Mom's Workbox

I'm on a yahoo group about workboxes for homeschooling our children and recently there has been a lot of discussion about workboxes for Mom.  It actually makes me chuckle a bit because I started a simple workbox for myself before I started workboxes for my children.  

Here is what I've been doing.  I'm starting out simple and not overloading my workbox with tasks.  I actually want to be successful before I add more to it... but in a regular card file (3x5 or 5x6) I have my first tab file that says, "today".  Behind that and slightly to the right is "tomorrow".  I have a few cards that I do daily that I routinely ignore behind the "today" tab.  When I do the task, I move it behind "tomorrow".  The next tab I have is "This week" and behind that is "next week".  Behind the tab for today, one of the cards is "do something from this week's tab".  Obviously these are things that I need to do weekly but regularly skip or they escape my radar somehow.  Things like menu planning or blog.  Behind the tab for "next week" I have tabs for "this month", "next month", "this season" and "next season". 

At the end of each day, I simply move the "tomorrow" card behind all the individual task cards and start again.  No one has to reload my boxes for me and things are starting to get done around here!  LOL!  (at the end of each week, I do the same thing with the "this week" "next week" cards, and so on across the system.)

I'm a past flybaby but found that whole notebook system to be cumbersome.  I abandoned it because if anything in my life needed to be added or deleted from my "control journal" I felt like I had to go to my computer and recreate a whole new print out for whatever list it pertained to.  With this system, I just add one more card as I see fit.  And if some card's task has become autopilot, I can just take the card out and trash it.  No need to reprint the entire system like I felt I needed to with Flylady.  (I love Flylady, don't misread that.  I think the woman is offering an amazing ministry to "messies" like me.  The control journal and the email reminders were too much for me though.)

Anyway... here are some pictures to help out my visual friends.  

I certainly don't think this system is original to me.  I believe FlyLady herself even references a similar system in her book.  Still, I hope it will inspire someone else to create a workable system tailored just for her.

Blessings!

ETA:  Thank you to Marni who helped me recall where I got the original idea for this.  It came from Side-tracked Home Executives.  http://www.shesintouch.com/  FlyLady did refer to this book in Sink Reflections.  I own both.  I really enjoy the books and recommend them if you have a few extra dollars.  

Math U See - Addition Facts

At my house, we're using the Math U See program.  I have to tell you that I really wish I'd learned math this way!  One thing I'm going to be fanatical about with my children is math drills.  As such, I'm currently drilling in the addition facts.  My children are learning them via the Math U See method of introducing them (Alpha lessons 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, and 17).

I am blessed to have an iPhone and for Christmas this past year, my daughter received an iTouch.  Lucky us, we get to use the free Quizlet software with our $2 application purchase for our apple products.  That means I can put any flash cards I can make online on our iPhone or iTouch devices.

I just made up flash cards for all the addition facts over at Quizlet.com. Click that link and you'll see all the flash cards I made.  (If the link fails, visit quizlet.com and search Math U See.  All of mine will be under the user name faithfulmommy.)  When I whipped them up, I made them according to the MUS lessons so they are not set up in a traditional method.  As you go through the alpha program, you can add the appropriate flash cards to your device according to what your child has just learned.  Now, here is the really cool part...  even if you don't have an apple device you can print these cards off!  I've just done that myself so I can drill the cards any 'ole time I like via the good old fashion hard copy flash card method.  Print them off, glue the back, fold them in half and you have yourself some flash cards!  Yahoo!  Easy Peasy.  Naturally, I laminated mine because if something doesn't move at my house, I might just laminate it...  Ha!

Here they are in all their glory...

I hope it serves you!

First day of school

Last week our children were away visiting the grandparents for the week.  What a blessing to have an entire week to prepare for homeschool!  I started the week by attending our local homeschool convention.  Who in their right mind would think that I would enjoy that so much?!  I purchased some curriculum, I listened to some speakers and I learned a few good tips for ways to run our school.  The remainder of the week I laminated until I thought I broke the machine, I read ideas all over the internet, I printed, I planned and I scheduled.

I've decided to run school in six week cycles here at our house.  I've also decided to use Sue Patrick's Workbox system.  

I don't like the idea of using shoe boxes because not everything fits in the shoe boxes.  I don't like the idea of some of my workbooks and projects not fitting into the box properly so I went on a hunt to find just the right boxes for my house.  Thanks to my friend Julia, I found these cool boxes over at my local Dollar Tree.  When turned one way, they nest into each other.  When turned opposite ways, they stack.  Super cool.  Big enough for most of my projects, tidy when the day is complete.

