Warm weather fun

We have continued to enjoy the warm weather the past two weeks or so.  It's really been a blessing to be able to get outside in the warm sunshine in the middle of winter (today, however, it's rainy and windy and cold, but supposed to be near 60 most of the week!!).  Last week I took the kids to the park.  They played and we did our weekly nature walk (which we've struggled to make a weekly thing since, you know, it's the middle of winter, and I'm just not a fan of the cold.  Unless it's snowing.  Which it's only done once, way back in November.).  Anyhoo.

 

Her shoe fell off. 

Playing McDonald's.

Piling leaves.

I found a dead bee and we spent a few minutes looking at it closely...and pushing it around with a stick.

My kids are still little, so right now I'm focusing on training their habit of attention and observation.  We noticed how big the bee's eyes were, how fuzzy he was, and how he had veins in his wings.

We watched a woodpecker climb up and down some trees.  Can you spot it?

After they played for awhile, we did our official nature walk, just walking on the sidewalk which encircles the park.  Except Izzy always just wants to run as fast as she can, so I have to yell at her several times to slow down and wait for the rest of us.  She's such a busy-body.

We found another dead creature - a squirrel.  Sorry if you're grossed out by dead things.  We made sure not to touch it, not even with a stick.  We mainly looked at its teeth - it had four - and its super sharp looking claws.  We left it after about two minutes because the girls thought he smelled bad.

They played around a big pine tree.

Izzy found a twig on the ground with a tiny pine cone on it.  We brought it home and put it in our "nature basket" :)

They played in the leaves for awhile.

Piled them up on the bridge and ran through...

Of course, you must roll around in big piles of leaves :)

Addy had to hold her pants up everytime she started running.  She and her pants...they never stay up, ha.

Have you had some nice weather lately?

Homeschool goals for the new year

It's officially the new year, which means most are starting up school again.  Having completed a few months of Izzy's kindergarten year, I've taken some time over the break to think about what we've accomplished and what I hope to accomplish with her this next go around.  I feel like I know more about what she's capable of and can plan accordingly.

I still believe in Charlotte Mason's advocacy for no formal lessons until at least the age of six.  Since Izzy will not be six until April, and I don't plan to begin formal lessons until around September, I will continue to allow her and her sister plenty of time to play and just be children.  I also feel good about continuing to gently introduce music, art, nature outings, and reading practice (with Izzy).

So, here are my goals for the next few months of Izzy's kindergarten, in no particular order:

1.  Continue morning Bible, poetry/rhyme, and story read-aloud at breakfast.
We've been using breakfast for a type of circle time, with Bible and poetry/rhyme readings, plus a story or two if there's time.  I think this has been a good setup for us, especially since I also babysit, because by the time we're done, the boy I sit for shows up and...they're off.

We're going to be switching over to The Jesus Storybook Bible from The Beginner's Bible.  I was never satisfied with the latter - the stories were very choppy and not well-written, and the pictures were very cartoonish.  The girls like it, though (probably because of the pictures), but I would like to read from a better written storybook, and this one seems to be.  (The pictures aren't the best, either, but oh well.)

2.  Continue light reading lessons.
I've been working with Izzy on learning to read for a good month or two and I feel that she's finally progressing.  I need to be more consistent, blocking out a time each day to work on reading because I'm pretty sure she's ready for more.  However, I don't want to push her too much.  We've been spending 5-10 minutes per day on this, and I think that's been plenty so far.

I foresee us moving past the consonant-vowel-consonant words (cat, hit, log, etc.) within the next month.  Her blending has gotten a lot better and quicker, but she still has to sound out each word before she can say it.  I'm waiting for her to be able to look at one of these words and just read it.  Then I'll know we can move on to words with an e at the end like gate, rake, kite.  After that we'll probably move onto sight reading by taking a rhyme and learning to read it.  (By the way, I've been using the methods outlined on the Joyful Shepherdess blog.)

3.  More consistency in art/music study.
We have begun to incorporate hymns and folk songs, as well as art studies, but in reflecting on the past few months, I know we haven't included it every week, and when we did listen to a song or look at a piece of art, it was kind of impromptu.

