Life Is Our Classroom

Emily's School

2010-03-10T14:15:00.001-08:00

Emily's report on bees. She really has enjoyed her bug book from the library and decided the first thing she wanted to read about was honey bees. After reading about it I asked her to write a little about it. She completed it with a couple pictures of bees. The picture stapled to the back shows the bees in the hive and is really cool. She got the honeycomb look and all.

The dinosaur lap book that we had so much fun making. And I love that Emily likes to look back and read it. We were talking about dinosaurs and the dinosaur bones that have been found in our state and she asked if they had found any "terrible lizards"? I knew she got it from her lap book and was testing to see if I remembered that dinosaur means "terrible lizard".

We started our lap book on Pilgrims in November, but after finding out I was pregnant the morning sickness hit hard and we have slowly been coming back to working on it and trying to finish it. So its still a work in progress.

The stalactite experiment. We don't know how many days/weeks it takes for the stalactite to hit the bottom of the dish, but we are waiting impatiently. Lindsey comes in every day to see if it has "grown" yet.

Our bean! Its hard to see, but there is a tiny little root already growing out of the bean. It has sprouted!

For her 6th birthday Emily got a clothespin doll set from her great-grandma. Its awesome and so far these are the doll creations she has made.

I looked all over the house for her journal to show off because I think its totally awesome. But we have misplaced it and will have to show it later. I love this thing. We got it in the notebook section at the store and I love that the paper is for learning beginning writing and it has a space at the top for drawing pictures. Emily writes about what she wants, includes the date and draws a picture. I think it will be really neat when it is all filled up and we can look back on what she wrote.

Library Learning

2010-03-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

We have been having some tough financial issues this year, from Emily's hospital stay, Robert's cancer screenings, Lindsey's asthma, me and baby and having some backed taxes we didn't know about. Ballet lessons had to be dropped and so far we can't afford to add anything right now. We are hoping and praying things will lighten up some soon. The stress has had me down as far as homeschooling goes. Feeling like I can't give the important things that I am grateful my parents gave to me. Then there are the thoughts that I should just get a job myself, but how is that possible when I have a new baby on the way. So that plan has been laid aside for even more desperate times. After all, we aren't there yet, we are still making it and paying our bills, there just isn't room for much luxury or extras. And next month I am outfitting my kids for summer so money needs to go towards clothing and an infant car seat.

After feeling a little down for awhile and wondering what to do, the obvious thought came to me.... why am I not using the library for school more?? We use it for fun. Fun reading, movies, etc. but we haven't been actively searching their educational section for curriculum. I kicked myself a little and the next day I went and found some great books! As I mentioned before we have a couple science experiments that have come from one of those books. Another is an art book with so many ideas! Unfortunately Emily isn't quite interested in them- they would be perfect for Lindsey, but not at this age. Oh, well. Guess we will check that one out again in a few years. There is a wonderful book on bugs that Emily has really enjoyed and she did a report on honeybees from it. My mom used the library a lot for educational ideas and yet its something I have been over looking. So even though I am not able to purchase a lot of curriculum right now, learning can still go on. Even on a very tight budget!

Science Experiments

2010-03-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

Emily is loving science experiments and we have 2 going right now. We are growing a bean start in a jar with a paper towel so we can watch it. Ours does not look like this yet. I will take pictures when it starts to grow, but this is how it will begin and we are excited to see it.

We also have some stalactites trying to form between two jars with water and baking soda and a piece of yarn in between. A stalactite should form in a few days to a week. We'll see I guess.

Emily wrote to her sister in Taiwan to practice writing and I was impressed when she found her geography book so she could draw Taiwan's flag for her picture to her Aunt. We also talked about mold spores on food and moisture in the air and learned more about positive and negative charges with static electricity and playing with magnets.

Homeschool Update

2009-12-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

I have not been very diligent about keeping up our homeschool blog. We have done so many wonderful things for homeschool that I haven't talked about or taken pictures of. I started the homeschool blog so that I would have something to force me to show what we do, but it hasn't worked out that way. We have been doing lap books, water and air experiments, writing, math, reading, park days, dancing, field trips to the zoo and loads of craft projects. My goal is to take pictures of all the things we have done and the things yet to come.

Emily's math has improved quite a bit. She is doing first grade work and doing great! Her reading is still excellent and she is obsessed with Garfield comics and can read those all day! I really like it because the vocabulary is pretty high and she finds new words all the time that she asks me about. Her writing has improved now that I have been having her write a journal entry every school day to keep it up. We are in the process of trying to get into a co-op. We missed the last meeting because of sickness. And January should start dance class up again since she is done with hospital issues.

Lindsey is my little artist. Drawing on the walls and papers and everything. I am so amazed at how naturally this is coming to her. She is just like me. She draws circles and "writes". She is less interested in letters, but knows most of them and loves books. She pretends to read them all the time. She also has a stellar memory! She remembers things that I would never think she would remember.

A Homeschooling Plus

2009-10-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Emily is in the hospital right now for a ruptured appendix. It stinks! She has been here for 6 days now and still going. We are looking at 2 weeks at the least. The plus side here is that she isn't missing school. Still she is too sick to do her lessons and is vomiting a lot, but she is not behind. She is ahead by a couple grades on some things so I don't have to worry right now that she is falling behind. The hardest thing for her is that she is missing dance class. We have been reading stories- a great Madeline story about getting her appendix out- and we are watching non-educational videos. But she is learning a lot about other kids who stay here for months at a time. Kids with cancer down the way and she is learning life lessons that aren't so fun right now to learn. We love her and really hope that soon she will be able to get up and go home and learn while not feeling the need to vomit. Until then, its wonderful to know that life is learning and sometimes we do it when we are sick in the hospital.

Start of the School Year

2009-09-22T17:56:00.000-07:00

Emily and I have started our school year officially. Our affidavit is sent in, even though she technically doesn't need it until next year, we decided for our own protection to send it in. Now that vacation mode is officially off after a great Disneyland trip, we are on track. My goals for this year are to work with her math skills and practicing them and practicing writing. She is doing very well. She told me that she already knows how to write. I told her that is true that she knows how to put her thoughts down on paper and can read very well, but that everyone needs to practice their penmanship and the operations of writing letters. We got one sentence down well and I was very pleased with her. Small steps, she is doing great!

We have also been working on her math and she has been doing very well with her math. We have been working on addition, subtraction, place value and multiplication. She has also improved a lot with her reading interest level. Even though she has been reading on a 2nd grade level, she hasn't wanted to go much past picture books and small chapter books. Recently she has picked up 4th grade reading material on her own and found it interesting. She finished in half a day the 4th Magic Treehouse book and asked for more.

So far things are going great! We are excited to start a new year.

Ebay + Homeschool

2009-07-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

I needed some books for the new year and was frustrated to find the prices to be outrageous and the shipping terrible too. So I decided to finally jump on and join Ebay. The books I needed were $35 with $8 shipping. Through Ebay I got them for $26 with free shipping. Every little bit helps, especially with homeschool when everything comes out of pocket for us parents.

Homeschool Musical

2009-03-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

I went a few weeks ago with a homeschool friend of mine to a small theater here that was doing a Homeschool Musical play.

It was pretty funny and they of course made homeschoolers appear weird, but smart. That's a plus. And really in all, they were fairly respectful of homeschooling. I will say their 'Linoleum Dynamite' was very good! The thing I found to be funny about him was that the real character Napoleon Dynamite was not a homeschooler, but went to traditional public school but was weird anyway. Seems you get both weird public and homeschoolers. It was really fun.

Homeschool and Emily

2009-03-31T12:26:00.000-07:00

Emily has been working on her math and her multiplication. We did some flash cards and she started to tout the "Mom, this is too hard and I don't know the answer." So I patiently worked with her until she believed in herself and I KNEW she would get it right. She got the answers right and I had to tell her that she knows it isn't hard because she taught herself the concept of multiplication. She totally knows it and got it and her confidence was boosted when she saw that she did have the answers right. We did the Hooked on Math flash cards. And brought out her Math-U-See math blocks for her to visualize the problems. She is just like me in her audio visual learning.

We have also been working on her writing particularly with her holding a pencil correctly. She likes to hold the whole thing in her fist. And doesn't want to listen to me when I tell her to hold it the other way. I don't push too much when she gets obstinate with many things because she soon finds the correct way with our working together on things. But in this case, I have to push her. I don't want her creating habits that will be harder to break. And her other issue with writing we are working on is when she writes mixtures of upper and lower case letters in her words. Emily to her is always spelled with upper case L. She is really thriving in reading, but she has been doing it for so long. I still get amazed at how she takes a difficult and long word and can break it up so well to be able to figure it out. I don't know if her reading level is on a 2nd or 3rd grade. I am going to have to do another online evaluation soon just so I know where she is at. I know the books she is reading are in that level, but it will be nice to know.

Lindsey has been getting doses of starfall.com and Letter Factory. She walks around saying "The A says AHH" But kind of gets lost with the other letters. She recognizes by sight A,B, D, E, G, H, I, K, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, and Z. She mixes up M and W sometimes as well. She is doing so well. Things are going great right now. Emily's drama class is almost up. They are soon going to perform their play and Emily has memorized her lines and does really well with acting. Her interests recently has included dinosaurs and storms. She asked me the other day in the car "Mommy, do people have egg tooths?" HAHA! She read that birds have an egg tooth to break out of their shell and I had to tell her we don't have an egg tooth because we don't need one.

Universal Pre-K a Scam

2009-03-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

Wow, this article says a million words. And I can just say how happy I am with a GOOD reporter. John Stossel was also the one that brought us the gem on 20/20 called 'Stupid In America' that addressed the Nation's failing schools. I seriously can't believe some of this. I am not a pre-school fan as it is and this just tops it all. My favorite parts are the ones that are bolded. The location of the article is here.

It used to be that the first day of kindergarten was the first day of school. But now there's a new movement: Universal pre-K. Every child in America should have a chance to start school before kindergarten. Isn't that a wonderful idea? Part 4 of John Stossel's special "Bailouts and Bull" on universal preschool.

Universal pre-K was one of President Obama's campaign promises, and most Americans agree with him. Sixty-seven percent of Americans think the government should pay for every child to go to preschool, according to a June 2008 poll by Peter D. Hart Research Associates/American Viewpoint.

It all sounds so good. However, Mia Levi, a parent who owns six preschools in California, is not convinced.

"Of course it sounds good. All they hear about is a little sweet preschool program, and it's for the little children, and how can you say no to little children?" she said. "But this whole thing is a scam. It's like some kind of spin they want everybody to believe."

One argument against universal pre-K is that most American kids already attend pre-school. Parents pay for it themselves, and if they can't afford it, there are free programs like Head Start.

But under a universal system, taxpayers would pay for every child, regardless of who needs it.

"It's a flagrant waste of money," Levi said. "It's as if I went shopping for myself because I needed a dress for a party and I went and bought a dress for everybody else who was going to be at the party, whether they needed it or not. Who does that?"

The government thinks it can do a better job, but don't they have enough problems running K-12 education?

Just this week, while delivering remarks on education in America, Obama said, "We've let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us."

Is the solution to our problems to add more grades onto a broken system?

"The government is providing K-12 education. and unfortunately, we're in the toilet," said Levi, "to say that they are the ones to define what quality is, is laughable."

Universal Preschool 'a Waste of Money'

While there is no guarantee that government would run preschools well, there is one guarantee: It would cost taxpayers billions.

One argument against universal Pre-K is that most American kids already attend preschool.

"Now with the economic situation being what it is, you're telling me that we're going to devote billions of dollars that we don't have? It's a waste of money," Levi said.

Making matters worse, private preschools that are already functioning well would have to conform to government standards, reducing the incentives to compete and provide the best-quality education. Levi and many others recognize this.

"The beauty of preschool is that there are myriad choices. If we didn't do our job, families would go down the street to the next school. Public schools aren't doing their job, and they get to just keep opening their doors," she said. (One HUGE reason why competition in education is SO important.)

Yet the president and many universal pre-K advocates point to statistics that claim for every $1 the government invests in pr-school, we will get $10 back.

Lisa Snell, education director of the Reason Foundation, points out that those impressive pre-K statistics are misleading because they're based on small studies of kids with very low IQs.

"They have these tiny studies of severely disadvantaged kids. But then they extrapolate as if you would have the same benefits for middle-income and higher-income children," she said.

She also pointed out that the most well-known of these studies, the Perry Pre-School experiment, followed only 58 children. These kids received many benefits like parent counseling and home visits -- all bonuses that would certainly skew the results.

Libby Doggett, executive director of one of the leading universal preschool advocacy groups, Pre-K Now, defends the study because she believes it demonstrates the benefits of a massive investment in preschool for low-income children.

"Well that study was an incredible study because they did have a random assignment. They had children who didn't get this treatment and children that did get the treatment, and the treatment was really high-quality," she said.

A Real Head Start?

And while that study concluded that preschool had a lasting effect on kids, plenty of other studies of the government's Head Start program point out that the gains from preschool tend to fade over time.

"By the second, third, fourth grade, they can't tell the difference between the kids that went to Head Start and the kids who didn't," Snell said.