Last week during my planning time, I made custom workbox tags for each child.  My 6 year old got Star Wars Legos, my 5 year old got Indiana Jones Legos and my 8 year old daughter got Kit Kittredge.  I found blank workbox tags at Confessions of a Homeschooler blog.  Scroll down to her workbox section and find the download for "blank workbox numbers."  I then went out to the internet under google images and found images that I wanted for each child.  I saved them and resized them so they were 1.5 inches tall and 1 inch wide.  Placed them each 12 times onto a new document and printed.  Then I cut them out, glue sticked them to the blank space on the downloaded document and laminated.  Adhered my velcro dots to the boxes, the schedule strip and the back of each individual number.  Voila!  A custom workbox plan for each child.

When I am planning my workboxes for the week, I use this excel spreadsheet.  However, not owning the Microsoft software to run it, I downloaded it and use Open Office (free) software instead.  On the same blog link I shared above, scroll down into the Workbox printables section again and click workbox planning worksheet.  Save it and then open it in Open Office (if you don't own Excel).  

The thing I love about this is that I can plan for our group time for the items we are all working on together.  Then the kids can proceed to the assigned workboxes I have planned for the day.  It also gives me three pages in my planner that I can look at each night to fill the workboxes quickly and pretty easily.  I can lay it all out ahead and the next morning starts out pretty smooth.  

This was only day one but it went well for us.  I'm sure things will get tweaked at my house as we use the system more but after day one, I can tell you that I think I've found the framework to structure our school.  

For day one, school was completed in about 2 hours with three kids working together with Mom's help.  In group time we covered the order of the months of the year, the order of the days of the week, our verse for this six week session, the 8 history cards we're learning this week, skip counting by twos, prayer and reading a chapter from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Mason (age 5) completed 9 boxes that included following instructions for sticker placement, math, lacing, tracing, handwriting, story sequencing, reading a Bob book to Mom, a matching game and a craft where he wrote a thank you note to Grandma and Grandpa which included copywork and craft time.  Case (age 6) did the following instructions for sticker placement assignment, math, a couple Brain Quest cards with Mom, some critical thinking exercises, a greater than/less than worksheet, the thank you note to the grandparents, handwriting, some shapes work and put together his newest Lego kit.  (We gave him the year long Lego club as part of his birthday gift last year.  This month's kit arrived while he was away last week so I put it in his box for his final activity for the day.)  Ashlee (age 8) had boxes that included her Wordly Wise book, a calendar activity, handwriting practice, consonant teams worksheet, skip counting, reading a chapter book and the thank you note craft.  

The children seem to be pleased with the idea that they "clock in" and "clock out" each day.  

For these, I simply printed out the downloads that are free when you purchase Sue Patrick's workbox book.  I glued them to some library envelopes (25 for $1 at Dollar Tree right now).  I laminated them all, used a box cutter to put the slit through the top layer of lamination so the kids could slide their punch in.  Each kid has a laminated card with their name and a picture of them for use as the time card.  I'm not sure how long this aspect of her suggestion will last but for now, the novelty amuses my kids.

Day one went pretty well considering it was a whole new system.  There were a few hiccups but mostly I was able to work with each child during the time they needed my attention.  The system will likely get smoother as time goes on but for now, I'm pleased that it went smoothly considering I was schooling three kids at a time - two of whom can't read.  

Do you use the workbox system?  How does it work for you?

E is for EXCITED!

It's been a super awesome week here at my house!

A few updates for you.  We named our school!  We are now The Halls of Learning.  Seems appropriate since our last name is Hall.  I even made the kids their own ID cards - complete with school logo.  Laminated them and everything.  That actually happened a couple weeks back but I'm just now getting around to writing about it here.  It's much more fun to order things for our "school" now that it's named.  LOL.

So, this week I went to the local Classical Conversations parent practicum.  In the spring, I ordered the Foundations guide, the History Cards and the Cycle 1 items that compliment the curriculum.  We enjoyed it but we were doing it on our own without participating in the local co-op.  We visited the co-op one day and decided it would likely be a good fit for our family.  To be honest, in order for me to be able to afford the fee I needed to sign up to tutor.  Luckily for me, they had a space for me. 

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I went to the parent practicum in the morning and tutor training in the afternoon.  I'm even more excited about the program now than I was before!  I have some new tools to help drill my children on the information and I have a new desire to give my children a classical education.  Frankly, I think I'm going to finally get an education too.  I was schooled before but now I'm going to get educated.  There is so much to learn and my feeble old brain is pretty excited to tackle it all. 

While I was in all this training, my kids were all in camps.  They did educational things in the camps but they had a LOT of fun.  All three of my kids came home talking about new friends and fun projects.  It was $33 per kid to participate in the camps for 3 days.  Eleven bucks a day.  Wow.  I couldn't have hired a sitter for all that - much less expected the level of education and entertainment that they got. 

Now - another fun thing I've heard about but recently started to explore...  WORKBOXES!  I know, they are all the rage and you've already heard about them, haven't you.  Well, I've been up LATE these last two nights searching the internet about this.  I won't do a big write up about them because there is so much else out there that is far better to explain the process.  But - in all your workbox searching - make sure you check out this list.

