{Year one reflections} - 8 weeks in

Izzy is about to finish week 8 of Ambleside Online's year one.  It's taken us about 11 weeks to get through the first 8 weeks, because of summertime activities/trips and my being pregnant which has required some rest here and there.

Once we finish the work for this week (which won't take us all week - I decided to spread out week 8 over last week and this week), we will be taking a break.  Baby girl #3 is due next week (!!) and we'll take some time to *hopefully* rest and finish any preparations before her arrival.

Anyway, here are some of my reflections from the year so far.  This is more for me, but maybe something will be helpful for someone.

Shakespeare

We read our first Shakespeare tale from Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I think it took us five separate readings to get through it, at 10 or 15 minutes apiece.

The first two readings were pretty painful.  The stories are lovely, but the language is pretty difficult, and Izzy was lost during most of the readings.  As a result, I searched around on the AO forum and followed the advice of some other moms who use puppets when reading Shakespeare.  We have some puppets, but not enough, so instead we used some little toy figures that the girls have accumulated over the past few years.

We assigned a character to each figure, and as I read, I would kind of act it out with the figures.  Then Izzy would narrate using the figures to act out the story.  It worked really well, and I could tell she enjoyed the story much more!  So we'll be doing the same thing for the next tale, The Tempest.  And the next one.  And probably the next :)

There's Titania, the fairy queen, with her "love" the clown with the donkey's head.  And King Oberon is on the sidelines playing football :)

Just So Stories

Just So Stories is just a little difficult to read aloud, in my opinion.  So, again, I browsed the AO forums, and some had suggested using an audio book for this one.  Thankfully our library has it on audio, read by Jim Weiss, who is a fabulous storyteller.  I've just been checking it out when Just So is on the schedule, and Izzy's narrations have been much better using this rather than listening to me.

Reading Lessons

We originally began Izzy's reading lessons using the McGuffey Primer and it was going alright, but honestly, it was kind of boring.  So I decided instead to do the lessons using Charlotte Mason's methods, and now Izzy has declared that her reading lessons are her favorite!  She looks forward to them each day.

It's been a little slow-going, but that's one of the (many) reasons why homeschooling is awesome.  There's time.  Time to allow the child to learn at her own pace.  Time to allow her to really understand what she's learning, and not be left behind in the process.

The Joyful Shepherdess blog has a good outline of CM reading lessons, and an AO mom has also written a guide for teaching reading this way.  You can find the guide on AO's website.

I read and made notes from both of the above, and also read what CM herself wrote, and then put together a plan and materials for doing the lessons.  I have it in my mind to blog about what exactly we're doing, and would love to, but we'll see if I'm able to get to it.  (You know, like I said, new baby and all coming soon!)

Books

Twice in the past week Izzy has, out of nowhere, picked up one of her school books and asked to read it!  We were about to do school one day and she ran over to the shelf and grabbed The Burgess Bird Book by Thornton Burgess and got all excited about reading it.  Unfortunately, it wasn't on the schedule.  I guess technically there's nothing wrong with reading it on an unassigned week, but I told her we'd have to wait :(  I don't want her to get in the habit of thinking she can choose whichever book she wants.  Maybe when she's older.

By the way, this book was not a favorite of hers the first few weeks.  We were reading it off the kindle, but I decided to just go ahead and purchase a hard copy because it's such a wonderful book and since we won't be reading every chapter this year, I wanted it available for her to read later on, or for us to read together as a free read.  I guess having the hard copy made the difference, because she loves this book now.

I also went ahead and bought a hard copy of The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang as well for the same reasons.  So now, the only books we're reading off the kindle are Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin and Parables from Nature by Margaret Gatty.  I'm okay with reading Fifty Stories off the kindle, because the stories are so short, but I'd kind of like to have a hard copy of Parables.  I just haven't been able to find a copy at a decent price!

The other book Izzy picked up and wanted to read was D'Aulaire's Benjamin Franklin.  Man, what a great book!  It is beautifully illustrated and written so well, as are all of D'Aulaire's books.  Unfortunately, we don't own any of them because they are pretty pricey and it's very difficult to find them used at a decent price.  So for now, we are checking them out from our library.

