No more packing lunches! No more carpool! No more waking babies from naps to pick up kids from school! No more volunteering requests from school! We are homeschooling all the kids this year. I'm also homeschooling my niece that I watch during the day.
When we decided to keep Racer home this year, I was a little worried about his attitude and potential conflicts between him and I and between him and the other kids. He kind of likes to tease and he is in 6th grade where they start to become individuals and have things like opinions. I knew that it would be best for him to have independent work wherever possible and that we should try some online classes. So here are our curriculum picks for the year. Racer 6th grade: Religion - For religion, we will all be studying the New Testament. Racer and Chicklette will be at a higher level of study. They will be doing Discover the Life of Christ and Discover the Acts of the Apostles. Language Arts - BYU Online middle school 7th grade class, Rod and Staff Grammar - Following the Plan. If I think that they are not doing enough vocabulary work in the online class, I may add another resource also. DH felt that Racer's spelling still needs improvement so we decided to use All About Spelling 6. Math - CTC Math online, Family Math: The Middle School Years. CTC Math is also online and was developed by an Australian father of 10. I bought a family membership so I can put all the kids on it if I want. Right now we are sticking with Math Mammoth for the other kids because I really like its format. Family Math: The Middle School Years is a great resource for understanding where algebra and algebraic reasoning fits in to real life. I'm planning on doing it with Racer on Fridays while Chicklette leads the younger kids through the younger edition of Family Math. Latin - BYU Online Middle School Latin, part 1. I have high expectations for this and I really hope they will be fulfilled. I'm crossing my fingers big time on this. Logic - The Art of Argument with the DVD. Yeah, I know. Why am I giving a middle schooler a book about how to argue? It's a very highly recommended book that covers informal logic. It goes through 28 different logical fallacies. I think the book looks to be written well and I think the DVD will help to expound on the different fallacies and provide an almost interactive experience since he is not doing it with a group. Racer and I will discuss various questions in the text and he will write out answers and definitions for other questions. Science - Lest you think he is doing everything himself, we are doing science and history together with Chicklette and Turtle. We are continuing on with the Sassafras Twins and will be studying botany and earth science this year. The kids are all excited to be going along with Tracey and Blaine and learning more about science. History - Story of the World 2. This is a great book for a kids overview of world history. The activity book has lots of activities to choose from and lots and lots of book suggestions to expand your learning. Racer will be doing more in-depth work here. He will be doing longer summaries and learning to outline information. He will also be required to make a Great Person page when we run across someone who should be remembered. We will also do all the mapwork associated with this subject. Tech Class - My Tech High requires that we take a technology class through them as well. Racer chose to do the Google Ninja class and will be learning how to use Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs and other Google resources. I'm actually excited for this class too. We are also continuing piano lessons and our co-op. I tell the kids they can be done with piano when they can play every song in the hymnbook. DH is considering giving Racer lessons on the trumpet to keep that up from last year. Chicklette 4th Grade: Religion - As noted, Chicklette is doing Discover the Life of Christ and Discover the Acts of the Apostles. Language Arts - All About Spelling 4, First Language Lessons 4, All About Reading 4. Math - Math Mammoth 4, Family Math on Fridays, Xtramath drill every day. Latin - Prima Latina with the DVD. I really like this program and I'm hoping Chicklette and Turtle connect with it this year. History - Story of the World 2. She will be doing shorter summaries that Racer and will not be starting outlining yet. Science - Sassafras Twins Botany and Earth Science. Tech class - Chicklette chose to do Snap Circuits for her tech class. She is also continuing piano and co-op. Turtle 2nd Grade: Religion - Discover the New Testament Language Arts - All About Spelling 2, All About Reading 2, First Language Lessons 2. Math - Math Mammoth 2, Family Math on Fridays, Xtramath drill everyday. Latin - Prima Latina with the DVD. History - Story of the World 2 with narrations instead of written summaries. Science - Sassafras Twins Botany and Earth Science. Tech Class - Turtle is doing a Robotics class. Also, piano and co-op. Sunshine and Ladybug Kindergarten: I shall have to think of a name for my niece for this blog. Okay, it is Ladybug. She and Sunshine are basically on the same level. She's having some trouble blending her sounds together to actually sound out words so I may have to do some one-on-one practice with her, but I'm hoping that she will pick it up as we keep practicing. Religion - They will be doing a modified program of Discover the New Testament. They will be doing the questions orally and drawing pictures instead of writing. We all do our memorization together. Language Arts - All About Reading 1 and pre-writing skills. We will eventually move to learning cursive writing but for now we just need to gain finger strength and dexterity and practice holding the pencils and crayons correctly. We will do cutting and tracing and lacing and finger-painting. Well, not so much finger-painting, but it sounded good. We will put paint in sealed bags and use those to practice writing. I'm also excited about using sand trays for writing practice. I've seen salt, sugar and cornmeal for those sensory trays too. Math - Funnix Math. I think it is a great, gentle prep program for early math. It kind of sounds like clicker training sometimes, but it still is a good program in my opinion. If you watch, once a year they often offer the programs for free. I didn't really like their reading program, but I do like the math program. Even the three younger kids will sit and watch also. Science - Intro to Science. I finally decided on Intro to Science for these two. It's a nice overview of all the scientific disciplines and the younger kids and join in also.