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/workbox.php

Many ideas of things to put in your workboxes.  Mostly for early elementary ages. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing the lady who started the whole phenomenon talk about it at the homeschool convention that is coming to my area in two weeks.  Wanna join me? 

The lady who started it all is Sue Patrick.  And the convention where I will be attending and she will be speaking is the Northern Virginia Home Education Conference that will take place in Chantilly Virginia on July 9-10.  I can't wait!

Personally, I'm going to start saving my pennies to buy some workboxes from Joann's with my coupouns.  I intend to buy these because I think they will serve my space and my needs best.

http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog/productdetail.jsp?pageName=search&flag=true&PRODID=zprd_02348241a

I'm super excited about this method of planning my school day and helping my kid(s) get the most bang for their school day buck. 

My intention is to start our school day with bible reading, family story time, and Classical Conversations drill/review before sending the children to their boxes for the remainder of the day. 

I'm super charged about the opportunity to sit down (in two weeks) to plan our our next six week cycle.  I've decided to plan our school year to be year round in six week cycles.  Six real weeks on and one light week while Mom plans the next six weeks.  That's how I'm tackling it right now.  As with all homeschool planning, plan for change too!  LOL.  Anyway, we're getting into our groove still as we're so new to this adventure.  But I'm totally excited!!

Cheers!

Egg-cellent experiments

Looking for some fun science to share with your kiddos this summer? Try this site to see what you can find. I heard about it from my friend Anna-Marie. I'm going to try some with my crew!

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000023

She suggested "go under the section related experiments to find the egg in the bottle trick."

Will do! Thanks!

Peace

It's been a rough day here at my house. Eventually, after the morning bickering died down, I got some workbooks out for Ashlee and Mason while Case was at kindergarten. That helped. Then I got out the Crayola Crayon Maker. That helped a LOT. After the bus came, we all went outside where it went back down hill for awhile. What can I say, it's been a rough day. I think they didn't get enough sleep over the big weekend and they still haven't caught up.

But then, God decided to smile on me for a few minutes. And he gave me this. This scene above. Ahhh....

Now, if you'll excuse me... I'm going to put my children in bed.

Home manager

I don't know about you but I really need to get a handle on this job of mine. I went to Costco on Saturday and spent $236. Doesn't sound so bad to some people I know but I went over the budget my husband sent me with.

Yes, I bought a rice cooker that I could have done without. However, I've been talking about a rice cooker for ages and I decided that was the day to get it. (Along with 25 lbs. of rice.) In addition I bought a shelter umbrella thing (http://sklz.com/umbrella/sport-brella?gclid=CInarbHJ2aECFY9M5QodjzQgIg) which is something I tried to buy last year but they were sold out. (PS - they are $40 at Costco versus $60 that I've seen everywhere else.)

SO, yes... I could have saved $70 from that purchase total but I don't think I was extravagant in my purchases. Everything else was food and household management. Now that I've gone over budget, I don't have any cash for the regular old grocery run that I might need to make.

It is time for me to figure out how to build up a pantry (in the basement) for a longer term supply of items than just one week's worth. Buying groceries at Giant one week at a time is expensive. We went on Friday and bought about two days worth of food and spend over $100! That's crazy.

Soo... on my hunt for ideas I've found The Frugal Girl's blog. (http://www.thefrugalgirl.com/) She seems to have some good ideas that I'm going to try. But if you have any other sites or ideas about helping me get our food budget under control and how to manage my home more effectively, PLEASE SHARE! I need to know.

Wordly Wise 3000

Before our homeschool adventure began, I'd purchased a comprehensive 3rd grade curriculum to "try out" homeschooling my daughter over the summer between second and third grade. Turns out, I began using it sooner than I'd originally thought.

I can't really complain about the curriculum I purchased but when it came to the spelling/vocabulary words it provided as a comprehensive list for my child, it was *way* too easy for her. Even half way through second grade, it did nothing to challenge her.

Last night I was reading through another homeschool blog (http://www.fivejs.com/) where she mentioned using Wordly Wise 3000. I went off to check it out and discovered it might be a good fit for my child. I ordered the third grade workbook, key and test booklets on ebay for about $25 including shipping.

You can find out more about this program at http://intervention.schoolspecialty.com/products/details.cfm?series=2818M

I guess the parent company who makes this curriculum also makes Explode the Code. I've heard good things about that too - although I haven't investigated that yet. One thing I really like is that on the page I listed above, under downloads, you can find a word list by level of each word used in the program. In addition to that, you can visit http://www.wordlywise3000.com/ where you can go through each lesson with your child and then play games. Both of these options are free! Gotta love that.