We've always read aloud to our kids and both of the girls love to read (well, be read to), but it seemed that at first Izzy was not too excited about the "school" books.  But the AO advisory has done such a wonderful job choosing great living books and I'm just excited that Izzy is beginning to really enjoy them!

Although, with almost every book we pick up to read, whether it's a school book or not, she asks, "Do I have to tell it back?"  Ha!

The four-year old

So in my last post about year one, I mentioned that I needed to have a better idea of how to give Addy (4) more attention now since I'm spending so much one-on-one time with Izzy.  A few things have worked really well so far.

First, I gave Addy her own "school" binder with some things for her to work on if she wants.  She was so excited to have her own binder :)  She and Izzy both love mazes, so I bought a Kumon maze workbook, tore a couple mazes out, and put them in sheet protectors so that she can use a dry-erase marker on them.  The workbook is full of mazes, so I'll switch them out every so often.  I also put some dot-to-dot and cutting practice worksheets in her binder, but she mostly does the mazes.

I also put some different activities in storage bins for her to pick from each day - dry-erase letter/number practice, puzzles, coloring books, etc.  When I sit down with Izzy each day, I tell Addy that she can join us with her school stuff, or she can play.  I never require her to do "school" stuff, but she usually hangs out with us for a little while.  She loves to do the mazes and the dry-erase letter tracing.

The other thing that has worked really well lately is we've been starting school with some read-alouds.  I have Addy pick out a book or two that she would like me to read, and I read to her first.  Izzy will usually do her copywork while I read to Addy, then I'll read Izzy one of her school books, and Addy can continue to sit with us and listen if she wants - sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't.  This way, she gets some attention from me before I sit down and do other subjects with Izzy.  It's definitely helped her feel more included.

Well, that's probably good for now!  How is your year going??

First grade scheduling

I recently shared our first grade curriculum plans and now we'll talk about scheduling!  We haven't begun year one yet, so I can't tell you how the following schedule is working.  These are my plans for the year, including a schedule of what and when we'll read the AO readings and a daily schedule/routine for getting all the work done.

First, the schedule of readings.  I've only done this for term one so far.

At first, I wanted to schedule certain readings for certain days.  For example, Our Island Story would be read on Mondays, Paddle to the Sea on Tuesdays, etc.  But.  I remembered that I am one who, if we miss say, the scheduled reading for Monday, would probably get a little irritated and it would throw my whole week off!

Thankfully, I came across the idea of looping.  Instead of assigning certain readings to certain days, I put the readings in the order that I would like for us to read them, and we'll just go down the list during our reading times each day.  So, my books are in the following order:

Our Island Story
Aesop for Children
Paddle to the Sea
The Blue Fairy Book
50 Famous Stories Retold
Just So Stories
Burgess Bird Book
Parables of Nature
Herriot's Treasury for Children
D'Aulaire books
(I'll discuss the Shakespeare readings below.)

I wanted to mix up the readings a bit so that 1) the history readings are spread out (this will probably be more helpful when there's more of a mix of World and American history in the coming years), and 2) we're not reading books from the same category all at once, like all of the literature readings at the end of the week, for example.

I am planning to have at least two times set aside throughout our days in which to do our readings.  At the beginning of the week, during our first AO reading time, we'll read from the first book, Our Island Story.  Then, barring no scheduling havocs, we'll read from Aesop for Children in the next time slot.  If we happen to miss Aesop, we'll pick it up the next time we read, even if it's the next day, and we'll just keep going from there.  This way everything stays in order.  We have to make it through the whole list before starting at the top again.

Here's my document for checking off the readings (here is a link to the pdf file):

Each week we'll just work our way down the list, marking off as we go.  I'll keep this handy throughout the term, maybe on a clipboard or something.

This grid came from the AO year one 36-week schedule page.  I downloaded the word document, then copied and pasted the rows for term one into a new document.  I rearranged the rows so that the books are in the order that I want to read them.