In addition, studies have found that too much preschool may lead to kids becoming more disruptive and aggressive when they get to elementary school, a finding which Doggett acknowledges. But she insists that the government can provide high-quality programs that will avoid this problem.

"They're doing it in a number of states. Oklahoma is a good example. Georgia is a good example," she said.

It's true that those states have government-run preschool programs already. Oklahoma has had it for 10 years, and so has Georgia. They've spent billions of taxpayers' dollars on it, and the result? Not impressive. Oklahoma's performance has actually dropped relative to other states.

"We don't want to just focus on IQ scores," Doggett insists. "We want to look at how children are doing in their social and emotional, noncognitive development. ... Your children will learn more in pre-K than you could imagine."

But how can we be so sure that the government can do a high-quality job?

"This time, we're going to get it right," Lisa Snell said of the government's promise to American parents. "We can't get it right with Head Start, we can't get it right with K-12, but if you give us control of the preschool market in America, this time it will be high-quality."

Do Kids Really Learn Like This?

2009-03-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

I am driving Emily and Lindsey in the car and this is how the conversation went:

Emily: "Mommy, 5, 4 times is 20."

Me: "Why yes it is sweetie. How do you know that?"

Emily "Because on my colorful tights there are 4 flowers and each flower has 5 petals. I counted them and there are 20 all together, so 5, 4 times equals 20."

That little conversation heralded some more math problems. I asked her what 3 + 3 was and she told me 6 and I told her that 3, 2 times is 6. We got out her math blocks the other day and discussed decimal street and did subtraction, addition and multiplication. I really can't help being surprised by what this girl can do! She reads everything she can get her hands on. Her cousins let her borrow a dinosaur book and after our lap book we made (that I have yet to show on our blog) she read it from cover to cover with complete fascination.

Lindsey has also been learning like wild fire. She told me "B mommy, b-b-baby" and both of them loved the Children's Chinese video I had from the library. If I ask Lindsey what her tóu is she points to her head and her ěrduo she points to her ear. Her bízi- she points to her nose. She walks around saying some sayings I don't even remember with the handful of times I heard them watching it. I LOVE watching my kids learn. It is fascinating to me!

Dinosaurs, Math and Singing

2009-02-18T01:07:00.000-08:00

We have been in a relaxed yet busy state right now. We are in the process of trying to buy our first home, which has taken 6 months of looking, putting in offers and loosing them. We are finally on board to close soon which means we wait and we work. Because of all of this our schooling has taken some interesting turns. We have had some breaks and we have had times for Emily's excitement on a subject take off and we follow where it leads. I am also hitting the February blues and really wanting to get on with the packing and de-junking and moving. It has not been a total loss and it has not been our best few months either. But really, Emily is proving that she is learning more all the time.

Recently we have been studying dinosaurs and working on a lap book. Emily has learned a lot from it and really enjoys doing these. It is almost done and then I will be able to show the completed book. We have a dinosaur Usborne book that she really likes and that was what started her interest in them. She asks lots of questions about what they ate, where they lived, etc. and I am trying to address all of her questions in the lap book. Her other interest is in Garfield comics. We have two books in our house because Robert likes them. She has read both of them cover to cover. Sometimes alone and sometimes with us. It is really fun, she laughs and her vocabulary words are only getting stronger by reading them. She does need help with some bigger words, but surprises us with the ones she does on her own. The next thing is to find more Garfield comics at the library.

Her math has improved by leaps and bounds. Course she was ahead by quite a bit too. She is starting to understand how to add two digit numbers and we are working more on subtraction right now. Because she likes to count a lot to 100, Lindsey is picking up on it and today she said "100, 46, 40, 41..." She was naming off numbers I didn't even know she could say. And speaking of Lindsey. She is identifying a lot more letters now. And shapes too. I read her one of her favorite books and she identified "tri-tangle" and "tangle", circle and "scare".

And the two of them love to sing. Lindsey asks us to sing the "ABCD" and "Twinkle Star". Emily is doing really well in her drama class. Last week I dropped her off so I could stop by the bank. Lindsey was NOT happy about that and said "Emmy go? Lindsey go singing class!" So we came back and Lindsey listened to the songs and by the end she was trying to dance with the kids. After that day she has come home and started singing "Monster Mash" in the cutest voice. She purses her little lips tight and tries to sing in a deep baby voice and I LOVE it! Emily gets so focused and asks me if I will turn on her music CD so she can practice and sing with the songs.

They are both doing SO well and they surprise me every day with what they learn and know.

Count by 5's Jumping

2009-01-24T12:44:00.000-08:00

To reinforce counting by 5's I decided to have Emily jump and say the numbers as she jumped. Lindsey wanted to do it too. She needs a little more practice, but she got the idea that you add 5 more to get the number and the understanding of the concept is what I wanted the most. The rest of it will come through practice.

BOOKS!

2009-01-15T23:21:00.000-08:00

I LOVE books. I think I have mentioned that. I had some great luck last night. I have added to my already exploding book shelf. Here are some of the books I got: Secrets of the Mummies, These Happy Golden Years- I am 2 books away from owning the series-, You Are Special, Meet Kaya- collecting the American Girls series for Emily. And these are the other ones:

I have been looking for this one for a long time. I have wanted to read it forever, but seeing that it is 900 pages, I thought I would rather own it than have to keep renewing it from the library.

I have the first book called Boy about the life of Roald Dahl. I love his books. He is a very animated author. I have read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach. I am missing other collections of his in our library, but we are getting there.

I love this book. It is on the lines of the story of Corrie Ten Boom and The Hiding Place. I can't believe I found it since it is out of print. It is either under this title or the title of The Small Woman. It is the true story of Gladys Aylward. A woman who during WWII was a Christian missionary in China and her experiences loving the people, serving them and saving hundreds of children from the invading Japanese by walking with them over mountains to safety. Incredible story! If you have never read it, take a moment to, it is a courageous book.

I really enjoy Usborne books and so does Emily. They are very interesting and Emily loves her books about science and the body, castles, eating, butterflies, space, music, etc. This has very fascinating pictures and I was very excited to find it for 50 cents.

Emily loves Dr. Seuss and has read almost all of them. I got her this one and a few other reader books, she read them all in one sitting. And when we go to the library she checks out what she wants and reads them in one night. I can't keep this child entertained long enough. She loves new things to read, but is still in the stage where books with pictures on every page are still the best. Well, those books are also the shortest. What do you do when you are 4 and can read, but you still think like a 4 year old? I guess we are figuring this out with lots of Dr. Seuss, some Magic Treehouse books and lots of Frog and Toad. I only wish there were more than 4 Frog and Toad books.

I tell you, if I went on a book hunt every week, Robert would probably not know what to do with himself and all of the books around him. Not that I really know what to do with them, besides read them all and save them for my kids. Emily informs me when she is bigger she will read the books with no pictures like me, but she isn't there yet. Funny girl.

Carnival of Homeschooling

2009-01-12T01:00:00.000-08:00

Another carnival of really good blog articles about homeschooling from Why Homeschool.

Our Lapbooks

2008-12-18T20:15:00.000-08:00

Months ago Emily and I worked on our first lap book about the 5 senses. She loved doing it and still loves to look at it. She wanted to show her daddy, cousins and grandma what she did.

Then about two months ago we finished our Charlotte's Web project. We read almost all of the book. Emily wanted to finish it and was getting excited, but we still have not gotten back to it. I believe we have two chapters left to finish. Emily did a dot-to-dot of Wilbur, a poem I helped her with, a story summary and crossword puzzle. We loved reading the book together and we will have great memories because of that story.

Math Patterns, Writing and Christmas Books

2008-12-18T17:02:00.000-08:00

Today Emily wanted to learn again about telling time. She really is figuring this out line by line. She understood today that the number before the dots is the hour and the numbers after it are the minutes. She understands the concept of skip counting and patterns. She proved it when I showed her on paper how to skip by 2 s, 3 s, etc. We went to 5 s and then she showed me- without me going over this at all- that she understood how to count by 10 s. 10, 20, 30, 40, and so on. She made it to 100. GOOD JOB Emily! So I showed her a pattern of circle, square, triangle and she was able to see the sequence and guess which ones came next. She then took her Math U See blocks and was doing basic addition with them. I had her do a page of basic addition a month back and through the concepts she has learned visually with MUS she was able to understand them.

Then we practiced a little of her lower case penmanship and she needed some encouragement with them. By the end she said she didn't want ANY help.

We read a great Christmas book about Laura Ingalls Wilder's Christmas in the big woods. I love those books and have been collecting them used for awhile now. We talked about how in the old days kids didn't get a lot of presents and there were very few stores. Their gifts were homemade and from the heart and the children loved them all the more. Just like Laura who loved her homemade rag doll with button eyes. And her one candy cane and red mittens, likely knitted by a loving mother. Lindsey had a few of her own stories and got very angry when Emily came in trying to correct her alphabet. I had to explain that Lindsey needs some one on one time too and it was her turn. It was a good day. Emily didn't want to stop school today, but mommy was tired by it all! I promised her tomorrow that we will do an electricity experiment from our new electricity book. She also wants to do an experiment with magnets. What a little sponge!

Homeschooling Carnival

2008-12-04T00:40:00.001-08:00

I thought I would post and add a link on here about something I love to read. I think these are just wonderful and very inspiring. Keeps me excited and going with our journey and there are many wonderful ideas on here too. So here is the first post of the Homeschooling Carnival.

Learning Two Lessons

2008-12-03T23:39:00.000-08:00

With my sister-in-law in the hospital for cancer surgery, I decided I would help Emily learn two lessons. Writing and forming her letters correctly and showing love to her Aunt. The writing was a test in patience for myself. It took a long time and Emily got pretty bored. But when I suggested that one thing I read about all the time- giving little ones a break- she said that no she wanted to finish it and give it to her Aunt. She told me what she wanted to say and it was very sweetly put. She practiced over and over when she was a sweet little 3 year old on how to write her capital letters and has them all down. It's those lower case letters she doesn't want to do. I reminded her that she practiced the other letters and that is why she can do them so well. I finally told her that it will be time to put the writing aside if she was not going to follow my direction in writing words with lower case letters. She decided she would listen because she really wanted to finish the letter.

Dear Lori,
I am sorry you are sick. I hope you get better soon. I want to help you get better and healthy. Thank you for letting me play at your house.
Love Emily

It is now written in cute little 4 year old penmanship with the second lesson achieved, love for her Aunt. Emily is learning life lessons. That people get sick and that sometimes it makes the other people around them very sad. She has told me that when I get sick, she isn't sad, so how come her cousin Kara is sad about her mommy? I had to answer age appropriately about different kinds of illness. Her little cousins 5, 3 and 21 months are all showing their fear in different ways and Emily knows and senses their fear. Life lessons that hurt and are hard to have any answers for. But Emily is very good at showing love and I am grateful she showed both perseverance and love during her lesson. We hope to give it to her soon.

Paper Clip Fun, Stuart Little and Checkers

2008-11-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

In What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know they have a method for teaching how some things are larger and also the beginnings of measurements. I gave Emily free reign of the box of paperclips and she went around the house measuring and writing down how many paperclips something was. Then we sat down and read 4 chapters of Stuart Little. She looked at the author and said "Mommy! E.B. White, the same one that wrote Charlotte's Web!" That is really neat that she remembered the author from our Charlotte's Web lapbook, which I will need to post about sometime, she is very happy about it. After that she begged me to play checkers with our glass chess set. She got very good after the first try. She was jumping my players right and left. I really like the logic that games like that teach. Which is why the plan for Christmas includes a few more games in our game closet.

It amazes me what she can come up with on her own. We stopped at the light the other day coming on evening and she said "Mommy, red means stop, so the lights on the other cars are red to tell you to stop." Yes. She is a very observant child, I have to admit, I didn't even notice things like that until I was much older.

Counting by 2s

2008-11-12T22:56:00.000-08:00

Emily wants to tell time. However, the concept of counting by 5s has not quite taken root in her brain. But I don't think it is far away. Many times when I think it will take her a long time to grasp something, a month or even a two weeks later, she gets it. She understands how to count by 2s. Whether she will remember it will come with practice, but she got it. I demonstrated it first on paper and then we played a dot-to-dot game where she could try this new skip counting out. She is doing just wonderfully with numbers. Her reading level continues to climb and we are having a blast. I really love this! What fun it is to watch her learn so much.

Breaks

2008-11-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

We have had a break for a few weeks. Which I am not worried about seeing that we are ahead. The break has been while we are getting this moving and house hunting done. It seems to be taking most of my time. But that doesn't mean we stop learning, especially with Emily around. She is used to a lot more structure though and it is starting to bug her that I am so focused on this. She asks me "Mom, can I get my school box? Please can we make another lap book?" I think I will need to dedicate Monday to doing a whole day dedicated to school. Emily was reading a book to me about birds and imprinting and told me, "Mommy, I could lay eggs even though I am a people and have birds for babies." Ummm... well not quite sweety. She is so funny. She is such a motivated child and I feel bad that I have been too caught up in the other stuff. She is still going to her singing class and loving it. I can't wait to be settled in a new place and get our schedule up and running again.