Instead, I would like to be more consistent and intentional about listening to music and looking at art.  My plan is to use AO's recommendation of rotating hymns and folk songs every six weeks, and rotating works of art every two weeks.  I don't plan to follow AO's music and art rotation this year, however (we will when we begin year one).  I'm taking Linda Fay's recommendation to find art and music appropriate for young children that will capture their interest.  I'll write a post in the near future about the songs and art that I've chosen.

This does not take much time at all - 5 minutes or so - and I plan to do this during lunch.  I may also rotate in some classical music during one of the lunches, although we've been listening to this at different times of the day.

4.  Weekly nature walk.
I had planned to do this since August, but it just didn't happen every week.  We did spend a lot of time outdoors, but not much for the purpose of looking at nature.

I want to take one walk each week with the sole purpose of finding out about nature things.  Right now I don't foresee having a plan of study when we do these walks since it's new and more about developing the habit.  I want to focus this time on teaching the children to really look at nature and notice things.  I'm not as concerned about Izzy incorporating a nature journal yet (although one of my goals is to begin one for myself), but will encourage her to draw anything she finds.

Izzy got some new binoculars for Christmas, so I'm hoping that will help to excite her for nature walks.

5.  Continue to read good books.
I talked about this in this post, and will continue to read good, quality books to the girls each day.  Now that I have a kindle (thank you, hubby!), I'm very tempted to add some books to the list - the ones by Pierson, Baldwin, and Perkins.  We'll see.  I'll keep you updated with current/favorite read-alouds.

6.  Weekly baking or dinner prep.
I would really like to have Izzy help me bake or make dinner once a week.  She and Addy both help me quite a bit when I'm baking, but I would like to introduce her specifically to cooking here and there.  I think it'll be a good way to expose her to it while she's young, paving way for time spent on this handicraft in the future.  I love to cook, and am fairly good at it, and want my children to develop this skill.  The girls even got new aprons for Christmas (thanks, Nana!).

7.  Weekly journal entry.
This is something else I had planned to do from the beginning, but I honestly forgot about it.  I would like to sit down with Izzy once a week, on Fridays, and have her dictate an entry to me while I write it down.  She can tell me about anything:  events, daily happenings, weather reports, descriptions of people/places/things, her favorite things, an imaginitive story, etc.  I think this will be a wonderful way for her to practice formulating and processing information and ideas in her head as well as relaying those ideas to someone else.  It's like early narration practice.  It will also be something fun to look back on.

8.  Make some homemade books.
I've been really intrigued by Linda Fay's description of making homemade books with her children.  I think this would be a wonderful way to integrate drawing, plus a little penmanship practice.  I would love to incorporate this every now and then, but it's not a priority.

9.  Daily art time plus biweekly art project.
I don't know if the art time will be a daily thing, but I would like to begin encouraging more drawing.

Do you like Macho Man, there?  Jared refuses to get rid of him.

The girls have been drawing more since I moved their picnic table into the play learning room, and since they got some new art supplies for Christmas - new supertip markers, watercolor pencils, and oil pastels, plus Izzy got an art kit from my mom (thanks, mom!), which she loves.

For the art project, I put biweekly because I just don't foresee this being a weekly thing, as much as I would like it to be.  At this point I have no idea which specific projects we'll try (except for the homemade books - this will be a great time to do those) but I'll probably steal some of Celeste's examples from her blog.  (By the way, the daily art time idea was stolen from her blog, too.)

I think that's it.  Happy homeschooling in 2015!

Our kindergarten reading list

Reading aloud is one of the most important parts of our day.  We've always read to our girls, even when they were little bitty.  And I don't plan to quit reading aloud to them even when they learn to read themselves.  There are many reasons to continue reading aloud to kids even when they're well into their teen years.

What we're reading

As far as which books we choose to read, quality is definitely more imporant than quantity.  I have spent the past several months purging our house of books that would fit under the category of "twaddle."  These books have no meat to them; they're just silly and nonsensical and are not literature.  They remind me of comedian Brian Regan's bit about the book about the clock - Page 1:  The clock.  Page 2:  Tick-tock.  Page 3:  The end.  Back cover:  18 bucks.  