A few notes:

~ I moved around a couple of the readings:  "Prince Darling" and "Toads and Diamonds" from The Blue Fairy Book, and "Only One Woof" from Herriot's Treasury.  You can see at the bottom of my table where they were originally.  I moved them in order to keep a maximum of 8 readings per week (the two Aesop readings per week count as one since they're short).

~ For Paddle to the Sea I'm going to use Charlotte Mason Help's (CMH) schedule of this book which means reading Paddle in term one, then reading two chapters of Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography per week in terms two and three.  That's why Paddle is different from the original AO schedule.

~ AO only has half of the Burgess Bird Book scheduled for the whole year; one chapter every other week.  I've heard so many people talk about how the book is so wonderful and just flows if you read it from beginning to end that I've decided we'll read one chapter each week with a plan to finish the whole thing (which will take longer than 36 weeks - we may begin it a few weeks early and finish it a few weeks late).

~ See the Shakespeare row at the bottom with the asterisks?  I plan to begin a "morning" time routine (I hope to keep you updated with our morning time plans throughout the year) consisting of Bible and poetry readings, memory work, possibly Spanish, and a read-aloud or two.  On the weeks that Shakespeare is scheduled, I'm planning to read that as the read-aloud during morning time.  Addy (4) won't be required to sit in during this, but I would love for her to.  It seems that most families read Shakespeare together, so I think this would be a nice way to do that.

~ I mentioned in my first grade plans post that I'm not planning to read Trial and Triumph this year, so that's why it's missing.

Still with me?  I hope!

Now on to the daily schedule!

At first I made a schedule with the actual times that I wanted to do everything throughout the day.  So for example, morning time would be from 8:30 to 9:00, math from 9:00 to 9:15, writing from 9:15 to 9:30, then a break for 20 minutes, etc, etc.

But.

Like I said earlier, if I did this kind of schedule and we got behind, then I may or may not get a little irritated and it would throw the whole day off!

Instead, I'm going with a routine rather than a schedule.  Things are in order, but it's not so particular that we have a certain time of the day for each subject.

Here is the weekly schedule checklist I made for term one:

I'll print this off each week so that I can check off each item and make any notes that are needed.  I may keep this on a clipboard with the readings schedule from above.

A few notes:

~ Notice how I did not assign the actual days of the week:  Monday, Tuesday, etc.  I put day 1, day 2, and so forth, so that if we miss Monday because of sickness or something, then Tuesday turns into day 1.

~ The first block for each day is morning time, which will probably be during or right after breakfast.  Bible is first because I definitely want Addy involved for that, but after that she is free to go if she wants.

~ I put the subjects in the order in which I would like them to be accomplished during the day.  So once we're done with morning time, we'll probably break for morning chores, then come back and Izzy will start with math.  Writing practice is next, followed by one of our AO readings from above, then reading instruction, then the second AO reading.  If we have to take breaks, we have to take breaks.  Of course, I would love to get this all done together, maybe with a short break or two, and be done before lunch.  But, if we only get math, writing, and one reading in before lunch, so be it.  Sometime after lunch we'll continue with reading instruction, then the second reading.  And then she'll get to recorder practice at some point during the day!

~ You'll also notice that next to each subject is a number in parenthesis, for example Math (15).  That's the estimated amount of time that will be spent on that particular subject.  CM was an advocate for short lessons, and I agree with that, so we will be staying close to those numbers.

~ Bible:  AO has certain Bible selections to be read each week, but I am doing something different.  I'm going to be using the selections at Penny Gardner's website, with two days of Old Testament readings and two days of New Testament readings, then a chapter from Wisdom and the Millers on Fridays (I mean, day 5!).  We'll probably just go down the list on her website, but only keep the readings to around 10 minutes per day.

~ I plan to "do school" four days per week with the fifth day being a day of enrichment.  We'll still have a morning time, but instead of all the academic-y stuff, this is when we'll do our art and music studies, drawing lessons, handicrafts, and nature studies...aka the fun stuff :)  I'm not planning for us to do everything listed every Friday.  I mentioned in my previous post about how I plan to rotate these subjects.  We'll see how it goes.  And I hope to keep you updated!