The other factor in my scatterbrained head is Lindsey. My sweet baby, she is definitely turning 2. She is stubborn beyond words! I had a very pleasant first child. She had her moments, days, weeks, months, but even those were easier. She was a lot more obedient and I am finding that the same discipline I used on Emily does NOT work on Lindsey. Go figure, they really are different. I think teaching them will be completely different and Lindsey will teach me how to stretch my imagination and creativity. Until then she is set on testing my patience right now. Hopefully our break will be over soon. Until then, we are learning by living and setting structure aside for now.

Children Starting School Too Young

2008-10-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

This article is really insightful about how starting school younger and younger does not yield better results academically. This is from BBC news in England. I think it has great points about the negative effects this has on academics and children. So many reasons I am beyond grateful to be homeschooling right now. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

Do children start school at too young an age in England? Is childhood freedom being curtailed too soon?

Compared to most other western European countries, English pupils are extremely early starters in the classroom.

While compulsory education begins in England at the age of five (with many children actually starting at four), in countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland, school doesn't begin until the age of seven.

English children are ploughing through a fixed curriculum while their continental counterparts are still ploughing up the kindergarten sandpit or playing at home.

But which system delivers the best results?

The young ones

This far-reaching question has been raised by the Cambridge-based Primary Review which is scrutinising how primary education is organised. And its conclusion challenges the idea that an early start has long-term advantages.

"The assumption that an early starting age is beneficial for children's later attainment is not well supported in the research and therefore remains open to question," says the report.

COMPULSORY SCHOOL AGE
Pupil with international flags
Five years old: England, Scotland, Wales, Malta, the Netherlands
Six years old: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain
Seven years old: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Poland

Source: NFER/ Eurydice

So why do English schoolchildren start at five, when almost everyone else in Europe starts later?

Apart from the Netherlands and Malta, the only other education systems beginning at five are Scotland and Wales (with Northern Ireland even earlier at four).

The origin of such an early start, introduced in 1870, had little to do with education, says the Primary Review report.

Entering full-time education at such a tender age meant reducing the malign influence of Victorian feckless parents - it was about child protection and social conditioning rather than learning.

And it was an attempt to appease suspicious employers, who were worried that starting any later would remove their supply of juvenile workers. An early start meant an early school leaving age.

Long hours culture

The result remains with us - and as a consequence one of the most distinctive characteristics of English schoolchildren is how little time they spend with their family.

Primary classroom
Long hours in the classroom are not an advantage, says report

Children are full time in school up to three years earlier than in Scandinavia - and the summer holidays in England and Wales are shorter than anywhere else in the European Union.

And the pressure on schools is now to become "extended schools" which would create an even longer day, with optional activities before and after school hours.

But this is far from straightforward territory. If children were not in school, what would be the impact on working parents? Long hours in childcare are already a reality for many pre-school children.

Last year's teachers' conferences heard concerns that children were spending so little time with their own families that they were showing signs of aggression and de-socialisation, taking their behaviour from their peer group rather than absent adult role models.

Less is more?

But what does it mean for education standards?

Finnish classroom
Children in Finland start at seven but soon overtake English pupils

One of the most intriguing statistics from international comparisons is the lack of relationship between hours in the classroom and educational achievement.

Finland, a global superstar in education terms, is consistently among the top performers. But it is also at the very bottom of the league in terms of the hours spent in the classroom.

Finnish pupils start formal education at seven and then enjoy 11-week summer holidays - and they end up with the highest educational standards in Europe.

Poland, a rapid-climber in international education league tables and overtaking England at reading skills, is also another country where pupils do not start until the age of seven.

There is another egalitarian argument for starting school early. Pupils from poorer homes, with parents who are less able to help their learning, might be held behind if they didn't start lessons until six or seven.

Level playing field

But a rather sobering set of statistics published by the government earlier this year showed that the length of time spent in school does little to level the playing field.

When pupils start school at five, the children of more affluent families are already ahead. But this "attainment gap", instead of closing gets wider at each stage up to the age of 16. As every year passes in school, the results of the richest and poorest grow further apart.

There have been some other cross-winds of concern about children starting school before they are ready. The government has highlighted summer-born children, whose parents could now be given the right to delay entry by a year.

It followed research showing that the disadvantage of being the youngest in a year group persisted right through primary and secondary school. While 60.7% of September-born girls achieved five good GCSEs, only 55.2% of August-born girls achieved the same.

The Primary Review, taking an overview of the evidence, suggests that there is no clear link between quantity and quality in education.

Or put another way, the early bird doesn't necessarily become the bookworm.

Learning Through Play

2008-10-26T22:22:00.001-07:00

Recently Emily told me that she had a dream that she learned how to ride a 2-wheel bike without training wheels and she did it without help. So she got right to it. Where we live in our community there are kids bikes left out for all the children to use. Emily decided she would practice until she could do it. And she did just that. She practiced and practiced, for hours. Until one day, here she is riding a 2-wheeler all by herself. I gave encouragement and words of advice, but she did it. She is very pleased with accomplishing this. This was relevant and important to her. To her, this wasn't something I made her do, I didn't force it on her and she saw it as fun. She learned through play.

Which is something that sadly does not get enough credit. My children are given chances to play and I love it! Books are a part of life and learning in our house, as are blocks and puzzles, toys. I really liked this article in regards to how children learn through play time.

Is play really a waste of time? Did nature goof when all cubs, including humans, are born with a drive and an ability to play?

For me, child rearing has been a continual test to my ability to trust. Should I physically make sure that my child learns to crawl? Walk? Talk? How about "Talk and Walk Class for Toddlers 101"? Interestingly, language is the hardest thing to learn, and children do it all on their own. In fact, the speediest learning in humans occurs in the youngest years, when children generally play all day. Maybe nature didn't goof - maybe I can trust.

Adults worry that if children play, they won't learn. But that is what play time IS for them. Emily and Lindsey play while they read, while they build towers, role play. When Lindsey pushes her baby doll around the house in a stroller, feeds it, rocks it, cooks for me. She knows what she is doing. She is learning by making sense of the world she lives in.

So I trusted in nature from day one and noticed an interesting thing: children play, and their best learning happens through play. Children are designed to be curious. From birth on, they want to know and figure out everything. Children are driven to succeed. They are constantly challenging themselves and can actually accomplish it all through a biologically implanted process that we call play.

If children played all their childhood (I mean it), they would be ready for life. They would be emotionally strong (providing no other damage has been done), and would have all the basic skills to handle life. Our anxiety for children to know certain things at specific ages is an enormous obstacle to trusting and allowing their natural development. When children play, they are the only qualified authors of this magical process. It is rarely too late to acquire knowledge, but often it is dangerously too early and out of harmony with the internal journey of the child.

Trusting children to direct their own play has immediate advantages: 1) The child is likely to do exactly what is best for her emotionally, intellectually and socially. 2) There is no worry about age appropriateness, and no guesswork about what or how to play or learn. The child is his own best expert on timing as well. 3) Even adequate exposure to needed information is mostly taken care of. Life, as it is, can provide too much exposure in our times. Children will select that which applies to their personal needs. We can share our life with them, our interests, friends, loves, frustrations, activities... and they will observe, learn, and let us know of their needs in their own playful ways. Children who are allowed to play and direct heir own path, will study anything to get them where they want to go.

Emily rode the bike at the right time for her. She initiated it, she carried it out. I provided food for her desire, but she initiated her reading. She has shown me time and time again that she knows when is the best time for her to learn what is important to her. I do suggest from time to time. When she wanted to learn to count to 100 I helped her and tried to find ways for her to understand, but it wasn't the right time, so she wasn't interested for a few weeks. And then proved that she got it. When I tried to initiate the potty training MUCH too early for her, it proved disastrous! She showed me just how hard it was for her as she paced the floor crying about using the bathroom in either a diaper or the potty. That was when I told her I trusted her, we would put it away if she wasn't ready. I will never forget the look of gratitude in her face that day. My 2 year old who just needed to be trusted and given time. It is the same with learning. I have learned a lot as a parent and trusting my children is a big one.

What kind of play is so effective in growth and learning? The answer is simple: self-initiated, self-directed play.

Supermaket Math

2008-10-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

Emily and I have been shopping and not neglecting our schooling either. We have been doing math while we live. I have to run errands, why not learn while we are doing it? Emily plays with my calculator I carry around in my purse when she gets bored. She has fun finding what something + something =. Then she asked me the other day, "Mommy there aren't any tags on the things you buy. How do you know how much it costs?" After our math games day where we tried to find the object in the picture first and the price tag, she must have noticed that it isn't the same in the store. So I pointed out to her that underneath the merchandise there are numbers. I asked her what the first one said and she would tell me. I reminded her that the numbers on the right side of the . mean cents. She has been doing really well and will tell me, "This costs 2.65". And she will be able to recognize what the two digit number is. It's amazing to watch her grasp this all the sudden! I have been trying to explain how we round up and how something that is 2.99 is almost $3, but we haven't gotten there yet. Right now we are enjoying our math at the grocery store. Isn't life grand?!

Now I just need to make sure it doesn't go THIS far.

Emily is Learning Contractions

2008-10-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

Emily has been asking spelling questions and she loves to write. She writes down everything and the english and grammar are coming along little by little. She understands about periods and now it is having her understand when to use a capitol letter. But my understands contractions. We discussed it and then I found her a quiz. She did the entire thing. Asked for help mostly at the beginning and then got so good she was doing them without me. She would see 'did not' and be able to tell me that it was 'didn't' and type it out. It was great. And she has been teaching herself to ride a 2 wheel bike without training wheels. She told me she had a dream that she could do it by herself and didn't fall so she is determined to practice. She is getting better and better. I watch as she puts one foot on the pedal and adds the other and pedals for a little bit until she is nervous and puts her foot down. But she is coming along great!

Lindsey has been watching starfall.com with us and loves to say letters all the time and sounds, though she doesn't recognize them at all. She loves animal sounds, elephant right now mostly. She is a smarty just like her sister and we love learning together.

Math Games and Charlotte's Magnum Opus

2008-10-09T21:51:00.000-07:00

Emily is excited to see that we are almost done with Charlotte's Web. Never mind that we have been almost done for awhile. She wasn't interested in it. So we moved on for awhile. Now she is back and is excited to see that we have less than 30 pages to go. And she is even happier to watch Templeton become the gluttonous rat at the Fair. She asked about Charlotte's egg a lot and how spiders have an egg sac and why she called it a "magnum opus" or "great work". She was very intrigued by it. We have been reading it in the mornings and enjoying ourselves as the weather turns cold and there is more time to spend on other activities.

After we played with a 100 number chart. There are several fun math games I found dealing with this chart. One that we played was rolling the dice to see who could get to 100 first with their game piece. Emily won, of course, that little girl has the best luck and always wins. She started to be able to see in the dice that 6 + 6 was 12 and she was really enjoying the game. Then we played another one where we find in the picture what two kids bought and see who could find it first and find the price tag. She doesn't quite get how price looks when written. But after telling her some of it, she comes up with, "Mommy, that one is $3.50." Good job! And she would try and write each one down on a piece of paper. Lindsey of course could not be left out and was "cowowing" with us. Oh, and she wanted to put the date at the top of her picture and wrote October correctly!

Tonight with her pj's on, we found her sitting on the couch practicing more of her letters and copying out of a book what price looked like and writing what was on sale. It was really cute and I should have taken a picture. She looked so young and focused as she "did her homework". Then for her night prayer she asked to be blessed to "do studies like daddy". It was really sweet! We had a very good and productive day.

Learning Chinese and Math

2008-10-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

Emily and I have been working on her math skills. She is still awesome with her counting to 100 and the understanding is becoming better and better. She was adding 12 + 4 today, but didn't quite understand how it went. So we worked on number patterns and how she knows that 2 + 4 = 6. 12 is 10 + 2 and + 4 would be 16, etc. I showed her on a piece of paper how 1 10 + another 10 is 20 or broken down is 4 5s. She really liked this so she decided to make her own. She did 4 rows of 7 and then asked me how many there were. I asked her to try and find out. She came back with 28 so I grouped her 7s into 4 4s and 4 3s, she told me "Mommy it looks just like a chart!" Then I showed her how the quick version of how to find her 28 without counting them. I said that math and numbers had tricks and they were like magic. She was thoroughly impressed and went off to make more charts and ask more questions.

Then later on in the day we were talking about months and days of the week- something she asks me about ALL the time, but doesn't quite get it yet. We have sung songs about them, we have charts about it, it just hasn't got to the "Ah-HA!" part of her brain yet. So I drew a picture on our white board that says the month, there is a pumpkin and Daddy's birthday cake too and it says the 10th month at the top. She will hopefully think to refer to that when she wonders what the month is. And I also showed her where to find the day of the week. We have a clock that has the date, month and day of the week. I showed her how she will know and we will see how it goes.

