  I’d love to hear from you if you try it!