Whoo!  That's my plan and I'm *hopefully* sticking to it!  Have you made your schedule for the upcoming year?  If so, I'd love to hear about it!  Maybe I'll glean some good ideas :)

First grade curriculum plans

I've been planning and researching and organizing these past few months in preparation for our first year of official homeschooling.  Izzy (6) will begin first grade sometime this year and I finally feel like I'm getting a grip on the whats and hows of what I will teach her.

It may be a little early to post curriculum plans, but I have decided to begin Izzy's first grade year around July (only two months away!!) because we have baby girl #3 due in September.  I would like to get at least a month or two in before our whole schedule/routine is thrown off due to a newborn.  Also, because of said newborn, I have a lot of "bucket list" items that I would like to complete in the next few months:  decluttering, yard sale, general baby prep, etc, and I don't want my homeschool plans to be put on the backburner.  I'm just not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of gal and I need a plan!  Plus, I tend to procrastinate and I just don't want to keep putting this off.

Anyway.

We're relying pretty heavily on Charlotte Mason's (CM) educational methods:  living books instead of textbooks to teach different subject areas, copywork in the place of spelling and grammar, narration instead of worksheets, and short lessons, just to name a few things.

So, here we go!

Booklist

I've decided to rely on Ambleside Online (AO) as our spine curriculum.  Here is the link to their year one (aka first grade) booklist for each subject - history, literature, poetry, science, geography, etc.  I plan to use all of these books with one exception:  Trial and Triumph.  I do think we'll read it at some point but I'm just not sure I want to read it yet.  I'm thinking of waiting another year or two when Addy (4) will be a little older and we can read the book together as a family, maybe on Sunday evenings or something.

Writing

I plan to have Izzy do no more than 10 minutes of writing each day (CM is an advocate of short lessons).  She can write fairly well, but I still plan to start with her mastering the correct way to form each letter (for example, making sure she writes an "o" counterclockwise and not clockwise which she has a tendency to do).  After we go through the alphabet, I'll have her begin copying words and short sentences from the above readings.

Reading Instruction

We'll do 15 to 20 minutes of reading instruction each day.  At this point, she already knows the sounds each letter makes and we've done quite a bit of word-building using CM methods.  You can find a breakdown of those methods here.  She has learned pretty well how to sound out words.  My plan is to use the McGuffey readers, beginning with the primer, to continue with both phonics and learning to read by sight.

The McGuffey readers are in the public domain, so they can be found for free online.  Here is a link to the primer.  Also, the Eclectic Manual of Methods is invaluable for learning how to teach reading using the McGuffey readers (and for teaching math with Ray's Arithmetic which I'll mention below).

Math

I've had a difficult time choosing a math spine, which seems silly because I have a math degree and I taught math in the public school system for five years.  However, there's a big difference between teaching 9th grade algebra and figuring out what and how to teach first grade math.

After much consideration, I've decided to use Ray's Arithmetic.  I like it because 1) it is that classical, tried-and-true method of teaching arithmetic, focusing on mental math and really understanding numbers, and 2) it's free!  You can find the Ray's New Primary Arithmetic book here.

Actually, the book isn't even used for the first year, unless the child masters the concepts quicker than anticipated (which I wouldn't be surprised if this will be the case with Izzy; she's pretty sharp when it comes to math...she must get that from her mother HA).  Like I mentioned above, the Eclectic Manual of Methods is a must for learning to teach math using Ray's Arithmetic.  AND the Ray's Arithmetic Yahoo group is also invaluable.  It has the whole plan for the first year.

I also plan to add in some living math books (great sites with lists of books here and here) and math-y games here and there.  My math pinterest page isn't much, but there are a few good games that I've pinned, so feel free to look!  We'll probably spend 10-15 minutes on math each day.

Foreign Language

I've decided on Spanish as our foreign language.  I really wanted to do French, but I'm much more familiar with Spanish, having taken it in high school and college, and it's just more practical living in the southern U.S.

