First Days of School

So the first few days of school have brought a LOT of field trips. We went to the Children's Discovery Museum for a day, and the kids had a blast painting on the glass wall, building with legos, and shopping in the pretend store.

We went to Safety Town, which is a neat place for the kids to ride bikes....they have stop lights and stop signs and an overpass that Nathan had fun zooming down. This year, he's really starting to get into riding his bike (with training wheels, of course) and I think he was laughing the whole time.

We also went to the Lakeview museum, because they were having a lego exhibit. The sunflower above was really neat...I don't know how to change the picture to vertical.

And of course, we have actual school time. Nathan works on math mostly, and Becca works on writing. Lately we've been doing our lessons outside. We do reading and read-a-louds before bedtime, and Bible over lunch.

We LOVE the freedom of homeschooling!!!

Day in the life...

I've been participating in Heart of the Matter's Not Back to School Hop over the past month and this week's topic is the typical day in the life of a homeschooler....We're still new at this, but here goes....

9am--We get up between 9 and 10. I'm hoping to move this back to between 8 and 9, but we've stayed up late a lot this summer. The kids get their own breakfast, usually....poptarts for Nathan, granola bar or cereal for Becca. We usually have to help her. I know I'm not going to win any "Mother of the Year" awards for my breakfast skills. I'm not a morning person.

The kids also get about an hour of TV at this time...we're still into the preschool shows, Sesame Street, Dora, Mickey Mouse, etc.

Mark works 2nd shift, so the mornings are our family time. Sometimes we have appointments, or sometimes we hang out and play with daddy. Just depends on what's going on around here.

12pm--Lunch prep for Mom. I'm trying to get better about cooking ahead, but I haven't done so well at it since we moved to the new house.

1pm--Lunch. This is the other reason I don't do a very elaborate breakfast. We eat our big meal of the day at lunch to accommodate Daddy's schedule. We read our Bible lesson at lunch...it's worked best for us at this time, because we're all together.

2pm--QUIET TIME. Kids are supposed to be playing in their separate rooms. Most of the time, they end up playing together. Quiet time has become more about giving me a break than them actually being in their separate rooms.

3:30pm--School time. Nathan does math and handwriting...anything else is bonus. Becca does some writing and some other skill, like coloring, painting, cutting with scissors, etc. Sometimes we do this outside, sometimes downstairs.

After this, they play outside or we swim or something. Maybe we'll play a game.

6pm--Dinner, which for us is more like lunch.

At bedtime, which is typically around 9, I have Nathan read me a page out of his reader, and then I read the read aloud book. Because of all that, they don't end up in bed until 10, hence getting up so late. I need to push it earlier, but it's been so hot, that I haven't let them play outside until 7:30 or so.

On Mondays, we have Mommy Moments in the mornings, and on Fridays, both kids have gymnastics. I hope to also start the kids in AWANAs this fall, but I haven't decided where they will do that.

Daddy is supposed to do science on Fridays, and we don't do much school other than that on that day. Sometimes we school on the weekends, just because the kids are bored and don't know the difference between weekends and weekdays. I haven't integrated the whole history part of Sonlight yet, I'm not sure how I want to add it. We basically spend a lot of time reading and talking about what they're interested in right now.

My main goals for the day are that Nathan does a math lesson, a language arts lesson, reads his assigned reader. Becca's goal for the year is to learn to write all her letters. I feel like we've accomplished a good day when all those goals happen.

I'd be interested to see if there are any other 2nd shift families out there and how they schedule their day.

The most amazing sight....

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in your mother's womb. Psalm 139:19

Schoolroom

I wasn't going to do a "schoolroom" but since we moved, homeschooling all over the house hasn't worked the same way that it did at the other house. Although this house is double the size of our other one, the floor plan is a lot more closed off. At the old house, we did workbooks at the kitchen bar, or dining room table, or sometimes in the basement with bean bag chairs and lap desks. At this house, though, there really isn't room for us all in the dining room, especially once the baby comes.

So this is the room that we decided would be the best schoolroom:

This is where I play bartender (I mean teacher).

I store all the school supplies in old diaper wipe containers...(crayons, glue, markers, etc.) In the organizing of this room, I discovered that I collect school supplies, and that I probably have enough for an entire kindergarten class.

On this shelf, I put the stuff that we use on a daily basis. The readers and read aloud books are still upstairs, but the math book, science stuff, and language arts stay down here. The other materials are stored underneath the bar....

Cricut: A homeschooler's best friend

A map and our "calendar" station. Right now, I'm having Nathan write in each day and the weather of that day. I have Becca count the days and sing our "days of the week" song and we talk about the month. I want to make this a little more fancy, but this works for right now. Maybe I'll get motivated with my cricut.

There are a few "mirrored walls" in this house, and they work great as dry-erase boards. This did say "Welcome to School, Nathan and Becca" but then the kids discovered that they could write on it too...so this is how it turned out. =)

This is what is all over the floor...for now....but when the baby comes, the Geotrax are going to be evicted to another part of the basement. The baby will need a spot in the school room too.

Look who else can swim

Becca's learning to swim too....but she doesn't come up for air. She can hold her breath a long time though.

The lens fogs up towards the end...sorry about the quality.

swimming

Nathan can swim!!

Curriculum

This is our first year of officially homeschooling. We're excited, so I thought I'd share a little bit about what we plan on doing this year.

We're doing Sonlight Core K this year. We've read one book so far and the kids are loving it. As much as I want to stay in the instructor's guide everyday, I don't think that's the way that it's going to be. My goal is to finish everything, but at our pace. I don't want to sprint through this year, but enjoy all the twists and turns.

I did pick up the Sonlight Language Arts 1, because Nathan was doing really well on learning to read, but it's kinda slowed down with the pregnancy and moving. Plus, I lost the book I was using to teach him in the move. (Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons) . We're also doing the Explode the Code as soon as I find it (it should be in the same place as the reading lesson book). I know that the books made it to this house, they were in the garage when we were moving our stuff in, and I thought that would be a safe place, but then everything got shuffled around between the garage and the shed, and we can't find them anywhere AHHHHHHHHHH!

We're also doing 1st grade Handwriting without Tears. We did the Kindergarten level last year with much success. I think it helped with learning to read too.

We are about 35 lessons into Horizons K Math. It's taught in a spiral fashion, which I didn't think that I would like, but now that we're used to it, both of us like it. It's getting harder right now, and he gets frustrated writing the numbers...he understands the math fine, but the writing part is difficult, so sometimes, I make him write half of it, and then I write his answers for the other half.

Dad is in charge of science, and they're going to do Sonlight science K. It's mostly usborne books, and they love the books. Science probably won't be every day, more like every few days, but they can have fun with it. I don't think that science is 'necessary' for kindergärtners anyway, I knew the instructor's guide would give them some structure for it.

Becca can do most of this with us....she'll be listening with the readers and read alouds, she can follow along with the science experiments, she can work on her handwriting as well. I might do some "letter of the week" stuff with her and let Nathan play along with that too.