Or that part in Despicable Me 2 when Gru is reading the girls a bedtime story about kittens.  "This is literature?" he asks.

Anyway, my point is that I've been much more thoughtful about the kind of books I read to the girls.  I want them to get used to reading good, quality, well-written literature so that they can appreciate it in the future (and be able to keep up with the rigorous Ambleside Online (AO) curriculum! - which is the curriculum we will be using, by the way), and so that their minds can actually feed off of it and develop meaningful and lovely ideas.

In my previous kindergarten post, I listed a schedule of read-alouds that we were following throughout the week.  Well....you know.  That kind of went out the window.  The schedule, I mean - not the actual books.  Right now there's no schedule as far as which books are read on each day.  At certain times of the day we just pick up a book, from a list of books, and read.  Then we put it back and the next day we pick up a different one.

So...finally...here's what we're reading.  Most of our reading happens at breakfast, lunch, before and/or after naptime, and before bed.  All hours of the day.  *Edited to add that we don't necessarily read at all of these times everyday - these are just the times that we will most likely read.

Bible:

The Beginner's Bible

We read one or two Bible stories each morning.  More on this in another post.

Poetry/Rhymes:
The Real Mother Goose (online here)
The Random House Book of Mother Goose
The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature - contains many poems for children
The Young Puffin Book of Verse
A Child's Own Book of Verse (online here)

We don't read from every single book each morning.  I'll choose one book each day and read a rhyme/poem or two (or seven if it's Mother Goose - they love it).

Storybooks:
The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature
Kindergarten Gems (online here)
For the Children's Hour (online here)
The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter
The Children's Book of Virtues

Just like the poetry books, we don't read a story from every single one of these books every single day.  When it's time to read, I choose a book (or let the girls choose) and read a story.  We rotate the books throughout the week, in no particular order.

Picture Books:
Too many to list.  This link and this link provide lists of wonderful picture books.  The former link also explains a little bit about choosing quality books.  We don't read books only from these lists, but I have been more careful about choosing quality, well-written stories.

Here are some of the girls' current favorites:  anything Curious George, Bread and Jam for Frances by Russel Hoban, The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Paul Galdone, any of the Carl books by Alexandra Day, Madeline and others by Ludwig Bemelmans, just to name a few.

Current Chapter Books:
The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Adventures of Buster Bear (online here or listen online here)

We usually read one chapter from Winnie the Pooh once per week (or every other week, it just depends).  From the others, we'll read one or two chapters once or twice per week.

There are also other books that I would love to include - I mentioned some in my other kindergarten post.  However, at this point I just haven't found the time to incorporate them regularly into our days.  Books such as Among the Meadow People and others by Clara Dillingham Pierson, Pilgrim Stories by Margaret B. Pumphrey, Fifty Famous People by James Baldwin, and The Dutch Twins and others by Lucy Fitch Perkins, are wonderful free, online books for this age.  I may read from them more after the first of the year because I may or may not be getting a Kindle for Christmas (ahem), which will make it sooooo much easier to read online books.

The last thing I have for you is a list of the chapter books on my kindergarten read-aloud list.  Of course, I may not get to all of them this year, but it gives me plenty to choose from.  Addy also listens in most of the time, although since she's only 3, I don't require her to sit there.  She can go play if she wants, but she usually stays :)  The link I provided toward the beginning of my post (about the reasons to read aloud to your kids) links to an article that talks about how children can listen at a much higher level than they can read.  So it's really good for them to listen to books that may seem too complicated for them because it builds their vocabulary and expands their minds.  Plus kids understand a lot more than we think :)

The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne - currently reading

Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
Stuart Little by E.B.White - finished
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl - currently reading

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

Raggedy Anne by Johnny Gruelle

Raggedy Andy by Johnny Gruelle

My Father's Dragon series by Ruth Stiles Gannett - finished

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

The Adventures of Buster Bear and others by Thornton Burgess - currently reading

Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess
Milly Molly Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and others by Betty MacDonald
Tumtum and Nutmeg and others by Emily Bearn
A Bear Called Paddington and others by Michael Bond 

Happy reading!