At this age my goal is to introduce the language to the kiddos and have them learn some common phrases and vocabulary.  I'm thinking we'll shoot for about 10 minutes per day.

I'm not buying a Spanish curriculum at this point.  I searched around the AO forums and found a couple of sites on the internet that provide free resources for teaching Spanish to children.  One of them is the Salsa Videos, and here are some Salsa Teacher Support Materials and the support materials for teaching grades k-2 with the videos which I think will be necessary to implement this program.  I actually don't plan to use the videos at this point, but I'll definitely use the support materials because they contain a great deal of vocabulary and common phrases.

Someone on the forums also mentioned Spanishtown, which may prove useful as well.  I would also like to incorporate some illustrated children's Spanish literature (gotta search the library) and Spanish children's songs which I'm sure I can find on youtube.

Memory Work

I'm taking the suggestions at Charlotte Mason Help (CMH - scroll down to the Recitations section) for this area.  Izzy will learn and recite one Psalm, one passage of scripture, and one poem, as well as two hymns and two folk songs, per 12-week term.  I plan to set aside around 10 minutes each day for memory work/recitation.  I don't have my official selections yet (I'm not that organized at this point!), but when I do, I'll share them.

Picture Study

I'm again taking the suggestions from CMH for picture/artist study.  AO has a rotation of artists and prints to study each year, but I think it's important to expose young children to art that will capture their particular interests, developing an appreciation for fine art.  So, I'm going to be choosing different prints to study, rather than the ones listed on the AO website.  I'll choose one artist each term and we'll study six paintings by that artist - one every two weeks.  I haven't made my selections yet (see above), but again I'll share them when I do.

Hymn/Folk Song/Composer Study

And yet again, CMH for this one.  At this point I'm not going to use AO's song and composer rotations.  I like how CMH introduces the young'uns to the orchestra, the ballet, and the opera, so we'll plan on that.  And I'll be choosing the hymns and folks songs at least for this year.

I plan to do the picture, hymn, folk song, and composer studies on Fridays, rotating each week.  I'll play the composer selection at different times throughout the week, and I plan to include the hymns and folk songs during memory work, too, rotating them on different days.

Drawing/Painting

Not quite sure about the painting part yet - CM advocates learning the dry-brush technique and I've played around with it, but I'm just not comfortable yet to teach it to a 6 year old.  So we'll plan to start with just plain ole' drawing lessons using the book Drawing With Children.  I should probably read this book soon...it's on my summer bucket list ;)

I would also love to incorporate some drawing drills that go along with this book which can be found here.  I'm wondering if we could do these during our morning time.

Nature Study

We'll plan to go on a nature walk once per week and keep a nature journal, recording and drawing birds, plants, and animals/insects.

We'll most likely take the journaling part kind of slow - maybe every other week or so in the beginning to get our feet wet.  We'll probably start this in the next few weeks.  As a result, I'll probably supplement a little with some nature/science books.  At this point I'm thinking of reading some of the Among the People series, probably during morning time.

Handicrafts

Oh boy.  Here's where I'm kind of at a loss at this point.  I know I want to teach the girls to sew, but first I need to learn!  Of course, I could just learn right along with them...

Anyway, I would love to teach them all kinds of things, but again, we're going to take it slow and go with something I'm familiar with.  (Plus I'll have a newborn, so...you know.)  We'll most likely spend the first term working on some cooking and baking skills (now that's what I know), and I'm thinking of doing some card making as well.

I know CM had her students working on the drawing/painting, nature study, and handicrafts every week, but I'm thinking of doing a Friday rotation, kind of like what Brandy explained on her blog, just so that we can get acclimated to all this new stuff.

Music Instruction

I haven't thought a whole lot about this area, but I would love to have the girls learn to play the piano.  I'll probably use CMH's suggestion of how to teach children to play the piano, starting with the use of a recorder.  I know this will need to be something done consistently, so I'm shooting for about 15 minutes, 4 or 5 days per week.

Whoo!!  Is that everything??  I hope so!  Sometime in the near future I'll share my plans as far as a schedule/routine for getting all this done.

Have you started planning your next homeschool year?