** Normally, I would title posts like these Princess M Funnies, but as this contains the words of a prayer, I thought endearment a better term. **
Princess M's lunchtime prayer today:
Dear Jesus,
I love you when we go to church but (aside - this is how all of her prayers start) today we didn't go to church. We didn't go anywhere - we stayed at home. And tonight we'll stay at home because it's cold outside, even though there's no snow.
Amen
** Reader's Note - It's been in the triple digit heat index for the past several days. Not sure where she's getting the cold idea. **
7/21/11
7/20/11
Plans for 2011/2012 - Princess S
It's only eleven days until we begin our school year. I need to finish my curriculum posts so I can get ready for the new year. Here is what Princess S will be using for next year.
Tapestry of Grace DE Year 1: We are using this for history, literature, church history, and some geography. I plan to incorporate more narration and copywork for her this year. She will be completing the UG level for most of the year, but I plan to begin the transition to D level part way through. I will have her reading a few of the D level literature books this year and including her in our discussion times for it.
Math-U-See Delta: She will continue on from where she ended the year. I anticipate she will be moving on to Epsilon about halfway through the year.
Latin for Children Primer A: This will be her first year with Latin. I'm hoping we get through this in one year, but I am going to be flexible. I'd rather go for mastery than finishing a book in a year. In fact, I really think we will only get about 2/3 of the way through. Last year, I had all the pages in page protectors for Princess E and she wrote on them with an ultra-fine permanent marker. I used an Expo board doctor to get that off. However, because I had waited until the end of the year it took a long time and lots of elbow grease. I finally gave up and threw away about 40 page protectors. This year we will use wet erase markers. I also purchased the activity book used, so that will give some more variety in the assignments.
God's Marvelous Works Book One: The last two years we have done science together. This year we are trying science separately. So Princess S will be working on this book. I plan to incorporate narration and notebooking with this subject. She will do the reading and answer the questions. I entered the vocabulary words on Quizlet so she can study them there. I also bought the test booklet.
Globalmania: We are going to add in this program for our geography studies. My hope with this is that they will be able to have a better grasp of where things are in the world. We will be setting aside a little bit of time each week to work on this adventure.
Language Arts - I am a language arts fiend! I was an English major and this is my love and comfort zone. But finding something that works for all my princesses is difficult. These choices below may seem like a lot, but Princess S really needs repetition as well as variety in order for concepts to sink in. She also needs lots of hands on practice. So I am blending a variety of programs together. We won't be doing all these each day, but we will be working with each thing at least twice a week. Most of these I purchased used.
Caesar's English 1: This will be our first year using MCT for vocabulary. This is an intense program. We are going to take it slow, but hopefully finish in one year.
Grammar Town: This is the next book that follows Grammar Island, which we did this past year. They enjoyed the story aspect of learning grammar, so I'm hoping this will be the same. As per MCT recommendations, we will be "front loading" this program. She will complete the book in five weeks.
Paragraph Town: She will use this after she completes Grammar Town. There are so many different activities to choose from with this one. We will be choosing those that look the most fun and the most helpful. (Yes - this might overlap some with IEW - but the approaches are different and like I said, she needs the constant review.)
Practice Town: Last year I purchased the student books for each princess. This year, I am going to be including this exercise during our meeting times. I only purchased the teacher's manual and will be dictating the sentence to them. Then they will be working through the four level analysis.
Fix It! Grammar - Tom Sawyer: This will be an additional grammar exercise. Princess S is a very good writer as far as creativity - but her mechanics and usage need some real work. I am hoping that this will help her become more conscious these aspects in her own writing.
McCall Crabbs Book B: We will be continuing this exercise this year. They will complete it during our half hour meeting time. They will be alternating between this and Practice Town. We may need to double up for about three weeks spread out through the year in order to finish.
Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons (IEW): This will be done with a friend's sixth grader. I will be teaching my oldest two princesses along with her third DD, and she will take my youngest two princesses with her youngest DD to do the Tapestry LG literature book and a craft. I really like the looks of this program and am hoping that Princess D will spur my two princesses to excellence. Princess D really enjoys writing and it's one of her favorite subjects I'm told.
Well, there you have it. Princess S's school year in a nutshell. I'm actually getting quite excited for it.
Tapestry of Grace DE Year 1: We are using this for history, literature, church history, and some geography. I plan to incorporate more narration and copywork for her this year. She will be completing the UG level for most of the year, but I plan to begin the transition to D level part way through. I will have her reading a few of the D level literature books this year and including her in our discussion times for it.
Math-U-See Delta: She will continue on from where she ended the year. I anticipate she will be moving on to Epsilon about halfway through the year.
