Field Day

We got to participate in THINK's (Teaching Homes In Northern Kentucky) field day last Friday.  There were many families there with children of all ages.  It was our very first experience interacting face to face with other homeschooling families.  Tim and Tori were a little bashful at first, but soon made several friends.  Tori left with numbers of a couple girls her age with promises of sleep overs to come.  :) I am so joyous that schooling at home as worked out as well as it has.  The Lord has truly been blessing our house even when we are facing troubling times we feel His love, comfort and protection.

I am not doing very well keeping up with my blog, apparently.  I have been looking into buying Titus2.com's Managers of Their Homes to help better with motivating me and my family and helping us to better spend our time more wisely.  If any of you have this or know someone who does, please share your thoughts on it with me before I decide to make the purchase.
Anyway, as you all know, we have been choosing next year's curriculum over the past few months and I am very excited about what we have decided to go with.  As of right now, we will be using My Father's World's Exploring Countries and Cultures Deluxe Package for our core curriculum.  For mathematics we will be using Math-U-See.  Tori will be doing Epsilon and Timothy will be doing Gamma.  For language arts we will be using First Language Lessons.  We will be using Character First's Series Two for our character trait development. Tori will also be using the Writing Strands curriculum. For their foreign language, we are going through Spanish on Mango Language which is pretty cool since our local library offers it free on a link from their site.
In our current hs curriculum, we are still doing SOS history and bible for both Tori and Tim.  Tori is using SOS for math and language arts as well.  Tim is doing math from a regular ps 2nd grade text book and language arts he is doing First Language Lessons.  They are both doing flash facts to help with memory recall of basic math.  They alternate science between Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy and a Charlotte Mason style of nature journaling.  They are read to from various books of devotions, manner development and character building.  They are read living books and read living books on their own.  We planted what seems like a million flower seeds  and they are growing and growing, they are ready for their second re-potting.  We didn't do very well labeling what was what so its going to be a lovely surprise. :)

The past two days, we have started opening the day with a group prayer focusing on 1) giving thanks for anything we feel thankful for 2) asking for help in our character and behavior that we noticed fault in the previous day and 3) asking for his blessing on our school day. Also, I have been making a schedule by hour on what we will be working on and putting it on my new 4' x 4' dry erase board located behind my desk.  These 2 things have worked so well, that not only are we finally completing everything I want accomplish each day, but we are getting it done more efficiently and in less time then I even have allotted for it on the schedule; making our days 2-4 hours shorter with more work completed.  I am truly amazed at how much God continues to bless our homeschooling, faith building and character development efforts. "And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, `do' all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:17

Refreshed

This morning I am finding myself refreshed.  I am up and ready to go, I feel like we can really get ahead.....but there are no children LOL!  They spent the night with my mother last night and have not yet arrived back home.  I find myself in search of curriculum for the 2010-2011 school year.  My husband and I have been doing A LOT of discussing about which route to take with the children and what seems to be working best for them.  I believe we are going to try a new math curriculum, Math U See was recommended by my sister and we have been looking into it and I do believe we have decided to start the children on it later this year.  Science I believe we will stick with Apologia and move to Exploring Creation with Zoology next.  History we will be learning through a more CM friendly method with living books and Geography will be map studies to go along with History.  Language Arts is still completely up in the air..... if anyone has a good recommendation, I would LOVE to hear.

God Bless you all this day and keep you safe.

First day back

Today was our first day home schooling in 2010 and it went really well.  The kids really enjoyed the Exploring Creation with Astronomy for their new science curriculum.  Tim (2nd grader) labeled 48 states from memory on the US map, again with no teaching or instruction involved, just daily blank map that he fills in from memory first, then fills in the rest using a key. For handwriting we are using two blank handwriting sheets, which I then put lines for him to copy, I just use proper sentences from the material we are working on.  Today was a list of the 4 middle colonies "New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware."  and text from science "The study of the universe is called astronomy."  The teaching across the grades is still a success.  Of course, we have to keep skill based subjects individual (math, language arts, etc) but everything is working out better than I expected.  Tori (5th grader) is really excelling with the new structure of learning.  Using Charlotte Mason's narration technique is helping her tremendously.  Tomorrow we begin a new character trait in our character development study, we will be focusing on consistency.

Thank You Notes

Today we are taking it light.  The children have been working on being appreciative in their study on Character Traits, so today, I had them write a thank you note to everyone they received a gift from during our Christmas celebrations, and tomorrow they will mail each person their note.  We also did our Daily Devotional today, the focus being 'listen & obey'.  We did our Bible reading; today was Matthew chapter 14.  Later on we will snuggle on the couch while I read to them from our current literature living book 'Anne of Green Gables' and they will do an oral narration after that.  But that is all that we did in our studies today, we have spent the rest of our time relaxing and enjoying one another and our friend Charlie whom I babysit.

New Year; New School Structure

I did a lot of thinking last night while I sat trying to make up my next few lesson plans, and after discussing it with my husband, I decided that since I am trying to merge the children's curriculum and lessons together like it suggests in Charlotte Mason's teachings that I have read at www.simplycharlottemason.com, I am going to teach Timothy with Tori during the SOS lessons in Bible and History & Geography and when she does her lesson reviews on SOS, I will have him do narration on the material and some questions/exercises of his own.  For Science I am switching both students to Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Jeannie K. Fulbright and I have a cd that is Live & Learn's supplemental material for the Exploring Creation with Astronomy (provided by my wonderful sister), so they will be doing some oral narration and then working through the material in Live & Learn's supplementals.  Doing the lessons together will require Tori to go back to a lesson plan involving multiple subjects in one day instead of just one main focus each day, but I feel with me no longer having to divide my time between them frequently, they both will take much more from each lesson and listening to one another's input will spark new thinking.  It will require me to come up with my own supplementals for Timothy in Bible and History and Geography, but that won't be very difficult at all.  Today we did this with the SOS lesson in Bible and it went very well.  I look forward to a full immersion into the new structure and have high hopes it will go well after we are fully adjusted.  God is with us, may he be with you as well.