Ashlee and I sat through the lesson on line for Book 2 lesson 1 today. It was short enough to hold her attention but long enough to go over 9 or 10 vocabulary words while requiring the child to repeat the word aloud and then answer a yes/no, true/false, a) or b) style question about each word covered. My four year old was also interested in the lesson which I thought was pretty cool.

I think I'm going to make some 3x5 cards with all the words from Book 2 and their definitions and play with that until my Book 3 gets here.

I love finding new quality material out there! I hope you find it useful too - even if you don't end up buying the books.

Cheers!

Bippity Boppity Boutique

While at Disney last month, I'd hoped to take my daughter to the Bippity Boppity Boutique. It never worked out but while at Downtown Disney she became a princess anyway. We stood just outside the boutique and Alessandra sprinkled my girl with fairy dust and said the magic words and she became a princess right before my eyes! It was one of those moments that I'll treasure when I remember the trip. Thank you Alessandra - wherever you are.

Break Free

Don't be afraid to be among the first to break free. Raise your head and stand apart from the crowd.

New look for Lightning Igniting

Did you notice? Did ya, did ya? I put up a new template for this blog. The old one was just too dull. Sorry Blogger!

I've been wanting something better for awhile but it wasn't easy finding a template that wasn't *so* girlie. I found just what I was looking for over at Split Decisionz. Click on the "free stuff" tab and see what she has to offer. Super cute stuff! And she looks a LOT more polished than many of the other blogger templates I found...

http://www.splitdecisionz.com/

Go ahead... snazz up your own blog! You know you want to!

Mother's Day is coming

My parents do a LOT of traveling. Either driving between their two homes, driving between their home and visiting me or vacationing. They have this little travel pillow they keep in the car for naps on the road and at a recent visit, it was somehow left at my house. It wasn't very pretty so I decided to spruce it up with a pillow case just for it.
My mom loves yellow but I was afraid a yellow pillowcase would show dirt too easily. Above is the front and below is the back. You can make this, as I did, from two fat quarters (available at any fabric store but on sale for $.99 each at Joann's this week). If you want the body of the pillowcase to be the same on both sides, use three fat quarters.

I was sprucing up the one they already own, but you can pick up a travel pillow form for about $8 on sale this week at Joann's. For about $10 and about 30 minutes of your time, you have a handmade gift for your mom! Love that!

In fact, I like this project so much, I think it's going to be my new birthday gift for all the little birthday parties my kiddos get invited to. What better way to use all those fun kid fabrics that I see at the store but wouldn't really use to decorate a room with?! And I bet every kid would enjoy having their own travel pillow and every mom would enjoy one less toy to pick up...

If you really want to make it special, attach this poem with your gift.

I'm your special travel pillow
I was made with lots of care,
Each stitch around my pillow case
Was sewn with love and prayer.

You can take me with you when you go
To places near and far
Cruises to exotic lands
Or just road trips in the car.

Cheers!

Downtown Disney - Lego Store

We took a trip to Disney World last week. It was a ton of fun and you can expect to see more about the trip here on this 'ole blog. To start with, I'll share about our Lego experience. (Come on, you knew I was gonna start with Legos...)

Knowing the trip was coming up, we decided to incorporate some of the money that would be spent at Disney World into Christmas gifts. This served two purposes, teaching our children a bit about delayed gratification and also defraying some of the cost of Christmas. Each child was given a golden ticket (shown above) that I made here at home explaining that they could pick out one Lego set at the biggest Lego store in the US while we were at Downtown Disney. This trick worked amazingly well! Each child picked out a set that was about $50 in value. (Ashlee's was a bit more but she has proven that she will care for it better than the boys too.)

Today I'm going to share with you the set that Mason picked out. It is so charming! We've all had a great time playing with it over these last two days. It's Woody's Roundup - a newly released set.

Here you can see the entire set from the front. It includes the Sheriff's office, the jail and a gold mine.

First we have Stinky Pete in handcuffs standing outside the jail next to his wanted poster. By the way, what exactly does Disney have against the name Pete? That's two bad guys named Pete in the Disney collection. Sorry - got a little distracted there...

Here is Jessie standing next to the cactus and snake with another set of handcuffs in case another bad guy wanders into the scene...

I love the horse and the water trough. The details that Lego puts into these sets always amazes me.

Here is the back of the Sheriff's office with a bank safe upstairs.

I love that the safe actually opens and has money in it! Again... those details that Lego is so good at.

Here you can see the back side of the jail. Fairly plain - until.....

Stinky Pete has an accomplice on the outside who turns the wheel and the whole back wall blows off! Some fun action there for my little people to enjoy actually playing with the set!

The Gold Mine actually has a bit of gold in it for your miner to find.

And one of my favorite touches, the little lantern above the mine. How creative are these folks who design these things?! I don't think I could ever come up with this stuff but I love that it can inspire my little Lego designers to think bigger than what the brick actually looks like on it's own.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it many more times. I {heart} Legos.