Latin for Children Primer A: This will be her first year with Latin. I'm hoping we get through this in one year, but I am going to be flexible. I'd rather go for mastery than finishing a book in a year. In fact, I really think we will only get about 2/3 of the way through. Last year, I had all the pages in page protectors for Princess E and she wrote on them with an ultra-fine permanent marker. I used an Expo board doctor to get that off. However, because I had waited until the end of the year it took a long time and lots of elbow grease. I finally gave up and threw away about 40 page protectors. This year we will use wet erase markers. I also purchased the activity book used, so that will give some more variety in the assignments.
God's Marvelous Works Book One: The last two years we have done science together. This year we are trying science separately. So Princess S will be working on this book. I plan to incorporate narration and notebooking with this subject. She will do the reading and answer the questions. I entered the vocabulary words on Quizlet so she can study them there. I also bought the test booklet.
Globalmania: We are going to add in this program for our geography studies. My hope with this is that they will be able to have a better grasp of where things are in the world. We will be setting aside a little bit of time each week to work on this adventure.
Language Arts - I am a language arts fiend! I was an English major and this is my love and comfort zone. But finding something that works for all my princesses is difficult. These choices below may seem like a lot, but Princess S really needs repetition as well as variety in order for concepts to sink in. She also needs lots of hands on practice. So I am blending a variety of programs together. We won't be doing all these each day, but we will be working with each thing at least twice a week. Most of these I purchased used.
Caesar's English 1: This will be our first year using MCT for vocabulary. This is an intense program. We are going to take it slow, but hopefully finish in one year.
Grammar Town: This is the next book that follows Grammar Island, which we did this past year. They enjoyed the story aspect of learning grammar, so I'm hoping this will be the same. As per MCT recommendations, we will be "front loading" this program. She will complete the book in five weeks.
Paragraph Town: She will use this after she completes Grammar Town. There are so many different activities to choose from with this one. We will be choosing those that look the most fun and the most helpful. (Yes - this might overlap some with IEW - but the approaches are different and like I said, she needs the constant review.)
Practice Town: Last year I purchased the student books for each princess. This year, I am going to be including this exercise during our meeting times. I only purchased the teacher's manual and will be dictating the sentence to them. Then they will be working through the four level analysis.
Fix It! Grammar - Tom Sawyer: This will be an additional grammar exercise. Princess S is a very good writer as far as creativity - but her mechanics and usage need some real work. I am hoping that this will help her become more conscious these aspects in her own writing.
McCall Crabbs Book B: We will be continuing this exercise this year. They will complete it during our half hour meeting time. They will be alternating between this and Practice Town. We may need to double up for about three weeks spread out through the year in order to finish.
Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons (IEW): This will be done with a friend's sixth grader. I will be teaching my oldest two princesses along with her third DD, and she will take my youngest two princesses with her youngest DD to do the Tapestry LG literature book and a craft. I really like the looks of this program and am hoping that Princess D will spur my two princesses to excellence. Princess D really enjoys writing and it's one of her favorite subjects I'm told.
Well, there you have it. Princess S's school year in a nutshell. I'm actually getting quite excited for it.
7/17/11
Breathless
This morning, Princess E performed a song she wrote for the offertory special music at church. It's not the best recording from the vantage point I had, but I think it gives you an idea of the gift God has blessed her with at such a young age.
7/16/11
Princess E's Extreme Room Makeover
Last year, my mom (known to the princesses as "Nanny") decided that she wanted to gift the eldest two princesses with an extreme room makeover. Part of the reason was because she knew they wanted a more grown up looking room, but another part was that we hoped they would be spurred on to want to keep their rooms clean and neat. Here is what the room looked like when they started.
So in June, Nanny helped Princess E with her extreme room makeover. They painted, decluttered, and replaced old furniture with much nicer old furniture. Almost all of the things that were purchased were second hand, except for her new bedding, and a picture and frame over her bed. Princess E is so pleased with how it turned out. Check it out!
(This is a dresser and dressing table in one. As we have four girls, we anticipate that the older they get, the more difficult it is going to be to find bathroom time. So having a dressing table in their room is a must.)
Princess E picked out this comforter set. She thought it looked more sophisticated than the other choices. The picture they found matches one of the flowers on the bed spread, but brings other colors into the mix.
Finally, Princess E wanted a music corner so that she could work on her music writing. She has her keyboard and guitar set up there. She received a new CD player for her birthday (which isn't in the photo as she hadn't received it yet) that is setting on the ledge. Also missing from the picture are the new curtains that we hung the next day.
The last thing that Nanny did was to have Princess E sign a contract. Since she had put a lot of time, money and love into the room makeover, she wanted Princess E to agree to some rules that had been decided upon ahead of time. So she drew up a contract and had her sign it. Then Nanny made a scrapbook of the whole thing and gave it to Princess E for her birthday. What a wonderful gift! In a few weeks, I'll show you the transformation of Princess S's room.