The last thing is- oh, and she broke her night light, the one she reads by at night for hours and begged me for the last 2 weeks to buy her one. I finally remembered and our little Matilda is plugging away so happy to be with her books. Anyway, she has a friend from China who is moving away this week. She is very sad and she has loved playing with her, I am sad too as I have become friends with her mom. She is so sweet and is such a good mom to her kids, I will miss her. I have learned a LOT from her and about her culture and I appreciate it. Emily has also been watching Ni Hoa Kai Lan. She walks around the house saying "mao zi" for hat. She can't let it go and she LOVES languages! Must be one of the reasons she learned to read so early and so well. I can't even count how many times she has HAD to have me call up her daddy- who speaks both Portuguese and Spanish to ask what something is in one or both languages. She knows good morning, good afternoon and good evening in Portuguese. So I think as long as she is interested, I might see if I can find her a learning Chinese for kids or something into our school. We already have a Portuguese teaching tool for when Robert was learning. I am sure I am furthering this because I have a love for a Chinese music artists music. On my main page, you can find a couple of his songs. She likes to sing along to the ones she can. Hey, I would love to learn the Chinese WITH her, then I can sing too! Here is the show she just loves.

Lindsey's School

2008-09-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

My baby is only 20 months, but I have to brag about her "baby school". She is just as bright as her big sister and Emily is so excited as she helps teach her. It is so cute. Emily shows her letters and tells her the sounds. Lindsey, Emily and I have been watching starfall.com and after we watch a letter Lindsey says the letter and repeats the sound! Then we were counting and I would say the first number and she would say the next one in sequence until 10. I was shocked that she knew that. Her verbal skills have taken a huge jump recently and I think there was all of that knowledge locked in there that was able to suddenly come out once her speech improved. So here is to awesome "baby school" and a wonderful big sister who takes homeschooling to a new level.

2008-09-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

Emily really wanted to give an update of her letter writing. She read the last bit about her Y being the other way and wanted to clarify that she now writes her Y correctly. She was working on her other letters this morning and went through the whole alphabet. She is improving greatly and had to be sure that her blog audience knows this. I can't write anything about her anymore without her wanting to read about it. So yay for letter Y!

The Letter Y

2008-09-18T22:24:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was walking home after running errands and when I came back from getting the mail I saw on the ground in side walk chalk, "Emily's Park". There was no apostrophe and I knew it was my little 4 year old who wrote it because the Y of course was off. The short side is always on the right instead of on the left. Never mind that I have explained this, we have practiced it, but I still see it written that way in her name. It makes you wonder what does help a kid learn that Y goes the other way? Then I remember how a few months ago we were having trouble with the letter R. We practiced that one too, but it was constantly a very interesting round bubble with legs. Now it is unmistakably an R. Besides the regular stuff we have been doing, she just did it on her own. She also spelled Cinderella correctly too. So I know she is getting there with time, practice and patience by mommy and her. Now to work on the other habit of seeing a long word and guessing at what it is instead of breaking it down. She is really ahead in her reading and was breaking those words down like a champ a few months ago. Now she wants to just skip those steps and go right over them with a guess. I guess I shouldn't complain with that either since they are words like: entertainment and the like. She tells me they aren't hard, but she wants to guess. There is a 4 year old for you.

Drama Class

2008-09-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

I found a new class for Emily. One with singing, just what she wanted and performing. She gets to sing the songs from the movie Enchanted and there will be two plays in May. She gets a costume, a part and a line to memorize. So far she really enjoyed it. She got to play with instruments and practice some voice techniques and she will get to learn some music theory. She is really excited and we are grateful to her grandma who wanted her in something so bad that she offered to pay for it since money is tight for us right now. She even came to watch Emily. And my sister-in-law Lori's friend has a daughter a little older than Emily who is in the class with her. Emily met her at her cousin's princess party, so she already knows one girl in the class.

Children's Museum

2008-09-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

We went to our church's museum and they had a children's center on the second floor. Emily and Lindsey loved it. They had a little area for the kids to "doctor" the babies, a place to color, puzzles to build, chairs to sit in, dress up, etc. They both looked cute and I decided to hide myself behind their cuteness so as to hide my not-so-cute-self.

Park Days

2008-08-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

In the spring we made it out to a bunch of our homeschool park days. In the summer... not so much. It was hard to make it out when it was hot and we have a playground right outside. The problem is in the spring and fall, it is empty. No kids! They are all in school and Emily just wants to play. We are back to park days in the afternoons and we are excited. I love spending time with homeschool moms! I really love spending time with all moms, but it is nice to have like-minded women for a change. Ones who don't look at me like I lost my mind for wanting to homeschool my children. And what I love even more about this group is the awesome diversity. There are LDS moms, other Christian moms, moms who aren't religious at all, moms and kids who speak spanish, older kids, younger kids, older moms, younger moms. Who says that homeschool kids will have narrow world views and won't get to talk to kids who think differently from them? It hasn't proven to be that way for us at all. I really am excited about this group. Everyone is kind and accepting. And the occasional vent about the opposition we get is very needed sometimes. We talk about curriculum we like, ones we don't like, upcoming field trips, our kids interests, classes, etc. Emily was timid this time since it has been awhile since we came and she can't remember the kids. But I told her to just start playing and the kids will play too. It worked and she was having a blast with the kids. We love it!

"A Little Child Shall Lead Them"

2008-08-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

Even though I was homeschooled myself and felt I knew a lot about it, I know and have learned even more now as a parent. I consider myself to be a homeschooling parent, because really aren't all parents homeschool parents from birth? They lead and teach their children from the time they are infants, I have just chosen to do it longer. But what I have really learned is that children love to learn. More often than not I am not "teaching" Emily, but she is teaching me, or leading me to know how best to mentor her. I have not read all of the book Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves, but I understand it completely. I feel my children benefit greatly from having a homeschooled parent because of my own education. However, I am learning once again that children understand how to learn much better than I do.

As I have started writing down our daily to-do lists and what we want to/have accomplished in a day, my eyes are being opened to my child and how she thinks. She is leading me and I love it. Each day I write about our experiences. I wrote at the beginning of this month:

"Today the reading of Charlotte's Web was not well received. Which is unusual for my Emily who is a little reader. She has had enough of books for the day. However, I did hear her quote with accuracy one of the books she has been reading by herself at night. Today was a day of child leading. Who says they won't be inspired in math on their own too? She pulled out both her math game- played it on her own with a little help from me- and her Math-U-See blocks."

And this is what has happened today:

"Emily surprised me today by counting, by herself to 100! She has been wanting to do it for awhile now and her Daddy and I have been helping her. Well, today it finally clicked and she got and understood it! We also had some moral discussions as she asked me why people go to jail. We talked about following the rules and then how God has rules too called the 10 commandments. Then she asked how our body gets rid of the food we don't use and we discussed how the body functions."

I have learned how to follow by being a homeschooling parent. To let go of a lot of my control. When I follow the lead of my children, they learn best. Does that mean I never persuade them as a parent? No, but it doesn't mean that I force things on them either. As she has shown me on the days where I have a "plan" of exactly what we will do for the day, that she knows how to learn and she will have an entirely different plan and that we are better off going with her plan than mine most of the time. The myth that children need a "teacher" or that they will become unmotivated, lazy and stupid is unfounded. My children have lead me and I am very grateful to be able to learn from them.

Music Education

2008-08-17T22:03:00.001-07:00

So while our printer has been on hiatus (it is fixed now), we have been putting the Charlotte's Web lap book on hold and have been focusing some attention on music. Emily loves music and when she was quite young she knew all the words and actions to quite a few songs. Some of the songs she loved we realized that Lindsey hasn't even heard. I have been finding them online. The Wiggles songs like Rock-a-bye Your Bear, Big Red Car and Fruit Salad. Then we found some really great kids songs and They Might Be Giants letter and number songs we used to know from my sister-in-law. Here are a few of our favorites right now:

The second song is the better one on here called E Eats Everything.

Calvin Hates School

2008-08-13T23:55:00.001-07:00

I was never a huge Calvin and Hobbs fan, but my friends were. My homeschooled friends that is. I started reading some of his comics about school and man they are seriously funny! And with a slice of brutal truth to them.

The New School Year

2008-08-08T22:40:00.000-07:00

I am getting ready and planning the new year. I did this by taking Emily, who is very excited about school, to the store to pick out her own supplies. She wanted more crayons, of course. Some colored pencil crayons, markers and a box to keep them in. We have tons of paper, pencils, books, etc. But she felt special being able to pick some things just for her. I got a few things for me as well.

I have found that if I write down the things I need to get done for the day, chores, errands, what have you and our lesson plans, I don't forget what I need to get done. I just use a regular spiral notebook, but I was sick of my non attractive one and was so happy to upgrade to a cute harder bound one with polka dots on it. Not everything gets done on the list and I am fine with that. If we spend more time on math than reading one day I am thrilled. So long as I know that there is a basic plan. It is wonderful to see things on my list checked off when the day is done. And I will even go back and add spontaneous things I got done or we did to remember the things that went right. And I refuse to beat myself up if not a lot got done in one day. There is a clean page to start on for the next day.

Our plans are so far to get the lessons for our Math-U-See curriculum. Emily loves the blocks. She pulls them out and adds and subtracts with them. And she is so happy with her adding and subtracting tic-tac-to game. She can play with them for a long time. We are working on her writing, though very relaxed since at 4 her fine motor skills are still young. We are working on a lot more lapbooking. However, my printer has decided to die on me and that problem will need to be resolved soon. Our first lapbook I have neglected to show to you about was about the 5 senses. The next one will be all about The Charlotte's Web since that is what we have been reading. I have also been looking into a singing class and think I may have found it. It is more like a drama class with singing and dancing, which is perfect for Emily. Hopefully it will work out, especially since it is cheap and only 1 day a week for an hour. We will see how it all works out.

Lindsey is 18 months and is learning every bit as fast as her sister. She listens to her read every night and every morning. She loves her big sister's school box, much to Emily's dismay, and carries around her alphabet flash cards all around the house. I have to say the letter, the sound and the word to satisfy her and she tries to repeat them. She also really enjoys watching Elmo demonstrate the alphabet. I have worried that my tiny apartment will be boring and not inspiring to my children. But I have recently come to realize that the size really doesn't matter. It is the 'food' and the spirit that is around them. They LOVE to learn and when it is there, they find it.

I am really excited for this upcoming year and though this would still be considered a preschool year for Emily, she is at a kindergarten level so I consider this to be her kindergarten year, though I really don't like the labels at all. On to our adventures since we will be moving sometime this year and both kids are learning so much.

One of Those Weeks

2008-08-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

This week my poor husband has been having finals. We got back from our family reunion on Sunday evening. I was tired and just frazzled from watching the two kids while he stayed home to study. He took his first final on Monday, had class Tuesday and has been studying for the past 3 days for the last final tonight. I am glad that this is his last big semester and that the next one, his real last semester only has one class left. Now the decision of whether to pursue a Master's is the question we have before us.

Our house has been stressful this week. My patience is low also so that doesn't help either. I am trying to get back on course and calling this week more or less a loss. That is how it has felt. We have accomplished some things, so I shouldn't throw the whole week away. We made it to the singing time at the library in the morning, which Emily loves. And I got to spend a much needed night out with friends. Things are good, but I really think I am ready to welcome the weekend, a few weeks of school break for Robert and a new week for us to reinvest in. Poor Lindsey is cutting her canine teeth also so that has kept her at night up yelling for mommy. So sleep deprivation has been a contributor.

It's days or weeks like these that make me want to sing Bring on the Rain at the top of my lungs. I agree with my friend in homeschooling when she did this comic strip. When weeks are hard, they are just... hard. And every parent, myself especially, just has to remember that 'tomorrow is another day'. That today or this week may not be going as planned, but don't give up just because of one day.

And as an update with our homeschool, this week we have been talking about maps and as we took a walk outside Emily asked, "Mommy, how do I know which was is North." We talked about that and then lucked out when one of the cereal boxes came with a compass inside. Hurray for cereal and the extra help a compass brings when a child is asking where North is.

Math, Fun? Because of Reading?

2008-07-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

I have a confession. I don't like math very much. It isn't as bad as it used to be and I appreciate it much more than I used to, but it is just not one of my most favorite subjects or past times. I had a teacher in 1st grade tell me I was lazy and dumb because I had trouble with a math concept she wouldn't help me with. I always wanted to understand the whys of math and I don't have problems with it once I understand that, but it takes me time to get it and I wasn't given that luxury in school. Once I began homeschool it was much better, though it has still always been something I have disliked. I don't share my sentiment with my children. I don't want them to ever think math is hard or not fun the way I do. I don't want to tell them "Well, I am not good at it and I don't like it so it's no wonder that you don't either." That only reinforces them to dislike it. I would never do that with reading, why would I do that with math?

So as a parent I am always on the look out for fun ways to do math. For them and for myself. Hands on approaches that teach the concepts. Manipulative blocks to help them understand that numbers are wholes. Emily loves to play with the blocks and has a good grasp on addition and subtraction. She has a tic-tac-to game that uses addition and subtraction. She has a lot of fun and for her she doesn't even have a label for the games she plays. They are just games for now and I love that.

I have been reading the book Cheaper By the Dozen. Based off a true story and no, nothing like the NEW movie that doesn't come close to the old one. The old movie is wonderful! The book is better. These parents were awesome and such a good example of educationally minded parents. They taught their children better than the schools their kids attended. The discussions and games they had at the dinner table were really great. Also reinforcing how important family dinners are, as we have found how much we enjoy them.