Cheers!

Boys

"Boys are active verbs: throw, choke, love, smash, hug, collect, love, dig, kiss, bounce." -Mrs. G via Pioneer Woman's blog.

Yep, that about sums it up. Although my girl is an action verb too... most days.

Mama break

The honeymoon is over. Yes, homeschool is more real now. I still think it's fun and I'm still glad we're doing it, but this has been the week when I felt first hand that it's not always joy and sunshine. So, I took a break. We still did school, but I spent a lot of time doing stuff for myself this week too. First, I started learning about gardening. I'm looking forward to all this snow melting and getting out in the dirt! The studies of gardening counts as teacher workdays because the kids will be helping with the garden and composting too.

Today, after a bit of school, I went to my sewing room. Well, "room" is a bit of a stretch. I went to the unfinished basement where all my creative goodies have been banished to make room for the school room. Still worth it, but I'm allowed to have a moment of longing for a pretty craft room, right? {sigh} Okay, on with the post.

This past Sunday at church, I got to care for the third baby of one of my friends while I served in the nursery. While Mom and I were chatting, she casually mentioned in passing that this baby had nothing made for him as we were recalling a beautiful pink blanket that had been made for her daughter. A little further in the conversation, we were talking about attachment items for babies and she said this baby didn't have one yet. She commented that his favorite way to fall asleep appears to be pulling a burp cloth over his face and snuggling in with it. Mom naturally didn't want to see her sweet baby boy attach himself to a ugly burp cloth!

With that conversation, I made him two burp cloth sized attachment blankets.
On the front, it's cotton with blue, green and light brown stripes. I embroidered his name and stitched a dark brown ribbon and a light blue ribbon. On the back is blue fleece with a tan satin ribbon.

Close up of the front and back. You know how some babies like to rub their fingers on something satin while falling asleep? That's why I added the satin ribbon on the back.

And here they are all folded up and ready for presentation. Ahhh. I feel much better now. If you are a homeschooling mom, don't feel bad to sometimes put school on hold to make yourself happy. You'll be a better mother and teacher if you take care of yourself too.

Don't get me wrong, we still did school this week. We just didn't do as much as we usually seem to do. I'll write about the stuff we did in another post.

Happy Homeschooling!

Handwriting and Monkey Academy

I had a stroke of genius this week. First let me say that my daughter's handwritting was far from a delight to look at. It didn't seem to me that it was a problem to any teacher she's had before me. Her sloppy handwriting only seemed to bother me. Yeah, I get that she's 8 but we're talking bad, sloppy, not-straight, uneven sized letters. So, I decided we are going to correct that before we move on to learning cursive.
Since I'd bought a gagillion (yep, it's a techinical math term) page protectors for her time line notebook (see below), I decided I'd put some to good use. When we pulled her from public school, we took her handwriting notebook home with us. But you could find any handwriting sample and do this too. I copied the sample page from the workbook that includes lower and upper case printed alphabet along with lower and upper case cursive alphabet. Everyday, she traces the entire 4 sets of letters with dry erase markers. Despite the look on her face in the picture, she actually loves this. It serves two purposes for me - a) she is imprinting writing her letters correctly and evenly and b) she is being introduced to cursive writing in a non threatening way.

I made notebooks for my boys too. They both attended a local preschool last year. The five year old class used the A Beka preschool curriculum. At the end of the year, we got to keep the workbooks to use any pages that weren't used in class (which was a LOT). I ripped off the sheet that had the entire alphabet sampled and slipped it into a page protector. Followed by individual pages for each letter of the alphabet. Voila! A handwriting, letter recognition notebook for my Kindergartener. He also does a page or two a day with the dry erase markers.

At the end of the school year, the three year old teachers gave our kids little notebooks for them to practice tracing the letters through the summer. I'd never used it so I slipped them into page protectors and Poof! my four year old has his notebook of handwriting and letter recognition for himself. The difference here is that his notebook contains letters that are bigger in size to match his cognitive abilities, the 6 year old's letters are still large, but are significantly smaller than the 4 year olds and the 8 year old's fit 4 sets of letters all on one page.

And that sums up my virtually free handwriting curriculum!

This week also saw the start of Monkey Academy for us.

Two other moms and I rotate weeks teaching preschool to our four boys in our homes. Due to snow, this was the first week it actually happened. Boy were my kids excited! Ashlee is my teachers assistant and she just loves that. The boys all earn tokens for good behavior during the two hours we have them and then they get to visit a treasure chest at the end to redeem the tokens for prizes (candy, bubbles, books, erasers, etc.). Each prize has a token value assigned to it.

