{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??

{Year one reflections} - five weeks in

Wow, we have already finished five weeks of Izzy's first grade (year one) year!  Time sure does fly.

I think I explained in a previous post, but we began early mainly because baby girl #3 is due in September and I wanted to get some school time IN before I take some time OFF to care for a newborn.  That way we won't be too terribly behind.

Anyway, here are some of my ramblings reflections of these first five weeks:

Circle/Morning Time

Circle time has been going pretty well.  We're doing this during/right after breakfast (I eat faster than my kids, so they're usually still eating or finishing up when I begin circle time stuff).  I like doing this at breakfast - it's like killing two birds with one stone, which gives us more time the rest of the day to play and whatnot.  Circle time has not been taking very long - it's short and sweet :)  Bible reading, memory work, poetry, and maybe a read-aloud is all we do, and it takes about 20-30 minutes.

Spanish

We've been doing Spanish at lunch, which has been going well.  Again, mouths full!  Addy has been catching on just as much as Izzy (6).  It's been really easy to do it during lunch because two times per week we just learn some vocabulary and it's purely conversational, and the other two times per week we watch a video - either a Salsa video or a Spanish song video.

*As I wrote this, Addy just got in the shower and yelled, "Muy caliente!"  LOL, she cracks me up.

Memory Work

Something that wasn't going well at first was our memory work (during circle time).  I originally took the suggestions from Charlotte Mason Help (CMH) to have Izzy memorize one poem, one Psalm, one scripture passage, two hymns, and two folksongs, per term.  But then I just couldn't decide on a scripture passage.  So instead, I opted for Simply Charlotte Mason's scripture memory verse pack.

So based on reading about others' memory work routine, plus CMH's suggestions, we were doing something like this:
Monday - Scripture, Psalm
Tuesday - Scripture, Poem
Wednesday - Scripture, Psalm
Thursday - Scripture, Poem

Plus, we were listening to our hymn twice per week and our folksong twice per week (during lunch, which, paired with Spanish, made lunchtime feel a little chaotic, to be honest.)  So all-in-all that meant three (3!) memory-type things we were working on everyday.

No wonder I didn't feel that it was going well!  It was just too much and felt more like drudgery than anything else.

I looked around on the AO forums and came across this link, which contains the PNEU curriculum for each year.  When you click on the year you need, it gives an outline of what the children learned for each subject area.  For year one, the students memorized one Bible passage (a Psalm), one poem, and two hymns per term.  That's it!  (I remember reading somewhere on this blog about how folksongs were not part of the curriculum back then because they were probably sung quite often in everyday life.)

Then, when you look at the PNEU schedules, memory work was only done for 10 minutes, three times per week in form I (years 1-3).  Oh, what a relief!

Now our memory work routine looks like this and lasts no more than 10 minutes each day:
Monday - Hymn
Tuesday - Poem
Wednesday - Folksong
Thursday - Psalm

As you can see, I have four days of memory work on our schedule instead of three, but that's because I added one for the folksong.

Much better.  And the girls (I say girls because Addy has learned the memory work, too, even though I don't require it of her, of course) are still learning everything just fine.

Burgess, Paddle, and CM's Elementary Geography

My original plan was to read all of the Burgess Bird Book, spread throughout the year; all of Paddle to the Sea in the first term; and then in Paddle's place, read all of CM's Elementary Geography (which would require two readings per week) in terms two and three.

Again, too much.

*Note to self:  trust the AO schedule!

It felt like I was just cramming in as much as possible and for what reason?  For example, I doubt my kids will be better off if I require them to read and narrate the whole Bird book rather than what's recommended.  So I went back to what AO suggests:  we read the first two chapters of Burgess Bird, then I've been choosing chapters about birds in our area.  It feels so freeing.

I'm also going back to the original Paddle to the Sea schedule, and only adding the recommended sections of CM's Geography and/or Long's Geography.  Again, freeing.

*One more time:  trust the AO schedule!

Weekly Schedule

I've also already changed the format of our weekly schedule (and our daily routine in general!  Actually the daily routine is still up in the air - summertime activities will do that :) ).  I figured out that I really need to have a specific plan for each day.  For example, I need to see on a schedule that our drawing lesson will be on Mondays.  That way I know that we had better make time for a drawing lesson on Monday.  Period.  Because so far, just saying that I'll fit it in some afternoon when we have time = it probably won't get done.  (And it didn't the first two weeks.  And it hasn't the last two weeks.  Drawing fail.)

Also, it's been helpful to assign certain readings to certain days.  Again, I know exactly what we should accomplish that day, plus I can pair a longer reading with a shorter reading so it doesn't seem like we're cramming in too much in one day.

AND, I've figured out that the lessons go much better if we do not try to do them all in one block.  Izzy and I both do better if we do two or three subjects, take a break, then resume lessons later.

Narrations

Izzy has been doing pretty well with her narrations.  At least I think so - I am just as new at this as she is!  I don't recall her giving me an "I don't know" yet, and she usually gives me a few sentences.  Here are a few things that have helped:

• The first week we took turns narrating for pretty much every single reading.  Now, we take turns on the longer or more difficult readings like Parables from Nature.
• I've broken up all of the readings, except for the really short Aesop readings.  This means that I've been reading a couple of paragraphs, then I stop and let Izzy narrate, then I read a couple more paragraphs, then Izzy narrates, etc.  I usually stop after 15, maybe 20 minutes of total reading/narrating time (a timer has helped here).  Of course, this means that some of the readings are taking longer than anticipated, but that's okay.  I think it took us 5 or 6 separate readings (spread over two weeks) to get through Beauty and the Beast, for example. 
• These two videos were really helpful for me in understanding how narration should look:  video 1 and video 2.

What I still need to figure out

• A "normal" (is there such a thing?) daily routine.  But then once I (maybe) figure that out, it'll be blown to bits when baby #3 arrives, HA.
• How to give Addy the attention she needs.  She's been acting out a little lately and I think it's because she knows I'm spending a lot of time with Izzy.  There are days when she wants to do "school stuff," too, which has resulted in my scrambling to find something for her to do.  We have plenty of puzzles, drawing supplies, pattern blocks, magnets, etc, but she knows that's not the same thing :)
• When to begin Izzy's music lessons (and she's beginning with a recorder), and where to fit them in during the day.  Music fail :(
• How to make myself sit the girls down for drawing lessons more than once every five weeks.  Another fail.
• And we haven't been very consistent with nature journaling, either.  We've at least gone on plenty of walks and talked about nature things pretty regularly, so nature study in general hasn't been a complete failure.
• I'm sure there's something I'm not thinking of at the moment.
• Oh yeah!  Actually, Spanish has not been consistent the last two weeks because our computer crashed!  As a result, we're having to use Jared's super old, super slow, non-wireless computer, which means we haven't been able to watch the Salsa or Youtube videos at lunch because the computer is hooked up in the living room.  I guess we could just move lunch to the living room floor on those days.  Yes.  We should do that.  And then the girls can vacuum.

~~~~~

There's more I could write about, but for now I think I'll stop there!