Well, one of the games they play at the table are math tricks. First their father had them memorize the squares of every number up to 25- this trick only works up to 25. This helped them learn great ways of multiplying double digit numbers quickly in their head. The rule goes like this:

To multiply 46 times 46, you figure how much greater 46 is than 25. Get that answer and it is 21. Then you figure how much less 46 is than 50. The answer is 4. You can square the 4 and get 16. You put the 21 and the 16 together and the answer is: 2,116.

Robert and I tried a few and it was really fun! Who knew math tricks like this were out there. I sure didn't because I trend to avoid math on my own. I am now determined to find a book of math tricks. I would love to play games like this with my kids!

Reading Rules

2008-07-23T00:07:00.000-07:00

Tonight Emily saw the bag of our corn chips that said Mission on it. She was trying to read it and I told her:

"Emily the 'ion' makes a 'shun' sound lots of times. Like potion or station."

About 20 minutes later she calls out from the bathroom,

"Mommy, I know it's just like population."

I am stunned. I know she has read that in our reading, but for her to GET that and to use that word just floored me! How does a 4 year old pull the word 'population' out for an example in 'ion' saying 'shun'?! It boggles my mind! I just tried to hide my shock as she has this sly smile on her face and I say

"Yes, exactly like that smart girl."

Wow!

Great Reference Books

2008-07-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

I was at our local thrift store- again. I am always there sniffing out more books. I am getting closer and closer to completing several of my book series. I bought about 30 books yesterday and spent about $30. You can't beat that! I found another book in my Half-Magic series, two more books in the Little House series, more frog and toad books, etc. Tons and I don't have room for them and will kick myself when I have to move them. But I just need another bookshelf and it will all work out (I hope).

I was very happy that I found one of the book series that are really great as a reference be it for homeschooling or public schooling families. I have 3 out of the series now. I found this one for $2 at the thrift store. The series goes up to grade 6. I really like the games they have to play for kids that teach certain concepts. Emily has really liked the math games that encourage the 'one more' concept. And you can't beat $2 when they are normally $10-15.

Cartoon

2008-07-18T21:53:00.000-07:00

This is great! It is totally how it is treated.

Questions

2008-07-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

It seems that when back-to-school starts up and Emily is inundated with it everywhere. Her friends, the stores, cartoons on TV, commercials, etc. She does ask about it. When she was 3 she wanted to go on the big school bus. We didn't really discuss it then, she was only 3. But the questions are back. I believe in answering my kids questions and I am glad that she asks. It in many ways would worry me and bother me more if she DIDN'T ask. That perhaps she wanted to, like any kid would, but was afraid to.

The topic came up like this:

E: "Mommy, when daddy goes to school, I thought he went to a tent to write in a book."
Me: "Okay, well not quite. Do you remember when we visited daddy's school and it was very big? There were many buildings and a library?"
E: "Yes."
Me: "That is daddy's school."
E: "Mommy, my friends go to school and so does Kara. Do I go to school?"
Me: "Emily there are different ways of going to school. Some kids go everyday to school and others have school at home. They also have libraries as part of their school and field trips and lessons and park days with their friends"
E: "Can I go to school mommy?"

Now this is where it does get hard for me. Am I the cruel parent that doesn't let my child experience what the other kids do? Or is it something else? As I think about it and look into the eyes of my sweet little girl I remember a few things. The choices I made were not to deprive her, but to give her more. More time to be a kid, more time to play and run and jump in the sun. More time to spend with family, more time to herself, to explore her interests at her own pace. More one on one time attention. I don't think I am being cruel if I tell Emily that the decision her parents have made is to homeschool. Children may come to their parents and ask to be homeschooled. If their parents do not feel that is the right choice they will explain that to their children. They are the parent with the right to choose these important decisions for their children. With this in mind, the discussion continues.

Me: "Emily, you are a very smart girl. You are reading and learning so fast right here. Your mommy and daddy love you and want the best for you and feel that the best school for you would be here at home. You will still get lots of chances to be out learning and lots of things to do with friends so don't worry about that. Emily do you know what they do at school?"
E: "No."
Me: "Well, they go to class. They do play on playgrounds and eat lunch with friends. But they also go every day for a long time and they need to sit and be quite in their desk and listen to the teacher. Emily why didn't you like the library story time when we used to go?"
E: "It was just too long and boring mommy. I just wanted to read my own books."
Me: "That is why we felt that you wouldn't enjoy school that wasn't at home. You are very good at doing things at your own pace and that is wonderful. We are so happy to do this with you. And you can tell anyone you meet that you do school, because you do and are very good at it."

That was the end of the conversation. When this stuff comes up, she wonders what is this thing that everyone talks about? I am very glad that so many families are happy with their educational choices. We are very happy as well. And Emily has every right to be excited for back-to-school also. So we are going to be spending an Emily and Mommy day to go pick out some school supplies while they are on sale.

Night Time Reading

2008-07-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

Emily loves to read in bed. Because she shares a room she can't have her light on. I have thought about investing in a child's night-light by her bed, but until then, she opens the blinds by the window and reads by moon or street light. She takes the book we read before bed and reads it to herself. Sometimes she just does it by herself. Either way, it is fun to come in there in the morning and find an open story book by her side. This time, I got a picture of it before she woke up. Our little book worm.

Homemade Spiders

2008-07-01T14:19:00.001-07:00

Today I had a left over egg carton and it is 100 degrees outside. We decided to make homemade spiders and use pipe cleaners for the legs. As I start getting the legs ready and cutting them, I am thinking I will teach a small fact to Emily about how many legs a spider has. I ask her, "Emily, do you know how many legs a spider has?" She tells me matter-of-factly, "Eight". Shocked I say yes that is right. Then I said "Do you know how many legs other bugs have?" She says, "Well, insects have six legs." Now really shocked I said yes and asked her where did she learn that?? I don't remember going over that with her. She says, "A library book mom." Oh, that explains it! My shock is complete. Here are her spiders. The pink one is Charlotte- of course- and the yellow one is... yellow. Go figure from the child who's doll was named Baby Boy and who's stuffed tiger is named Tiger Cub.

Take Away and Wild Deer

2008-07-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

Emily has been working on take away for awhile now. She works really hard on how much something is once you take something away from it. She has been adding too, but the subtraction is a new fascination for her. She has a bank and uses the money in there to practice. She knows the value of pennies and dimes and forgets quarters and nickels, but she is trying.

She also was excited to see another wild animal right outside. This time, a large buck. He was huge with giant antlers. He looked still adolescent though since his antlers appeared to be fuzzy. We talked about the fact that female deer don't have antlers and we call them a doe and the males are called bucks. She wanted to squirt water on the deer to cool it off, so naturaly it ran away. It was behind a fence so she wasn't going to get hurt by going near it.

Learning and More

2008-06-20T22:52:00.001-07:00

Emily is done being a ballerina. Unless I get some idea from her later that she wants to try it again, I think that is not in her plans. We will follow her lead. Being that she is only 4, we are taking breaks for the summer. I am pretty sure we plan to school year round when more formal schooling starts, but at this age she is mostly just playing and learning what she wants to learn. Her reading is shall we say... EXCELLENT! We were having family home evening the other night and she asked if she could do some of the reading.

Robert says, "Why of course sweetie. Would you like to read the scripture?"

Emily: "And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto
him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul;..."

She needed help with 'supplication' and Robert started to correct her with 'kneeled', but didn't need to as she began to correct herself. And that 'soul' makes an O sound with ou, but other than that, she GOT THE REST! Hungered and prayer? Robert's eyes got pretty big as he heard her read. I think for my next thing I am going to video tape her reading and see if I can put it on here.

We have also been reading Charlotte's Web together. I read some and she reads some. Which is great, but sometimes while I am trying to read, she is silently reading ahead of me in the story. We have been reading it during the day and before bedtime. Anytime Templeton is part of the story, she HAS to read that part.

Lindsey has been learning so much. Saying words like cookie, peas, outside, shoes, "boon" for balloon. She is so sweet. She has been "reading" books with us and loves to dance with her sister. And learning to color. We love what we are doing and taking a relaxed approach right now. The best thing we have is time.

Gas Prices... OH BOY!

2008-06-05T16:09:00.001-07:00

Well, before the giant gas inflation, when it began going up, but not enough to want to hand them a kidney in exchange for never having to pay at the pump again, it was hard. However, I never thought it would ever be THIS hard! It is frustrating that it affects where we move to in relation to jobs thinking of the commute ahead, what we buy at the grocery store, where we go on homeschooling outings, IF we can go on vacation. The vacation is basically out- except for something close to home. Ever been to Moab? Disneyland might as well be Italy with the impossibility of achieving it this year. Of course, the search goes on for jobs and promotions, but even with it, it will be enough to put us only at even.

Park day is coming up, but does that mean we will be able to attend? Lucky for us we still live in a place that has a playground right outside, but it won't always be that way. The ability to flit across the state or the country in pursuit of education is going to be an almost impossible realization at this point. It is good that my kids are young and we hope that our situation improves with time instead of worsening. But this is also what I realized. It is not convenient to have kids and have a family. No matter the situation, it can be the experience I wish it to be, if I am willing to not be ruled by my circumstance. If I want it bad enough for me and my children, we can choose how we react to these circumstances. We will use public transportation if we have to. If gas became so outrageous, I know I would not be alone. Parents and people would do what they could to adapt. And my homeschooling will do the same. Even if a few of my plans get canceled or replaced, I am resourceful enough to find alternatives to our education. Which is a great thing about having the freedom to do this. I am building memories with my children close to me and learning with them no matter how far away from home we go.

Ballet Comes to an End

2008-06-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

Our ballerina is retiring. We are getting ready to have her performance this week and she couldn't be more excited. Who knows what the future will hold for our little ballerina. She was so happy to be dancing at the beginning and then decided it wasn't for her and has told me she does NOT want to be a ballerina anymore. Some days she thinks it is alright and will go just fine. Other days she shows me her burn-out clearly when she stands in the corner and refuses to dance for the whole class time. Okay, I am a progressive parent and I will not force her to do something she doesn't want to that is supposed to be fun, just for my sake. She is excited that her cousins and grandparents are coming to watch her dance so we will be posting pictures after her Thursday recital. I am sure for her, this will be the highlight of the experience.

Thoughts, Feelings and A Little Opening Up

2008-05-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

I feel like, if just for myself, I need to open up a little on some topics of homeschooling that have been concerning me for quite a while. I LOVE homeschooling so far. I know it is not always going to be, nor has it been perfect or easy. Emily is still so young, but thriving so far. And Lindsey is not far off. I am so grateful to be able to do this. However, I know not everyone can or even wants to and I completely respect them in their parental decision regarding the education of their children. I don't badger them or question them on why they would possibly want to do this?

If someone asks me honest questions I love answering them. But when they are questions that bait and belittle me personally as a parent, those bother me. Of course I know that what I am doing is considered an "alternative lifestyle" in many ways, but then again, 100 years or so ago, so was institutional education completely alternative to the lifestyle that was being lived in that day. I know not many people will care to read about the way I feel, but I don't blog to please people. And if I am homeschooling, it should be apparent that this is not my goal in life either. I am not accountable to anyone, not friends, not family and not the state or government. I am accountable to my husband, my children and my God.

I love my children and feel I am giving them the best I can. I wouldn't do it otherwise. And I know that parents who do the opposite are doing what they feel is right for their families and best for their children. I get either one of two types of reactions when I mention homeschooling. Be it in passing or what we have done for the day. The most common is really complete ignoring and changing of the subject, the other is questions- not all of them rude either. I like questions that ask about what we like about it, what are we doing that we enjoy, etc. It shows that others truly care, just like I am glad to hear how other's kids are enjoying their school and I ask how they like it. The ignoring and changing the subject is typical and I actually don't mind it, it seems to be the normal response so far.

I am not perfect and I know I will not always be the best homeschooling mom, just like every mom has bad times, so does every mom homeschooling her kids and every teacher for that matter is not going to have times that are golden. Besides, so often my kids tend to be the better teacher than I am. I really don't consider myself to BE a teacher. I don't really like the word. It seems to say that without me my children cannot learn anything. And that is not true. I don't stand over them and lecture and impart all of my knowledge on them. That is teaching. I am a mentor, I guide them and they guide me and show me just how much they can learn without me. I provide the food, they have the desire and show me their greatness. I don't like asking them, "What did you learn?" It is life and they "learn" through life, without the label of "learning" attached.

I knew before I made the decision to sign on with this journey that it wouldn't be easy. Not a lot of people are going to agree with me and I am prepared for that. But I can also get kind of cranky too with it all. Basically not wanting to talk about it or answer questions that are not REAL questions, but more like personal criticisms and just handing an article out every time it turns that way. Or carrying copies of John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down in my purse (course, I would need a bigger purse for that) to pass out. I am happy with my decision, as is my husband and my children. And I am grateful for those who are so respectful, supportive, understanding and compassionate. I still like to answer honest and sincere questions. I also apologize for my crankiness when I have them for the 10th time in a day and you get to hear the last word.