My theme for the week was the letter V, the number 11, the color pink, the shape of a heart and the emotion love. We made little mice out of hearts we colored pink and cut out (scissor practice!!), we put 11 apple stickers on an apple tree and counted as we went. We used my ice cream scoops to count to eleven with the eleventh scoop being pink, we filled in an upper case V with heart stickers and glued pink fuzz balls and pink googly eyes to the lower case V, we read the Velveteen Rabbit (a story about love AND one that the Core Knowledge series says every Kindergartener should hear), we learned a little about Virginia and we had a snack of veggies. Each child got a token for *trying* one veggie dipped in vinegar too. One of the boys actually found he really liked it and dipped all his veggies! We had so much fun - even though the boys were all a little rowdy. After all, they'd all been cooped up for two weeks indoors AND it was their first time with a new group of friends and a new teacher (for two of them). I expect it to go even smoother in the future.

Want to see pictures of anything referenced here? Let me know and I'll photograph it for you.

Happy Homeschooling!

Presidents Day

If you haven't visited the Freebie of the Day, you really need to!
http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/

Today's freebies are all about President's Day. We aren't at the point in our history curriculum for discussing Washington and Lincoln so I'm making a note of these cool links here on my blog so I'll know where to find them when the time is right.

First, George Washington: A National Treasure
http://www.georgewashington.si.edu/
From the Smithsonian.

Next, an online archive of the papers of George Washington.
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/
From UVA.

A virtual field trip to Mount Vernon
http://www.mountvernon.org/
(although, I'll likely take my kids to the real deal since we live so close.)

Abraham Lincoln online
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln.html

Highlights Magazine tribute to Lincoln page
http://www.highlightskids.com/Lincoln/lincolnsBirthdayKids1.asp?ccid=EMC-1000-1001993

Abraham Lincoln as a poet, reader, writer and subject
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/lincolnpoetry/
From the Library of Congress

Happy President's Day!

Timeline Notebook

One thing that really attracted me to the Classical Conversations curriculum is the use of the Veritas Press time line flash cards. I love the idea of teaching my children history via a chronological method that begins with the beginning of time and moves to modern day.

Naturally, you can add this to any curriculum you happen to be using and you don't have to use the Veritas Press cards. One thing we are doing at my house to aid in our understanding of chronological events is making a timeline notebook. I have one page in a page protector that is titled with the titles of the Veritas timeline cards. On each page (as we get to it) we are making some picture, clip art, mini-book, crafty project that corresponds with the event. This is all on a very high level since Ashlee is 8. Eventually, when we've made it through all the time line cards, we can study any event in a little more depth and add more information to that page. At that point we can also study anything else in history and know where in the timeline to plug it in.

I like this method of study because it's makes history chronological for my daughter while also appealing to her arts and crafts nature.

I just read a great article that I found while looking for an element for our current page. It can be found here - http://www.ehow.com/how_5058537_make-timeline-notebook-child.html

Be sure to take note at the bottom of the article the section called resources. There is a link to portraits of historical figures - http://www.lib.utexas.edu/exhibits/portraits/index.php - that looks awesome!

I'm going to bookmark each of those resources on my sidebar too to make sure I have them for the rest of our notebook.

Happy Homeschooling!

Ice Cream Counting & Monkey Academy

We are learning all about counting from 1 - 20 at my house. The six year old is beginning to learn how to spell the words for the numbers.

The four year old is learning how to count past 13.

So, I made this little pile of ice cream scoops on top of an ice cream cone to help them learn. Each scoop has a numeral, dots equaling it's amount and the written word for that number.

We've been having fun creating our ice cream cones this week! I found the idea for this project here - http://www.first-school.ws/activities/crafts/colors/icecreamcone2.htm

Since I needed it to go to twenty, I just printed each of the colored pages twice. Then I used my scrapbook number stickers to label the scoops with the number I wanted along with the amount of dots. Finally, I got out my p-touch label maker and put the word for each letter on the scoop before running each sheet through the laminator and cutting them out. We played with them on the floor and table initially before I taped them to the door jam between my schoolroom and my dining room today.

You may (or may not) be wondering why I put the colors in the order I did. Aren't you lucky? I'm going to tell you why. A mommy friend of mine invited me to join a makeshift preschool co-op for the remainder of the school year for our preschool boys. They've dubbed it Monkey Academy. My first day teaching the co-op will be next week when I'm assigned the letter V, the number 11, the color pink, the shape of a heart and the themes love, relationships and communication. Whew! That's a lot to cover in 2 hours but we're going to do it.

At tlsbooks.com I found a little apples number book that you are expected to print off where each page contains a picture of a tree and a bear holding a numbered apple. The child is supposed to put/color apples on the tree to correspond with the number the bear is holding. Well, I think an entire book of that is a bit redundant so I just printed off the page for 11 and I'm giving each boy 11 apple stickers (again from my scrapbooking stash) to put on the tree after they've colored it. You can find that here - http://www.tlsbooks.com/appletreebook.pdf

Next I found a map of the state of Virginia (where we live) and the boys and I will color it and glue on the state bird, the state flag and the flower/tree. I found the map here - http://www.kidzone.ws/geography/usa/index.htm

The number 11 in my ice cream cone is pink so that the boys can build up to the color and number of our day.