So in June, Nanny helped Princess E with her extreme room makeover. They painted, decluttered, and replaced old furniture with much nicer old furniture. Almost all of the things that were purchased were second hand, except for her new bedding, and a picture and frame over her bed. Princess E is so pleased with how it turned out. Check it out!
(This is a dresser and dressing table in one. As we have four girls, we anticipate that the older they get, the more difficult it is going to be to find bathroom time. So having a dressing table in their room is a must.)
Princess E picked out this comforter set. She thought it looked more sophisticated than the other choices. The picture they found matches one of the flowers on the bed spread, but brings other colors into the mix.
Finally, Princess E wanted a music corner so that she could work on her music writing. She has her keyboard and guitar set up there. She received a new CD player for her birthday (which isn't in the photo as she hadn't received it yet) that is setting on the ledge. Also missing from the picture are the new curtains that we hung the next day.
The last thing that Nanny did was to have Princess E sign a contract. Since she had put a lot of time, money and love into the room makeover, she wanted Princess E to agree to some rules that had been decided upon ahead of time. So she drew up a contract and had her sign it. Then Nanny made a scrapbook of the whole thing and gave it to Princess E for her birthday. What a wonderful gift! In a few weeks, I'll show you the transformation of Princess S's room.
7/14/11
Princess L Funnies
Yesterday, I told Princesses S, L and M I would take them to Dollar Tree to pick out birthday gifts for Princess E. Princess L got really excited thinking about what she could get. Then she stopped short and said, "Wait, I don't have any money. (Princess E) you need to give me a dollar so I can get you a birthday present."
7/6/11
Plans for 2011/2012 - Princess L
Princess L will be in first grade already. (Insert sad sounding yiddish fiddle music.) Where has the time gone?
I have had a difficult time figuring out what to do with this little one next year. Some things were no brainers: continue Math-U-See Alpha for math, begin Tapestry of Grace LG level for our humanities rotation, and Awana Sparks for Bible memory work. But I've been flummoxed (I just had to get that word in there) about what to do for Language Arts. (I will continue to have her work on the Explode the Code workbooks as they are a good seat work activity that she can do on her own. I can hand it to her to do while I am correcting her work, or if I am unavoidably needed during her schooling by one of her sisters.) Because of the speech issues that she has been working through this year, she is a little bit behind where her sisters were in reading ability. At the same time, I have learned through experience that just because you can read a book (or a list of words) to get a graded reading level, it doesn't mean that you can comprehend or remember what you've read. This has been an ongoing problem with my eldest two princesses. I have come to embrace Charlotte Mason's ideas of narration and dictation as a method for training kids toward the stage of dialectic thinking. I didn't really do much with that with my eldest two princesses, and as a result, moving up to the dialectic level in our Tapestry studies has been a bigger challenge than it should be.
So what to do? When I first heard that IEW was going to be coming out with curriculum for the K-2nd grade set, I was excited. As an English major, I really like their method for training kids to write well. What held me back at the homeschool convention is that I didn't know where she'd be by the end of the year. I decided to spring for it because even if the reading lessons will be a bit easy for her - it will be a good review of the things that she has learned. And most importantly, I can use it the following year with Princess M. The writing lessons, however, are going to be right up our alley. This will allow us to work in the narration and dictation that I missed with my older girls at this stage. And it will set her up for a wonderful transition to be able to complete SWI-A in her third grade year.
When she is done with PAL-Reading, I am going to have Princess L begin Primary Language Lessons. I like the outlay of this version of the book. You can print it however you want - color, B&W, one sided, two sided, etc. And it can be done either orally or written down. The original version of the book would require separate paper to complete any written portions. When my elder girls tried this, they would either lose their place in the book or on the paper making the assignment take forever, or things would get skipped as they moved back and forth. This version allows them to write their answer immediately below the question.
I've already posted our master schedule, but here is a closer look at what Princess L's personal schedule will look like:
Princess L Schedule
This is what we will start with, anyway. It seems like the more the plans seem set in stone, the more things come up that require changes. I believe that's called "Murphy's Law"? You'll notice our schedule will be different on Mondays. That's because a friend and I will be kid swapping and team teaching on those days. I will take her 6th grader with E & S to do IEW's Ancient History Writing Lessons, and she will take L & M with her 2nd grader to do the Tapestry LG literature book and a hands-on craft or experiment. I'm really excited about it, though I enjoy the hands-on stuff myself, I think it will be good for L to have the opportunity to learn from someone other than me. One other thing on the schedule that is new for her is piano. She will begin her lessons in October. She is so excited and cannot wait to be like her big sisters. I have scheduled her a 15 minute practice session for this year. Those beginning lessons can get a little bit too much for me to listen to for half an hour. And it's also too much time for them to fill. Until her lessons actually begin, I will have her review Awana verses, as much of the first part of each book is a review of the previous year anyway.