Homeschool Convention

2008-05-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

It was another really good one this year. The keynote speaker was really good, very funny and had lots of good points and information. The classes were pretty good. I really enjoyed one that was about the old books containing the true stories about history. The current textbooks just feed you facts and sometimes false facts and forget to put God into the story. He gave several demonstrations of historical events where others have called it "luck" or blamed it on other factors instead of recognizing the hand of God in bringing truth to His people. It was a really great class.

There was also another one by this mom who is really awesome. She has 7 kids and just seems like the most put together person. I am sure she is not perfect because as I know, that can be deceiving, but she is so much fun to listen to. She teaches her kids a lot through classics, be they classic literature, science, philosophy, history, etc. She had some great insights into using classics for education. She also said she has this room with 5 large bookshelves with books upon books that she has read and hopes to read. I would LOVE a room with that many bookshelves and just consider it my library. Comfy chairs to curl up in, windows with lots of natural light. It would just be so nice.

Another class was about lap-books, which I am so converted to. If you don't know what they are, check these out. They are like learning scrapbooks. How fun do they look? Emily would have a blast with them. She demonstrated the fun different things you can do with them and how they are a much better visual then a book report. And they can have a lot of touchy feely things in them. Lots of flaps to look at and review with.

Also an old family friend did a really great class about hands free homeschooling. About finding tons of ways for kids to learn without you working yourself to death. Great ideas like menu holders with educational magazines at the table instead of reading cereal boxes. And she has found some wonderful things at DI and thrift stores. I have too and have recently been seen there because it is amazing what kind of things you can find for next to nothing. Books especially. Really good class about homeschooling on a dime.

I did however spend a little more than normal on some great USBorne books. I really enjoy them and so does Emily. Last year when she was really interested in the body and the ocean, I got her two books about it. So this year I asked what she wanted. "Mommy, I want a book about castles and ducks." Then I found a fun addition and subtraction Discovery toy.

Anyway, it was really great and very inspiring. It was nice to have some time away from the kids and get some great ideas.

Green Eggs and Ham and One Smart Emily

2008-05-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight after going to the thrift store, I brought home some more great finds. Like Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, Amelia Bedelia, Frog and Toad and 100 Things to Know About Sharks. Emily grabbed Green Eggs and Ham and did not want to go to bed until she had read the entire book herself, with only minimal help if she needed a little encouragement in the words. I have read the story before to her, but it has been about a year since. So I know it was not memorized and she was actually reading the words. We didn't want to put her to bed until she was done. Robert isn't usually here when she does her reading, so he was surprised listening to her go at it. AWESOME EMILY! She got an ice cream sticker when she was done.

Ballet is Winding Down

2008-05-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

It really is ending soon for Emily and it can't happen fast enough for her. She really doesn't want to do it. She has been doing it every Saturday morning since August. It must have been overkill or something. It seemed like some good thing for her to do on her own and she loved having something that was just hers. Recently, she hates it. She tells me she doesn't ever want to take it again. She says, "I don't want to dance, I want to sing." Okay, I get it sweetie. It may have been a little early to put her in something so soon. Which makes me nervous to put her in a singing class now as well. I don't want her to love it at first and hate it later. I don't want her love of singing to be a scheduled activity. I am going to try something that maybe is just fun singing and not an actual class. That might just be what she needs.

This morning was her second to last class. She has one more week, the performance and she is done. She knows the dance fine so I shouldn't have pushed her. She came into my room and said, "Mommy, I just want to watch cartoons and eat breakfast. I don't want to dance today." I tried to say "Oh, it is almost done. You also get a treat at the end isn't that good?" She is highly motivated by treats, she has a definite sweet tooth. Even that wasn't convincing. I spent a good 15 minutes debating on whether I should push her or back off. She did go, I should have let her stay. Robert says he stayed in the room for half the class time and she would not do it. She stood in the corner and even with her friends calling to her, she refused. She stood her ground and would not dance. Did I raise a free thinker here? :D I really needed to leave it alone and allowed her to stay home. She was showing me she was independent and I need to respect that.

Things can change, but somehow I don't think ballet is for her. She doesn't want gymnastics, swimming- she likes baths but not the water really. When the summer pools come out in the summer she gets excited, sticks one toe in and runs off to play in her swimsuit. I am glad I didn't plan on putting her in anything this summer. I think she needs a break, what do you think? I did pay for her costume and her Grandma and cousins are coming so I think she will still do the performance and she told me she wants to dance when they come and not before. Eh, you learn from your kids personalities all the time.

The Millipede and the Pinwheel- Inspiring Education?

2008-05-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

When Emily was born, we started on these weird nicknames. She was Mily, MilyPuff and has become the Millipede. Lindsey was Pindsey, Pindseykins, Kindsey and also the Pinwheel. Robert has this thought of doing a children's book called 'The Millipede and the Pinwheel'. I have thought of illustrating something like that and then sending it to those personal publishing places for a family story. It's a fun thought.

Well, Emily has been so interested in these nicknames that she asked me, "Mommy, what IS a pinwheel and a millipede?" We had to look on youtube.com and watch several videos of pinwheels in the wind. She loves them now and spots them in random places while we drive. "Mommy, there is a pinwheel over there!" She was also fascinated by the way the millipede moves with its many, many legs. She loves that she is the millipede that moves around on the ground like that. She has asked me how snakes move, as a branch off to the millipede subject, when they don't have many legs. So we talked about how snakes do move. It's all very interesting how a child's mind works and branches out in many different subjects all stemming from one. She does this often and I strike while that iron in her brain is hot.

What HAVE We Been Doing?

2008-05-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been drawing a few homeschooling comics, inspired by Christina at Home Spun Juggling who does such awesome homeschool comics. But I just don't feel they are coming out right. I guess it's because I also have been having a tough time finding the time to even paint. Which I need to get on because I have two competitions I want to enter in the fall. Our State Fair, that believe I have put something in about 5 times and I have 3 ribbons from it. Then I have a competition that only comes every 4 years that I have always wanted to enter. But I wonder if I am prepared. I am trying to see if I can get back to my art school with my awesome art teacher. It is expensive, I can't afford $80 a month. However, I want to ask if there is any way that they will let me pair up with my sister or my brother-in-law who is interested and we each pay $40, so they aren't loosing out on money and I don't have to pay so much. Emily is almost done with her ballet so that will free up some money and I don't want to sign her up for anything in the summer. She is just happy to play and I don't think she will care much.

I really love my art teacher! His name is Harold Petersen, but everyone calls him Pete. He is such a sweet and kind hearted man. I worry all the time as he gets older that he will die and I won't get to take art from him again. I had another art teacher that taught me only to a certain point, but when I wasn't advancing my mom found the school. My first teacher did not inspire you. When you told her your dreams of being an artist, going to college and getting a degree in art, she told you it was really hard and too hard to get into. Pete never said anything like that. He always said "Of course you can get in if you really want it and work hard enough!" He believed in everyone, even if they didn't appear to have a lot of talent, he felt that everyone truly is and can be an artist. Year after year his students were sterling scholar winners. He is himself an amazing artist and so friendly. He loves what he does and you can tell. I really miss taking from him. I wish I never had to stop for money reasons.

I think so many times I get too tired to pull out my art stuff. We have such limited room that it is such a hassle sometimes. And I hate that, because I love my art. I think I am also frustrated with the fact that I am lacking tools, space and time to do it so I almost feel like why bother. I LOVE my art and I can get really discouraged and sad when I think about how my talent is just sitting there. :( I have oil paintings waiting to be painted, but I don't have the proper ventilation for the fumes and with my asthma it is impossible without it. I am hoping that going to my old art school on Saturdays might help me actually get out and paint. And get back into a studio and feel the artist vibe from all the wonderful stuff around me. I really ache for it. I love the season in my life now, but I can't help feeling so busy sometimes that it is hard to feel like I am leaving my dream aside. I know there is a way to do both, I am just too frustrated and constrained to do it right now. I don't know how I got on this topic.

The other things we are doing is lots of playing outside. My kids LIVE outside when it is good weather. Basically we wake up, eat, get dressed, clean a little and immediately get ready to go outside. Lindsey loves it. She plays in the sand, climbs the ladder to the slide and nearly kills herself. Then when it is nap time I put her down and Emily and I stay out some more. I try and beg Emily to come in so we can have lunch. But she is having so much fun, so I bring lunch outside AGAIN. Then Lindsey wakes up and she has her lunch outside. We do go in here and there, but we never stay in. We are usually out an hour later. Today we spent about 6 hours total outside. Another reason I don't think we will do any scheduled lessons for the summer.

Get Back ON!

2008-04-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I fell off my scheduled band-wagon today. I didn't do hardly any of what I had scheduled today. I did fold half of the clothes and cleaned my room and vacuumed it. Academically, we read and that was about it. I just felt I needed a break and a recharge. I called my good friend Charlene, a wonderful homeschooling mom and talked about the things we love about homeschooling and the comments that aren't easy to hear. It is really nice to have people to talk to who see where you are coming from. One of the reasons the homeschool park day was a hit for me! Kids for Emily to play with and wonderful ladies for me to talk to.

Tomorrow has been deemed "cousin day". We try and do it every Wednesday, but it doesn't work every week. And it's a great day for it since it is supposed to be cold and rainy. So we have inside activities planned. I also like to go up by my sister-in-law because I frequent the... a thrift stores and find more books. {{blush}} I swear there are some awesome ones hiding there, just waiting for me to find and purchase them. If I don't go, someone else may get them.

As for our school recently, it has been just going. Emily reads lots of her reader books and in the mornings she has been reading to Lindsey before getting me out of bed. Lindsey has been listening to all of this and started pointing out the letters on the books and saying "T, E, O, OO, P" It's very cute. Also we have this keyboard piano we bought a while ago. It has weighted keys and since both me and Robert play we thought it would be great for our family. We play it every once in awhile, but have never used it's cool features. One day Emily showed us that she figured out how to play the keys and RECORD it and play it back! We hadn't even found how to do that yet. Then she knows how to change the beats and she plays that thing a lot in the day. She dances to it, etc.

I think the one thing we are trying to do better on is math. Though, she really is doing well at it. I am not trying to push her beyond what she is interested in right now. She doesn't need a whole lot of that at this point. I plan to get the books for the rest of her Math U See
curriculum. She has the manipulative blocks, she just needs the lessons. I get really excited for the homeschool convention.

Her ballet is coming to an end. She has a performance in a month. I don't think we will be continuing this. She told me she does not want to do it again. She used to be excited, but we have complaints about the teacher. There are things we like about her, but many we don't. Emily told me all she wants is something with singing. We will be looking into that after summer. She is excited for her performance though when her grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins can come.

So on to a more productive day! When I fall off, I must always get back on!

Homeschool Park Day

2008-04-25T23:30:00.001-07:00

Again, I remembered everything else. The picnic, the blanket, etc. but I didn't remember my camera. One day I actually will remember it to one of our functions. We had a great time and met some wonderful kids and moms. It was really a good day. We had our picnic and at first I thought I must be at the wrong side of the park. But slowly moms started showing up and talking to each other. There was a homeschool library activity once and I tried to find the moms I was meeting, but never did. I asked a few ladies if they were from the homeschooling group and they looked at me like I was from Mars. So this time I was a little nervous asking them, so I waited around until I heard one of them say the word 'homeschool'. Haha! It was SO nice to talk to other homeschooling moms! Moms who know just where I am coming from and don't start questioning me and thinking I am a weirdo. Ah, it's also nice to vent a little about the comments we all tend to get.

Emily had a great time with a little girl named Madison. She came to tell me she was "going with Madison to the rock houses, can I go with her?" She sounded so big! I thanked her for asking me. When she came back she told me all about the big rocks that were "like houses and you could sit in them and they found a cat, and it was dead." I made sure she didn't touch it. Yuck! Anyway, poor Lindsey, this was all right during nap time. I had to get her up early from her nap just to come. She played and would get in the way of the bigger kids and fall down and eat dirt. Even when I kept trying to get her to stop. Finally when we went to leave, I saw her sitting in the wood chips half asleep. Poor baby! I picker her up and she looked up at me so thankfully and said "Mommy, mommy, mommy." So sad! There is another park day in a couple weeks and I will be inviting our other homeschooling friend with three boys to come. Emily loves to play with the boys and she will be excited. It was a very nice time!

Confession Time

2008-04-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have been reading some homeschool blogs of some wonderful women and realized something that is a very good revelation. I want to use my homeschooling blog as a way to record what we are doing, how we are progressing, my feelings on homeschool, etc. However, I don't want it to be a blog that is not honest. I hope to be able to be honest about where we fall short in our school efforts and try to find new ideas and new methods. I mean really, I spent $40 on a reading program we don't even use- expect for the reading books. I am actually glad I don't need to use it, it appeared to be boring. Emily seems to be reading quite fine without any sort of program, though we do use starfall.com and THAT is FREE. Who knows though, one of my kids might like Hooked on Phonics after all. What I do like is that because it didn't work, I have the freedom not to use it.