Yeah, I know. The school year started a month and a half ago. It's okay. Now you know you are getting what really works for us this year.
Religion - We are using Discover the Scriptures: Old Testament this year. I also do special unit studies for Easter, General Conference, and Christmas. This study is written from an LDS perspective and uses the Old Testament Children's Stories as a spine. We also work on scripture memorization every day. I'm excited to hopefully, one day, try out the older grades.
Handwriting and Writing Curriculum - For handwriting, we are working through a bunch of sheets I found on the web that just copies the Creation story. Since we are studying zoology and anatomy in science and the Old Testament in religion, I felt that was the best fit. I like that it has the kids trace the scripture and then write it independently. Our writing curriculum is the only place that I am still feeling unsure of. I decided to go with WriteShop Primary B for both Turtle and Chicklette, knowing I could make Chicklette's harder, if necessary, and Turtle's as low-key as he needed it to be this year. It's an okay curriculum, but I'm not sure I love the organization. They both really love it though, so that's a good intro to independent writing projects.
Grammar - We are going with the old stand-by of First Language Lessons, put out by Peace Hill Press. It may not be the most inspiring or exciting program in the world for grammar, but it is thorough. I like how it breaks the concepts into small chunks.
Spelling - We are continuing using All About Spelling. Chicklette is in level 3 and is moving through it quickly because it is a little bit of a review for her still. Turtle is working through level 1. We have gotten stuck on the step where you learn about doubling F, L and S at the end of one syllable words, but we will move on soon. I'm glad I have the flexibility to stay on the step he needs until he gets it.
History - Our history spine is Story of the World, also put out by Peace Hill Press. I love the chronological approach of it. I also love how it tells the stories of many different cultures so it is not so American-centric. There is a world and history outside of the United States.
Math - Although I liked the way Singapore Math helped the kids to think mathematically and to play with numbers, I did not like the textbooks. There was no explanatory text that they could go back to for review or extra help. I have been wanting to try out Math Mammoth for a couple years and finally did it this year. I am really liking it so far. The explanations are good and they help the kids to see not only how to do the problems, but why it works. We also do our Xtramath.com every day to review basic math facts and make them automatic in our brains.
UPSTART - Sunshine gets his own program this year. He is doing an online preschool program called UPSTART that is funded by the state. The promised results look great and so far he loves doing his Rusty and Rosie. Cheez-it and Bubbers #2 love to watch as well and I'm sure they are picking up on the numbers and counting as Sunshine does his program.
Science - Save the best for last! I am so excited about this new curriculum. Turtle and Chicklette both beg to do science every day and they get so excited when I pull this out. I have purchased from this company in the past and although their materials were well-organized and thorough, the kids did not enjoy it. There was too much writing and not enough to capture their imaginations. This year, enter the Sassafras Twins! I know, the whole house is twins. Anyways, these books tell about Blaine and Tracey Sassafras who use invisible zip-lines to travel the world and record data in their SCIDAT app. It seems to be along the same lines as Wild Kratts, if your kids like that show. Mine love it. The story is pretty fun with lots of adventures all over the world. The kids can't wait to read each new section and find out what happens next. I also highly recommend the Encyclopedia of Animals book that is a support resource. It has great pictures that we love to just look at.
Whew! If you're still with me, thanks for reading. We are off to a good start this year and hope you are too! Affiliate links included. We're having a nice relaxing day, but also getting a lot done. Racer is taking care of mowing the lawn. I help by emptying the lawn mower and helping to move tables and stuff around. After a week and a half, it really needs to be done. I covered up the potatoes a bit, so we have put three lawn mower loads in the garden area. It really does seem to keep down the weeds. Chicklette and Turtle are doing a bit of hand trimming. The only frustrating thing is when the mower overheats and just shuts down for a while. It does give Racer a break, but sometimes you just want to get a job done. Our raspberries are in season now and I brought a few black raspberries over to Bubbers #2. I thought he would like them because he likes all kinds of berries. He looked at them and put one in his mouth . . . and then grabbed the other three and shoved them in so fast! I think he liked them. He got an ear infection Sunday, but he seems to be doing much better now with some medicine. Religion - We did do our scripture memorization. It really needs to be done every day. It's amazing how fast you can forget. History - Since we will be visiting Mount Rushmore this summer, I had the kids watch the History Channel movie on the creation of Mount Rushmore. Math - Both Racer and Chicklette did their Xtramath and Chicklette did two exercises in her math book about reading graphs. Turtle also did a Funnix Math lesson and he seemed to do pretty well.