I have had a difficult time figuring out what to do with this little one next year. Some things were no brainers: continue Math-U-See Alpha for math, begin Tapestry of Grace LG level for our humanities rotation, and Awana Sparks for Bible memory work. But I've been flummoxed (I just had to get that word in there) about what to do for Language Arts. (I will continue to have her work on the Explode the Code workbooks as they are a good seat work activity that she can do on her own. I can hand it to her to do while I am correcting her work, or if I am unavoidably needed during her schooling by one of her sisters.) Because of the speech issues that she has been working through this year, she is a little bit behind where her sisters were in reading ability. At the same time, I have learned through experience that just because you can read a book (or a list of words) to get a graded reading level, it doesn't mean that you can comprehend or remember what you've read. This has been an ongoing problem with my eldest two princesses. I have come to embrace Charlotte Mason's ideas of narration and dictation as a method for training kids toward the stage of dialectic thinking. I didn't really do much with that with my eldest two princesses, and as a result, moving up to the dialectic level in our Tapestry studies has been a bigger challenge than it should be.
So what to do? When I first heard that IEW was going to be coming out with curriculum for the K-2nd grade set, I was excited. As an English major, I really like their method for training kids to write well. What held me back at the homeschool convention is that I didn't know where she'd be by the end of the year. I decided to spring for it because even if the reading lessons will be a bit easy for her - it will be a good review of the things that she has learned. And most importantly, I can use it the following year with Princess M. The writing lessons, however, are going to be right up our alley. This will allow us to work in the narration and dictation that I missed with my older girls at this stage. And it will set her up for a wonderful transition to be able to complete SWI-A in her third grade year.
When she is done with PAL-Reading, I am going to have Princess L begin Primary Language Lessons. I like the outlay of this version of the book. You can print it however you want - color, B&W, one sided, two sided, etc. And it can be done either orally or written down. The original version of the book would require separate paper to complete any written portions. When my elder girls tried this, they would either lose their place in the book or on the paper making the assignment take forever, or things would get skipped as they moved back and forth. This version allows them to write their answer immediately below the question.
I've already posted our master schedule, but here is a closer look at what Princess L's personal schedule will look like:
Princess L Schedule
This is what we will start with, anyway. It seems like the more the plans seem set in stone, the more things come up that require changes. I believe that's called "Murphy's Law"? You'll notice our schedule will be different on Mondays. That's because a friend and I will be kid swapping and team teaching on those days. I will take her 6th grader with E & S to do IEW's Ancient History Writing Lessons, and she will take L & M with her 2nd grader to do the Tapestry LG literature book and a hands-on craft or experiment. I'm really excited about it, though I enjoy the hands-on stuff myself, I think it will be good for L to have the opportunity to learn from someone other than me. One other thing on the schedule that is new for her is piano. She will begin her lessons in October. She is so excited and cannot wait to be like her big sisters. I have scheduled her a 15 minute practice session for this year. Those beginning lessons can get a little bit too much for me to listen to for half an hour. And it's also too much time for them to fill. Until her lessons actually begin, I will have her review Awana verses, as much of the first part of each book is a review of the previous year anyway.
7/5/11
Plans for 2011/2012 - Princess M
This will be Princess M's first official year as a student in our homeschool. She will be a pre-K student. We will be using the Letter of the Week curriculum. While you can get all the downloads free from the site, it is well worth the $10 to download everything zipped and organized. I also purchased the K4 expansion pack a while back. I do not know how much of it we will use with Princess M this year, but I can also use it with Princess L for a fun review. I have decided that, although I'd love to print everything out in color on heavy weight cardstock and then laminate it, it really was not cost effective to do that. Princess M is my last student, so that would be a big investment. If I still had one more behind, I would most certainly spend the money to make things last. So I went through the list of activities and decided which ones really would be best in color, and which ones I could get by with B&W. Princess M can color some of them in before we cut them out to play with. I'm printing out all the activities I plan to use, a letter a day, until I have all that I need. I've also gone through the list of suggested books and marked which ones I have available at our library. I will be working with Princess M immediately after breakfast in the morning. I plan to have some activities she can do with me and some that she will learn to do on her own for a few minutes. She is very excited about being an official student, something that her sisters find very funny. (I remind them that they were once excited about school as well.) Princess M will also be a first year Cubbie at Awana this year. I think she is most excited about that fact. It has been a long wait for her to join in on the Wednesday night fun. I will try to remember to take some photos of the activities and post them on a regular basis. (I have such a hard time remembering to take pictures.)
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