I just really don't want my blog to be a false representation of me. I make mistakes, I am not perfect, just like any teacher. I know I do and will fall short and will have to turn to others, be they tutors or family and friends, and employ them for any help I may need. I know I am really at the beginnings of our homeschooling journey, but I want to learn what I can now so it may help myself later on. So far I don't always wake up with ideas or a lesson plan. I try to have a schedule, but it doesn't always follow, which is okay. I am flexible enough to know what is a priority. I have my strengths and then I have my weaknesses. Some days I want to recuperate more than others and feel bad that I spent less time than I wanted with my kids. Other days I devote to them, but my house smells and my dishes aren't done, and on and on. I can't do it all the time and I can't do everything. Luckily I already know that about myself so I haven't set unrealistic expectations, I just don't want to portray a false version of me. I think being homeschooled has allowed me to see that it is not all roses. I hope I continue to see that aspect of it and don't forget it, because if I do I think I will be in denial. It's okay to not have Emily in a million different extracurricular activities. It's okay to not go to every homeschool event, park day, field trip, etc.

Well, I hope to always portray an honest reality in my blog. I love the homeschoolers that do this. It makes us real and I plan to be real. To admit when something isn't working and when it isn't perfect. Since neither I or my children ever will be.

Reading, Math, Music and Science

2008-04-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

This child never ceases to amaze me! Emily told me yesterday morning that she wanted to read her scriptures and asked where they were. I told her they were on my bookshelf so the baby wouldn't get them. She pulled them down and started to read. She came in telling me "Mommy, I read 'had seen angels' "! I looked and she was right, she did read it. Then she kept reading different words like 'time to time' and 'it came'. She decided she would finish reading while she ate her breakfast, since that is what I do when I read my scriptures- course ever since the baby has been here I have a hard time sticking to this because she doesn't let mommy actually sit during any meal. I am up and down 10-15 times getting her food.

Then Emily reinforced what we have been working on, which is the concept of 1 more of something. So she said "Mommy, I know what 1 more of 2 is, it's 3. And 1 more of 3 is 4." She got to 6 and I was so happy that she is understanding this. And at lunch she had grapes and was practicing adding one and or taking away two and what is left. She has also learned how to count backwards, which she hadn't quite grasped.

This child is also so good at singing. She has a natural vibrato and makes up her own songs and sings all day long. We were singing the beginning song from the movie Enchanted while she was helping me with the dishes. I was singing the guys part and Emily was singing the high notes that Giselle sings and she HIT the note and harmonized with me! I was sitting there listening and shocked that that could come out of her little lungs and mouth. Anyway, something keeps telling me I really need to be working on getting her into a good singing class. Her ballet is almost up and she told me she doesn't want to do ballet anymore, but begged me to put her in singing. I showed her gymnastics, soccer, etc. and she told me "Please, mommy I want to be a singer!"

She has a book about space that she loves and had me read for the 20th time before bed last night. I haven't read it for awhile, but she remembered the facts. "Mommy, this planet has poisonous gas on it huh? And the sun has its sunspots doesn't it?" Sometimes I don't think she pays attention when I read to her, but apparently she does. I love these little books I got at the Homeschool Convention last year. They are a little pricey, but worth it. I am going again in May and I think it is worth the investment to get some more.

Maybe I am just an impartial parent, but I love how much she grasps and so much of it is on her own. I do mentor, but she directs and absorbs like a little sponge. I am so excited to watch Lindsey learn this stuff too.

Cooking Class

2008-04-18T20:38:00.001-07:00

Emily went to the Young Chefs Academy on Thursday for a homeschool field trip while Lindsey spent the afternoon with her cousins and her Grandma. I meant to take pictures, but my terrible cameras batteries died. grumble, grumble. Anyway, it started at 1:00 and I got lost so I showed up at 1:15. Not too big of a deal. They were making bread sticks. Emily got to put the flour in and see the yeast. They asked what the 'secret ingredient' was and I told Emily, so she raised her hand and yelled "YEAST!" There was a Chef named Bionca or Victoria, something like that, who was French and her assistant.

It is really cute because they have a younger kid and older kid room. They have the kitchens decorated in cute kid colors and even the halls have things like '8 oz= 1 Cup', etc. The kids sit with aprons on, around metal tables and get to measure out their own flour and play in it. Then they get to knead the dough and make it into a long snake and brush it with egg yolks and put cheese on it. Then they play a game while they wait for it to cook and the Chef cleans up and they get to eat it. Emily had a really good time and said her bread stick was yummy.

Awesome Stuff + Great Prices

2008-04-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

I found some great books at consignment sales a few days ago. One I am really excited about is called Education in the Supermarket. It has a lot of great ideas of using the grocery store for some educational ideas. Not that every trip has to be made into a teaching tool, but there are things that I perhaps would have never thought of to teach to my kids, all from the trip to the store. And the price was great too-75 cents! Then there was a great book about a train because Emily finds trains to be interesting, that was $1. And a geography game with quiz cards and a block puzzle of the countries, this was $4. Then I was SO excited when my favorite books were 5o cents each! The Half Magic series. I was so excited! I never find those in the thrift book bins. I love looking at the books at thrift stores. I usually find them for $1 or under and half the time they are brand new.

I found the rest of the Narnia series for 50 cents each- brand new. These are great finds and any time I can find great books I can hardly help myself, I have to get them. I love to read and fill my house with books. It seems to work since my kids both love books and Emily has been doing so well reading. John Holt says that kids who are given a lot of exposure to words and letters have a much easier time when they learn to read because those are so familiar to them. The kids who don't have that exposure need to catch up in school because they have to become familiar with it first.

Notebook Schedule and Emily's Reading

2008-03-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to schedule my days and my to-do-lists for a long time. I have looked at flylady.com and have tried complex systems and planners. I have even tried fancy notebooks and trapper keepers. I usually end up giving up because it is too big and bulky and I get sick of pulling it out and putting it away. So I have decided to try a simple spiral notebook and see if it works. I just put my to-do-list and the date and any other things that I might want to write down or document. And I write down Emily's lessons. They are very relaxed lessons right now because she is only 4. I have them broken down into math, art, reading and music. One small activity for each is really all she needs. And if she gets interested in one over the other than I let her continue and do the others on another day. It is mostly just a basis and most of them are games that have to do with math or art. Reading can consist of a lot for her since that is her main interest at this point. Anyway, I hope that the notebook works and helps to keep me more scheduled and keep up with everything I need to do. If some things get missed on the check-list I am the type that already knows I can't get to everything in one day. It is just a way for me to visually see what I need to accomplish and what Emily may want to have time to focus some attention on.

One of Emily's reading lessons today was on filling in the blanks. She had a picture of a rock and underneath was r_ck and she filled in the letter O all by herself, she knew that it was short O and A vowels for the pictures and when I told her what the pictures were, she promptly filled in the vowels for r_ck, c_p, f_n and p_t. I also have been trying to encourage, without pushing, correct writing of letters, but she is not interested in it. We will have to keep working on that one. She still can't physically hold a pencil correctly yet, so we have time there. The good part is that she is trying to write. She wrote a birthday card for her grandma that was something like: Hppy Berthday grama, in (she then asked me to write 'your') hart. I think that is pretty good for now.

More About Books

2008-03-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

I have been reading more and more these days. Some really good books on keeping marriage strong. Those were great, but more for my regular blog. Right now I wanted to write about the books I have been reading on education. There are so many valuable things in there. The first one is John Taylor Gatto's book. If anyone can open one's eyes to educational reform it is him. He is a fine speaker too. Having been there as a teacher for 25 years, he ought to know what he is talking about don't you think? When I read what he has to say it really makes me think of my own experience in public school. How much I disliked it and yet really couldn't explain why, I just did. He talks about the 7 Lesson "national" curriculum. One in which there is confusion. He says:

"Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much:the orbiting of planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, standardized tests, guidance with strangers my students may never see again, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the outside world... What do any of these things have to do with each other?

"Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, a host of internal contradictions. Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed off on them as quality education. The logic of the school-mind is that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than with one genuine enthusiasm... Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending, for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess."

Humm... that is very interesting and eye opening. I see how my children want the world to make sense. I did as a child. My Emily asks me questions constantly. She wants what she does to have a why and a purpose.

"The second lesson I teach is class position. I teach that students must stay in the class where they belong... My job is to make them like being locked together with children who bear numbers like their own... If I do my job well, the kids can't even imagine themselves somewhere else because I've shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes... You come to know your place.

"The third lesson I teach is indifference. I teach children not to care too much about anything, even though they want to make it appear that they do... I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously for my favor... But when the bell rings I insist they drop whatever it is we have been doing and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn off and on like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class... Indeed the lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything?"

I know just how I felt with those two lessons and I really don't want my children to learn this way. When I went to college I felt it again. There is more freedom in college, but the bells often ruined the class experience for me. If I enjoyed it, I had to turn off. If I struggled, its okay because I won't understand it and it won't matter once the bell rings. Now that I can work and learn again on my own, it is great to learn and study for endless hours. I am grateful for that love of learning that homeschooling helped instill in me. I don't want to stop, so it hasn't. I will skip to #7.

"The seventh lesson I teach is that one can't hide. I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by me and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time.

"I assign a type of extended schooling called "homework," so that the effect of surveillance, if not the surveillance itself, travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or mother... The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate."

There is so much more in his writing, but these are the main points that I wanted to quote. For winning teacher of the year award 3 times, he sure is not a fan of public education. I don't feel that public education will ever disappear in my lifetime, nor do I want it too. I think many parents can't and don't want to take on education with their children. And that is okay, it is hard work and it is a parent's family decision to find what is best for their family. However, I think the more a parent is informed on what is unnecessary in the current system, they can work to combat it. I really wish that the current system were completely overhauled. I feel children do not learn best this way, despite test scores because those only measure what children memorize not what they learn or retain.

Spoken of as the father of homeschooling in a way because he spoke about education reform, he has some really good points so far. He talks about attending education conferences where the "experts" talk all about education, but not at all about reforming it. Whenever anyone "talks" about it, they don't include truly unique ideas. Its things like "more money" or "more standardized testing" and "less of the arts, more core basics". Those things have been gone over again and again, it is no new information. Nothing new, not a reform at all. John Holt's ideas were truly a reformation. His first book was How Children Fail, but I am focusing on this book.

"All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words- Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple-or more difficult. Difficult, because to trust children we must trust ourselves- and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted... at the height of the so-called revolution on education (which in fact never took place), a prominent educator, after spending a few days at a big top-level conference on the future of education, said to me, "Those people weren't the least bit interested in alternative schools or open classrooms or any of that stuff. You know what they were really excited about? Something called behavior modification and behavioral objectives." It proved to be so. Fragmented learning became even more so, the weekly test became daily or hourly or even fifteen-minute test. The Back to Basics era is now seven or eight years old, with, so far, mostly bad results. But this only leads the schools to say, "Now we're really going back to basics," as if that particular wheel had been invented only the day before yesterday."

There is so much more, but I want to stop here and I will continue reading. I don't think I am the perfect parent and I don't think my children are the perfect children. I have been grateful to have found some good things to help me teach them and get them interested. I can't take credit for a lot of the ideas since they came from other great moms of many different backgrounds. I guess I will take credit for implementing them, I guess I could have just sat back and not done anything. I really have loved learning about the way children really learn. I don't agree with the 7 Lessons Gatto talks about that are taught in public schools. In talking about education and school, I don't feel that institutions are very good at it. They are good at schooling, but not educating because that is so complex and with 30 kids per one teacher and many different levels and methods of learning, how is that even possible?

I would love to someday see public school for 1) not be mandatory 2) include children and more adults of varying ages and levels, learning together and growing from each other. Since we learn best not by staying behind with those who are behind or being lumped with those that are ahead, but by really learning from others 3) not be taught values that a parent's do not agree with 4) internships where kids learn from the those at the top of their field 5) where parents are actively involved- not as a teacher's volunteer- but AS a teacher. We give parents far too little credit, there are some smart parents out there who have something to offer. And also have them be actively involved with the curriculum, the internships, etc. 6) stop testing kids constantly on everything! It doesn't prove who is intelligent, some kids "test" well and others don't. It just makes them feel better than the others or dumber than the rest 7) let kids out to PLAY and really explore. Have some private time. 8) Less homework and more family time. They don't need more classes, more lessons, more tests, more assignments. They need more family, more family dinners, more story times, more hugs. How can they do that with 4 hours of homework a day? Those are my ideas. I know many a private school that follows them and hope someday that public education will truly be as "reformed" as it claims to want to be, to include all this as well. Even then, I want to continue on the path we are on right now. We love it and I wouldn't have it any other way.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."---- Robert Frost

Socialization- The Myth

2008-03-21T14:53:00.001-07:00

I really like this cartoon. Says a lot. Haha!

Math- The Fun Way!

2008-03-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

Emily and I are working on math with a game. This is also to help her recognize her coins. She is calling all of them pennys. This way I wanted to show her they have different values. So we play store where she "buys" something for whatever price we say it is and then I ask for that coin or value and she puts it in the correct cup that says 1 cent, 5 cents, etc. She loves the game and has asked to play it 3 times since we first tried it. This is the second time playing and she decided she wanted to do this rather than have a story before bedtime. She wore her backpack so that she could "go to school". This is really good since she loves games and anything she can really play. Numbers haven't excited her as much as letters have, but maybe I just made letters more fun with foam letters, magnet letters, a toy she called "number" because it wrote and sang both the alphabet and counted to 10 and I read to her. So I am trying to make numbers fun and exciting. This one is working thus far.