Spelling - Racer did really poorly on his spelling last week with the /ex/ sound so I had him read through the lesson again and he will have all the words he misspelled from last week, plus a few extra words from the More Words section in All About Spelling 5. Chicklette has moved on to a bunch of sight words that don't seem to follow the rules like you, to, do, and of. Turtle was going to do a spelling lesson with me too, but he decided to work on his handwriting. We have taken nearly two weeks off for vacation and vacation recovery so now we are attempting a reentry to school. We only have a few more curriculum to finish up and then we will be doing the curriculum that is ongoing or that we started late. Turtle had some trouble with reentry, but Chicklette and Racer did fine.
Religion - I am having Racer read his scriptures every day for religion. I still want to do the scripture memorization every day because we still need those. Math - Turtle never did get to his Funnix Math yesterday because we were struggling so with handwriting. Racer almost finished his last review and Chicklette worked hard on hers for about 2 hours. She has more left in her math book than Racer does. Both Chicklette and Racer did their Xtramath. Someday, Chicklette will move on to another level of Xtramath; it's just probability theory, right? History - We finished up Charlotte's Rose last week which finished up what I planned for our history curriculum. I still want to continue memorizing some dates and events and DH asked last night if we would study Mount Rushmore since we will be visiting there later this summer. Spelling - Racer and I did his spelling lesson focusing on when to use ex in words. Chicklette apparently did not do her test last week, so we just kept all her words and we will review them this week and test on them at the end. Turtle and I reviewed his words and moved on to the next lesson. Latin - Racer and Chicklette kind of watched their Latin lesson. If they don't do well on the worksheets and test for this week, I definitely know why. Grammar - Racer and I did a grammar lesson on punctuation and diagramming compound sentences. We both learned about comma splices. I was so pleased that I was able to get all the wash done by noon today. I was not pleased that it felt like the twins were crying and screaming all day. I'm thinking that I may need to take some tantrum extinguishing steps.
Moving on to happier notes, this is the time of year where subjects start dropping off as different curricula are finished. We have finished the religion curriculum although we will finish off the stories that the curriculum does not cover. We are on our last week of science and only have a couple weeks for grammar and Writing with Ease. We still have All About Spelling, Latin, and Daily 6-trait Writing that we will try to continue as well as driling with Xtramath. I may make sure we have some handwriting practice as well to keep that up. We will, of course, continue our library visits. Religion - The kids watched a few chapters of the video before we moved on to our next subject. We also did our memorization, or at least, I told the kids to and I hope they did it. Sunshine somehow flooded the bathroom and I had to mop that up. Math - Racer is very close to passing off the two second subtraction in Xtramath. He's at 92 so far. Chicklette is still working on her addition. I'm not sure why she is hanging out in the 60s but someday she has got to move on. It's just the law of averages, right? Right? Physics - We worked on reviewing all their vocabulary while I made French bread, which turned out beautifully by the way. We will definitely work on these definitions this week. DH volunteered to make their rocket with them this week. Latin - Racer reviewed the Latin lessons, but Chicklette didn't because we were working on her spelling lesson. Maybe I will have him teach her tomorrow so he gets some more review and she at least hears the lessons again. We also get to read a couple chapters out of the Famous Men of Rome book this week. I think it looks pretty interesting. All About Spelling - I was getting pretty frustrated with Chicklette that she didn't seem to retain any of the syllable rules we had practiced and she was having such trouble sounding out words that I thought she should know. Really, I was frustrated with the screaming and crying that was happening from the twins and Sunshine. I need to work on their screaming and develop a plan for them to play better. I don't have any ideas about that yet. We'll figure it out, or they will grow out of it and into doing actual school and activities. Racer ended up doing half of his program by himself so I could try to figure out what their problems were and settle everything down. Grammar - Racer finished up his business letter today, corrected it and made a clean copy. Chicklette learned more about the four types of sentences and we practiced identifying them. I also got to deal with some lying behavior today. I am only going to post a few details and how I handled it for those who think my life is perfect and for any new homeschoolers. If you haven't dealt with this behavior yet, you will, and hopefully it will only be once. It is a good thing to think about how you want to handle it before it happens so you don't fly off the handle like I did the first time it happened with one of my precious angels. One of the kids was working on their math as I went out to hang some clothes on the line. When I came back in, we did that child's weekly log for their virtual school and then I told them to work some more on their math. It was not an assignment that needed to be done today, but I knew they had a bit of work