And I found this darling little heart/mouse craft at http://www.first-school.ws/activities/shapes/animals/mouse_hearts.htm

They will be able to color the hearts pink and practice their scissors skills - something every preschool teacher I've ever known has emphasized.

For snack we'll have Veggies and I'll invite them to dip at least one in vinegar. And I'll offer vanilla wafers too.

Finally, I plan to read the Velveteen Rabbit to them. According to the Treasury of Virtue - it's a story about Love. According to "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know" - it's a story they should hear around this age.

Let's hope that fills two hours!

Melted Snow

One thing the East Coast has an abundance of right now is snow. It seemed like a great time to conduct an experiment regarding volume!

Always the ham, my eldest son needed to clown around in the shot for the initial photo. He makes me giggle sometimes.

Measurements of the glass full of snow.

Guesses placed about how much water there will be when the snow melts.

Checking the glass halfway through the melting...

And our finally analysis. Snow, Guesses and Water charts ready to be put in a science notebook. Want to do it in your homeschool? Here's the link.

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/Snow%20Melting%20Experiment.pdf

I hope you're enjoying the winter wonderland where you are!

Great finds!

Today included some web surfing for my homeschool. I found a few really geat finds to share.

First and most exciting to me is Home Share. It's google but for homeschoolers! We type in what we're looking for and it provides us with googled links that are suitable for homeschool! I am completely excited about that.

Next I found Worksheet Works. The thing I love about this is it allows you to go in and set some parameters for what you want in your child's worksheet in a particular theme and it creates a worksheet for you! How awesome is that? For example - Ashlee is learning her multiplication table right now. We are up to the three's. So - I plugged in my parameters of 3x12 as the maximum and she now has a worksheet with variables of 1x, 2x and 3x any numbers up to 12. Fantastic!

And finally, I happen to own the book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" because it was recommended to me. Case seems to like it but we'd set it aside recently. While on my tour of the web, I found that donnayoung.org has worksheets that coordinate with each of the 100 lessons in the book! Free! I've printed out the worksheets for the first 10 lessons and all of the traceable cards and slipped them into page protectors. My plan is to use the book for Case and then again for Mason. Each boy will get to practice the letters they are learning with dry erase markers. If you are looking for this resource, visit her at http://donnayoung.org/penmanship/manuscript-lessons.htm

The other two links have been added to my sidebar. Happy surfing!

Following Instructions

In another post, I mentioned my daughter's need to learn to follow instructions. I elected to use two methods for teaching this - a) cooking and b) Legos. (You knew I was going to get the Legos in there somewhere!)

I'm preparing to go to a girls weekend tomorrow. I'd volunteered to bring my French Toast Casserole - which my family loves. So, I promised hubby that I'd make two and leave one at home for the family as well. First, I let her watch me make the casserole I'm taking and then I let her (mostly) make the one that is staying home.

Little brothers both popped in an out during the cooking lesson to pick up a few tricks.

She managed to break 8 eggs into the bowl and only got one tiny shell in! Not bad for a beginning chef.

Her favorite part was squishing it all together at the end. She kept saying things like, "Cool!" or "Weeeee!"

Earlier in the week, we worked on the Lego house.

First, I made her complete the base portion of her new Lego house all on her own by following the instructions. I was pleased to see that she had to take things up several times because she'd missed a step or a detail that was needed just a few pages later. A fantastic, no-nag method to help her understand! Forgive me, but I'm pleased with myself.

After my point had been made, I jumped in and we completed the house together. I {heart} Legos.

Here she is doing her copy work after the house was built. The second picture shows my favorite part of the house - the sliding glass door that actually works! The third picture is her favorite part of the project - the bird on the roof!

Free World U

I found something really neat last night. It's called Free World U and it's a complete curriculum for the each grade level preschool through high school. It's a flash card style of curriculum in which the child (or in our case, the child and the teacher) evaluate when the flash card has been mastered.

We started on a few of the flash card sections for second grade today. My daughter really seemed to enjoy it! We sat together and clicked through the digital flash cards and she gave me the answers verbally. I think she really thrives on one-on-one attention.

One of the sections we covered today was about maps. It was particularly interesting to me that although she'd covered this material in her public school education, she hadn't retained even half of the material. It seems to me that this offers some depth to the topics that might be missed otherwise.

I have begun to subscribe to the notion that memorization of rote facts is particularly important for the elementary years - as seen in classical education models. I'm looking forward to spending some time with this website for my two younger boys too. It'll be interesting to see how quickly they begin to retain facts.