California Taking Away Parental Rights?

2008-03-10T00:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1720697,00.html

I hate blogging an "agenda", but when it is something that is close to my heart and truly makes me just so frustrated I can hardly help voice my concern on the issue. This article is from TIME about the situation, but to sum it up. A family in California was in court for alleged child abuse. The appellate court then orders them to send their youngest 2 of 8 children to public school. They further decide to state that homeschooling in the state of California is now a criminal offense for all parents- and private school teachers, basically anyone without a teaching certificate and rule homeschooling to be unconstitutional. Not only this, but they did this without anyone being able to vote and without any knowledge of this, no one was able to assemble and protest, etc.

What makes me so upset by this- among many different things- is that regardless of the individual opinions on whether or not homeschooling is a good thing or a bad thing, disagree with or agree with, it is a parental RIGHT to choose how their child is educated. The State does not own my children, they are not the ones who decide what, who and where my child is educated. Who gave them that right?? I guess this shouldn't be so surprising to me since just 3 years ago, these same judges and this same court had an issue with parental rights. Children in 1st grade were given a sexuality survey that a bunch of parents did not agree with. They were not informed of this either and took the state to court. They lost and were told that parents have no constitutional right to decide what their children do and do not learn in public school and that "their rights as parents end at the school door". It concerns me that those who are supposed to be protecting the freedoms of parents could possibly state that our very contract which guarantees those freedoms does not give parents the right to decide what their children are taught at school.

Currently the HSLA- the Homeschool Legal Defense Association- is working with the California government to get this de-published which will mean that this will only apply to this family. The governor has said that he is working to protect the rights of parents in education. I don't understand why they believe that one- and this is an assumption of the family since I don't know the details of their case- abusive family could mean that homeschooling is at fault. Or that all homeschoolers are abusive. If that were the case we should shut schools down immediately because from what has been reported again and again is abuse from teachers and students. And they assume that what, no public schooling parent abuses their children? It goes unnoticed in schools also. It is a case of child abuse, not of homeschooling. Lets make the distinction here please.

There are so many reasons that have driven my desire to homeschool. Many of them did come from my homeschooling experience and ALSO from my public school experience. I have the unique opportunity to have a view of both worlds and I have chosen this for my kids. It was a decision that my husband and I didn't take lightly. It has been hours of talking, planning, studying, attending conventions, etc. to offer our children, what we feel, is the best there is. Just as others have the right to send their children to public school, I also have a right not to.

We Love Books, Books and More Books

2008-03-03T21:11:00.000-08:00

In our home we are addicted to books, well me and the kids. Robert sadly just feels bogged down by textbooks, but he does like to read. I have read to Emily since she was a baby. Every night she gets a story, unless it is REALLY late. We have a nightly family routine. Story time, brush teeth, song and prayer. It really relaxes everyone for nighttime and the kids go to bed so easy. We rarely have an incident with them. Some of our favorite kid books have been:

When Emily was just 2 she was in love with this book. We got it from the library and we were asked to read it over and over again. She thought it was the best thing ever. We even had it memorized for a time. "Cows can't fly, but I don't care. One day I drew some flying in the air..." When I took it back to the library I was kind of sad. I found it a few months later and by then she didn't care anymore. Robert and I still talk about how she loved the book Cows Can't Fly.

Emily also loved The Foot Book. She had us reading that one a lot and then she had it memorized. Even now that she is learning to read better each day, she loves to pick that one out to read to herself. "Left foot, right foot, feet, feet, feet. How many, many feet you meet."

This series is really cute and Emily laughs every time she reads these stories. I love stories that introduce imagination. This one was suggested to us by my sister-in-law Lori who is a great mom who reads to her kids all the time too. Her kids book selection is really great. A lot of classics that I am just barely being introduced to. I had never heard of Goodnight Moon before.

If you want a story that is just as funny for the parent reading it as it is to the child hearing it, this is a great one! I loved it so much I was so excited when I found it for $1 at a thrift store. You can't beat thrift store finds for classic books. Find this one and some of the others, so cute!

My mom read to us when we got older and she really took a vested interest in our education, but I don't remember being read to much as a younger child, nor do I remember going to a library at a young age. As we got older my mom realized the importance of books and read hours upon hours to us. It wasn't until I babysat for an amazing family, that I saw how wonderful reading to young children is. The families two boys were read to every night and they were the two smartest kids I had ever met. They didn't frequent the TV, but they played. They had a very active imagination and the two hours spent watching them before bed used to wear me out! These parents were very active and involved and they had family dinner every night without fail. We try to as much as possible, but with Robert attending night school, it doesn't always happen. We are trying to do it more and more.

I just love to read to my kids. I love that Lindsey, even though she is only a year old, loves stories. She is constantly pulling books off the shelves. She even has a favorite board book. It's a Blue's Clues story with flaps and she looks at it over and over every day. I think reading to my kids has helped strengthen Emily's vocabulary, confidence, language skills and now reading skills. Even though she is reading more and more words on her own, she loves to have me read to her still. It is the love and closeness she feels from it. And when I read now she will ask me, "Mommy, you said 'steep', where is that? Is it here?" as she points to it and sounds it out to herself. We tried Hooked on Phonics, but I think what has encouraged reading more than a program has been just simply reading to her. Fostering the love of books in our home. She watches me read constantly and when I read on the computer she often asks to sit in my lap and read what I am reading. I am so grateful I built a library early on and have continued to add to it. We have also found that we love story time at the library also. Sometimes I really think there is nothing greater than books.

I love to read. I love old and new books. It was a prophet or apostle that said, "It is a test of a truly educated person to know what not to read." I believe that is true. There are books out there that are popular and I have no desire to read them. One of these is Harry Potter. I don't think they are terrible books or bad per se. I have never read them, I have seen the movies and was frankly bored. I guess to me I am always trying to be inspired by books, rarely reading just for mere entertainment. It feels more like a waste of my time. I want to read the classics, the truly intellectual non-fiction books, the marriage books, the apostolic books, etc. There is so much that is good and great, I always feel like I don't want to waste my time on what isn't truly uplifting. I haven't heard Harry Potter to fit those descriptions. As for my kids, I want them to find fun in reading. I remember as kids we drove my mom crazy reading of all things the
Pee Wee Scouts. My mom wanted us to read the greats and we got obsessed reading all of these mindless books. But we loved reading and we were spending time together. Sometimes you just have to find what can bring that love in.

So I know that my kids will need to find things that entertain them with reading and what interests them. I think some things just might be a little older subject matter though. I don't know if I will have an opinion on my older kids reading Harry Potter, I just don't know. Maybe by then I will give it a shot to know just what they are reading. Parents need to know what their kids watch, I feel it can be the same with books. Then we can discuss it together. This is how I feel about reading, I really could talk about it all day I love it so much.

New Computer

2008-03-03T15:16:00.000-08:00

We are building a new awesome computer so we can do family videos and lots more educational activities with it. When we move we won't have high speed internet for free like we have now so we have decided that it is important enough to invest in it. With using the internet so much as a homeschool resource, I feel it is really important. And now we will have a really good computer to be able to do all of that. Hopefully soon I will be blogging from a new beefy computer!

Herman Got Emily's Picture!

2008-03-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

Herman the Worm

YAY! We are so excited! I looked up Herman's site and there it is! Emily was so excited too. The mailman came and took it to Herman. It was a lot of fun!

Herman the Worm

2008-02-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

Herman

This is a really cute site. Emily and I have been having fun with it the last week or so. It teaches all about how worms work, and at a level that Emily can understand. They also have an art gallery where kids all over the country draw pictures of Herman doing something and send it in. You can send it by email, but I really want Emily to go with me and have the experience of mailing her own letter. So far there are no pictures from my state! Hopefully Emily's picture will get there soon and if they post it, I will have a link here so you can see Emily's masterpiece on the website of Herman the Worm. Emily is so excited, each day she asks if it is time to send Herman her picture. So cute and so much fun!

Painting and Questions and Answers

2008-02-18T23:44:00.000-08:00

Emily loves to paint so today she painted a heart shaped box she got from her Grammie. While painting she asked me the most interesting questions. "Mommy, what do giraffes eat?" Me: "Ummm,... I believe they eat leaves, but let's look it up." Its questions like that that made me really think about something- Emily asks questions all day long and really I love them and I like to answer them. Probably because it reminds me of myself, I was a very "why" child. Its interesting because as a homeschooler you often want to make sure you are providing an educationally stimulating environment for your kids. As I think about how we spend our days I realize that I must do this because of the millions of things I get asked by Emily all the time. She wants to understand the world and really everything in it. And when she knows an answer, she is very happy about the fact that she does know something.

Like today as she was playing outside in the snow with her friend Daniel. He ate some snow and she came to tell me about it. "Mom, Daniel ate snow, that isn't food." Me: "No, its not and its pretty dirty, you probably shouldn't eat it." Emily: "Mommy, when snow melts its water, not food." She is very happy that she knows this. We rarely ever use ice in our house because we tend to like our water at room temperature and we put the other drinks in the fridge anyway. So one day I froze the water while Emily watched. Then we pulled it out and I let her play with the ice in a bowl and asked her what was happening to the ice. She was so excited that she understood that water can be frozen and then changed back into water. We talked about the other forms that water takes. We looked at steam, talked about snow, etc. I love the sweet exciting drive to learn that children have and her inquisitiveness is so much fun to watch.

20 Great Reasons to Homeschool

2008-02-18T11:52:00.001-08:00

Haha! I thought this was so cute!

Puppet Shows and Writting Books

2008-02-18T00:44:00.001-08:00

Emily and I made sock puppets and put on a show just for us. We used some of Robert's old socks and drew eyes and a nose and made hair and a dress. We took a video of it and if I could show you, I would, but my computer will not let me do the whole video thing. Maybe another time. Emily laughed and laughed at it. Then during the week we made a book together. She helped me write it and I drew the pictures and she colored them. The story was about a princess Elaina and a pet butterfly, named Flutter. And a witch who captured Flutter and Prince Tane- all Emily's names by the way- who saved the day. Emily was so cute, with each page she wanted to know what would happen next. As we got to the last two pages she cutely said "Mommy, I am SO excited to find out how it ends!" It was a lot of fun!

I love enjoying my Emily. It is so much fun to watch her learn. The wonderful imagination she has is amazing and I think it just flourishes when she is able to have unstructured play and when we play together. I am also impressed with her growing vocabulary. The other day I asked if she was ready to get dressed and she said "I will get dressed mommy, eventually." I didn't even know she knew that word. So silly! And the kind of books she picks out from the library sure do say a lot about her too.

Our Pre-K So Far

2008-02-11T19:02:00.001-08:00

I thought we would give Hooked on Phonics a try. My little sister Nicole learned to read in about 3-4 months at the age of 4 through this program and thought it would work for Emily. Hummm,... not so much. I got the Kindergarten version and most of the lessons she finds boring. I didn't like the CD-Rom either. I find starfall.com to be much more stimulating and so does she. When I pulled out the beginning book after Christmas I knew immediately that she was beyond it. She was reading all of the words in the book just fine. It wasn't a total waste though because she LOVES the little reader books they have. And who knows, what doesn't work for one child just might work for another. Anyway, she is reading fine now. She knows many of the rules and is so cute when she is reading.

I am looking into Math U See for our math program. Some wonderful ladies on one of my homeschooling sites have been raving about it. I have heard that is has some trouble when it comes to later math, but that it really helps with the beginning understanding of math concepts. Which is good because at this time Emily understands numbers 1-10 and then gets a little confused because she only has 10 fingers. HAHA! She is so smart.

Right now Emily is taking a weekly ballet class and loves it. She loves to move around and be with other kids and dance. I wanted to have her try gymnastics in the summer, but I thought I would ask her what she wanted to do- gymnastics or singing? She told me, "Oh, mommy, singing! I want to be a singer!" Which shouldn't surprise me since she walks all around the house singing songs at the top of her lungs. So that will be what I will be doing after her dance recital is finding a decent and cheap singing or choir class.

Life Really is our Classroom

2008-02-11T17:49:00.000-08:00

I am a mom of two wonderful girls, Emily is almost 4 and Lindsey is 1. My sweet husband is very supportive of me as a wife and a mother. Together we are taking this homeschooling journey with our kids and this is a way to log our experiences.

I wanted to start a separate blog for all of our homeschool adventures. We are all so excited and happy to be doing this! We feel very good about it and think this is the right move for our family. I loved my homeschool experience and really want to provide the same for my kids.

I loved being able to have the freedom to follow my passions. I loved being able to volunteer at the State capitol when everyone else was in school and see what it was really like and really understand how the government works. I loved being able know so many different kids from all over the state through our many activities. I still have great friends who I knew through homeschool. For my kids I love that I can give them the one on one attention and they don't have to compete with 20-30 other kids for it. I love that I get to watch them learn and don't miss those first steps. I love that I get to be their mentor and learn along with them. I love that we don't have to use the time when they are home to do hours more of homework and they can be kids and have play time.

There are so many reasons I am happy to be doing this. I really just feel that this is the best thing for us at this time. I feel that the opportunities are endless and I can give them so much. So let the adventures begin!