to still do. When that child told me they were done, I knew they either had not done a good job or they were lying. So, I asked to see their paper to correct it. They were protesting and told me that I didn't need to see it. My mom senses were really starting to tingle now! Then, they told me they threw their paper away. I told said child to get it out of the trash. They said they threw it in the outside recycling can. Now if I had any doubts about their veracity, they were gone now. Wanting to see how far this child would take the behavior, I told them to go get it. And then they were standing at the door to the garage crying because they knew there was no way out now. I finally told them that I knew they were lying and I rehearsed all their stories to me. I wasn't terribly upset about the incident; it had happened before with a different child and I knew this was a test to see if they could get away with it. The consequences they received were: feeling bad about their behavior, needing to have a conference with Principal Daddy, losing their school point on their checklist, and having their mouth washed out with soap three times for the three separate lies. Hopefully, that will nip this behavior in the bud and I won't have to deal seriously with it again. We did not get an early start today and we decided to go on a bike ride to the library again so that took up a couple hours of our day. We did get most of our basics done and I previewed a fictional book about the Mormon pioneers that I think I will read to the kids.
The book is called Charlotte's Rose and is about a young girl who volunteers to take care of a baby whose mother died and whose father is emotionally unable to care for the child. I very much enjoyed the book and I think the kids will too. Religion - We did our scripture memorization and Racer and Chicklette drew pictures on their timeline of different church history events such as the publication of the Book of Commandments and Pearl of Great Price. Latin - Racer and Chicklette "watched" their video lesson. I'm thinking of having them watch it again tomorrow since I find it hard to believe that they got much, if anything, out of it. Math - Chicklette is very excited to be done with the money unit. She has moved on to fractions and worked on comparing 1\2 and 1\4. Racer finished up his math review pages today. Spelling - Racer actually did not get his spelling sentences done today. I know, I can't believe it either. He is in Level 5 of All About Spelling now. Chicklette is in Level 2 and Turtle is doing Level 1. Chicklette's lesson was on using er in words and the R-controlled syllable tag. Physics - We learned the law that states "Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes form" and we watched a bunch of tsunami videos. The videos showed how energy was transferred from an earthquake on the sea floor to the surrounding water and how that water traveled so far and so fast. We also played with Racer's cat's cradle to watch the transfer of energy between balls. Our geography fair was last night and it was a smashing success! The kids all did their part well, we got to visit with friends, and we learned a lot about other states. I will be posting many, many pictures tomorrow and possibly a video or two. I know, it has really been a while since I have updated. I do apologize.
Sunshine turned three this week. He wanted a blue cake, which the kids said meant he wanted a cake with blue frosting. So we had chocolate cake with blue frosting. He loved all his presents from his grandparents and he gets to start taking part in our family economy with his allowance. He also had a checkup and did great. He took his shot without even flinching and has leapt from the 0-5%tile in height to the 50%tile in height. I'm relieved about that. Chicklette had her dress rehearsal for her ballet recital next Saturday. Now that she has got a taste of performing, she thinks she wants to continue ballet. We'll have to talk about it next school year because she is not going to do it this summer. She looks really cute in her costume and I saw some of the other dancers so it looks like it will be beautiful. I will have to post some pictures later. We got to experience the joys of a blocked kitchen drain this week. It was blocked for almost two days which really the our kitchen off. Finally after a lot of drain cleaner, plunging, and snaking, Jack finally got it unblocked. All the time I was home I was doing dishes and getting the under sink cabinet put back together. Religion - This week we have been talking about the Kirtland period of church history. We talked about the Kirtland temple dedication and just mentioned the troubles that started there. History - We finished a lot of my history plan so this week has been about getting ready for our co-op geography fair. It is going to be so cool. The treats are pretty much done. I wish some had turned out better and there are more that I would like to do but probably won't. And really, I don't think I need any more than what I've got, as much as I like to go overboard with treats and dinners. Again I promise pictures later. Language arts - We have continued in our grammar programs and other language arts curriculum. I don't have much to report there except we are plugging along. Chicklette is getting better at writing longer sentences. Latin - We are continuing in our Latina Christiana. Racer is having some issues memorizing his conjugation so we need to put some more time on it. I got the book Famous Men of Rome. Just glancing through it, the stories look like they are written well and I think they will keep the kids' attention. |
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