Being very new to the whole homeschool journey, it's very exciting to me to discover things that will work for my children and customizing a curriculum to get the most value for each child. I'm surprise by how much I'm learning myself and how passionate I've become about education! It's just a fun and joyful place to be. I only hope that my passion and enthusiasm continues for the duration.

On one of the pages of the Free World U site, I found the following quote.

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats

I find the quote to be relevant to my little blog.

If you'd like to visit Free World U to see if it's a fit for your family, check them out at freeworldu.org.

Cheers!

Lily the Bear

It's been a very exciting day here in our homeschool! We watched Lily the Bear have her first cub live via webcam!

Unfortunately, I sent our six year old son to afternoon Kindergarten today as scheduled. In hindsight, I wish I'd kept him at home with us. I can bet they didn't have nearly as much excitement at school today as we did here!

This live webcam experience has launched what will be a semester long study of bears. We will watch Mama Lily and her cub(s) as they continue to reside in their den and on into the spring. We will learn about bear behavior, hibernation and anything else that excites us.

If you'd like to have a good starting point to learn about bears and join in with us on this adventure, visit bear.org . The Den cam is fascinating to watch. Today alone we've witnessed Lily's labor, seen one newborn cub's arm and heard newborn cub cries. If you do find the website useful, please consider making a donation to them for all the fantastic information they've shared. Even a small donation would be appreciated by the team of scientists. And it's tax deductible too so remember to print out your receipt!

Cheers!

The Adventure Begins!

The morning of January 1st, I sat with my husband to drink our morning coffee and chat like we often enjoy. I had no plans to venture into the topic of homeschooling when I sat down. Somehow during the conversation, I found myself saying, "Can I tell you the reasons I'm considering homeschool?" My husband is a type A personality who thrived in public school. He is not a huge fan of the homeschool concept. However, for some time now, I've felt the gentle urging of the Lord to consider it for our children. In spite of all my inadequacies and my nerves, He has persuaded me. A few months ago, my prayer became, "If this is really your will, Lord, YOU have to sway John's heart because I can not do that in my own strength."

Somehow the words that came out of my mouth that morning were enough to persuade him to pull our 2nd grade daughter out of school for the remainder of the semester. The Friday before she was to go back to school, we had made the decision to try homeschooling. To say I was shocked that he agreed is an understatement!

For the last few weeks, my daughter and I have been muddling our way through homeschool. I had two books already on hand to help us begin this journey. The first is the Core Knowledge series (What your Second Grader Needs to Know) by E.D. Hirsch. The second is a full scale curriculum called Home Education Curriculum by Jean Wolff. This is a third grade curriculum (she has all elementary levels) but apparently it's no longer in print. I saw it was well reviewed at Amazon and I came across an unopened box of it for $20. I decided for $20 it was worth investigating!

So far, it's been a modge podge of those two guides. Mostly the third grade curriculum package (which has worksheets and book guides to go with it) but also items from the other book too.

I have two girl friends who are educating their children with Classical Conversations. I'd originally declined to investigate that method of schooling because I thought it sounded so dry and dull. But their kids seem to be thriving and enjoying the work. In a number of other ways, it appeared that God was putting this method of schooling in front of me so I had no choice but to examine it. My favorite thing about the curriculum is that it gives a timeline study of history that the children memorize. How wonderful would it be to learn of something in history and already have a framework built in my mind about what the life and times were like at that point?! Certainly something I was not blessed with in my own education.

Today I ordered the curriculum. I'm sure it will be here within a week or two. It'll be exciting to try it. I'll let you know what I think after we've used it for awhile.

In the meantime, I'll continue with the Home Education Curriculum. I'm sure I'll continue to supplement the new curriculum with it as well as the Core Knowledge series.

It's exciting and overwhelming to begin this journey. I'm afraid I'll stumble and fail my children. I've been reassured that my thoughts and fears are common. That it's a whole new experience for our entire family. That it'll take a little time for us to get our groove before I begin to have those fears lessen.

This week, our primary focus is on following instructions as they are given! This is something my daughter has struggled with for as long as I can remember. She frequently thinks that her childish brain can tweak the instructions of her mother, father, teacher, etc. to be better than the way they were given. Nothing seems to have curbed this behavior previously. Today she began building a large Lego house. As I see it, the value in this is two-fold. 1) she must follow the instructions from Lego in order to build the house correctly and 2) she must be diligent in continuing on her course beyond where her attention span might otherwise release her to move on to other things. Judging by how much time she spent on the project today and how little was accomplished, I anticipate this to be a week long project!

On another fun note, I found the Sunflower Schoolhouse today. Specifically this post on reading resources that I think will be most helpful on teaching my two younger boys!
http://sunflowerschoolhouse.com/reading-resources/

That's all I have for you now. Hopefully, I'll be sharing more exciting adventures with you shortly.

Blessings!