Our one week off flew by. And I don't know that we got anything I wanted to get done accomplished. We did get pictures taken of Princess E and Princess M. I did read the Tracie Peterson book (it was awesome) and also the new Karen Kingsbury book Unlocked (which was awesome as well) - so I was productive in that respect. But now we've finished Week 10, so it's time for another update.
Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
Latin for Children Primer A: Lesson 18
Math-U-See Delta: Test 24 - begin lesson 25.
IEW: We didn't get one of these in this week. More on why later.
Foundations 1: Work on suffix -ER.
MCT Language Arts: Lesson three - We also worked some more on 4 level analysis. We will be starting the Practice Island book next week. My plan is to assign these individually, but go through them together during our group time.
Spelling: We did not get a spelling bee in this week.
Science: We did not get a science lesson in this week
TOG Yr4 Wk10: Timeline; SAPs; AQ/TQs; Reading - Gladys Aylward, Idiot's Guide, Our Town.
Princess S - 4th Grade - UG
Growing With Grammar 4: Chapter 2.9 to 2.11
Math-U-See Gamma: Work on lesson 24. For some reason, Princess S thinks that it's easier to think when she does her problems on the whiteboard. But then, she erases her work, and I have nothing to look at to see where her mistakes are being made. So I'll be printing out some worksheets for more practice, because she's just getting too many wrong.
IEW, Spelling and Science: same as above
TOG Yr4 Wk10: Quizlet vocab; important people; SAPs; Reading - War, Peace and All That Jazz, Gladys Aylward, . Alexander Fleming, Mary Poppins.
Princess L - K - LG
Winter Promise Advanced K: Handwriting practice; Explode the Code - pgs 48-54; Reading - Wet Legs; word family -et and -ed.
Math-U-See Primer: Continue work on lesson 23. I've decided not to push the tally marks. We'll be reviewing them again in Alpha, so I'll just wait to tackle it until then.
Awana Sparks verses: She earned the first green jewel and second red jewel.
Princess M - PreTOGger
Practice being a princess, dancing, taking care of her "sick" dolly, watching Little Einsteins, coloring pictures.
So what was I working on that kept us from doing IEW, Spelling and Science? I've been working on a game for our co-op meeting next Tuesday. We are studying the Great Depression. Not exactly a "fun" subject, and our group seems to need fun or they get a bit wild. So I spent some time combing the internet, but just didn't find what I wanted. I know how much fun my girls have with our Oregon Trail game, and thought that some kind of role playing game would be fun. So I got this vision of a game, somewhat like Life, using situations that would have been common during the depression. I spent two and a half days trying to create the game board, the various draw cards, and the rules. Now I'm really excited to have them play the game. I'm thinking that I could perhaps come up with some other cards to change the game to a different time frame. Here's a sneak peek.
Life in the Depression 1
Life in the Depression 2
Click above to go to my Scribd account if you want to see all the files.
Showing posts with label co-op. Show all posts
Showing posts with label co-op. Show all posts
10/21/10
9/3/10
TOG Year 4 Week 4
This week we have continued our study of WWI. We learned about what life in the trenches was like, and how the new technologies affected the way the war was fought. We learned about how the new way of fighting meant a much higher death toll.
Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
McCrabb: Book A Tests 7-9
Latin For Children Primer A: Review lessons eight (second half) through lesson ten.
IEW: Finished KWO, rough draft and final draft of a paragraph on the Panama Canal.
Math-U-See Delta: Began lesson 22.
MCT Language Arts: Continue reading Grammar Island. We have almost finished our study of the 8 parts of speech, which is really a review. One new thing that wasn't properly learned before was the fact that a conjunction must join two similar parts of speech. IE: two nouns, two verbs, or two adjectives.
Spelling Power: Did placement tests and we will begin tests next week on list H. We will not be following this as the program suggests, I am really just using the leveled tests for the words. We are going to be combining this method, with Spelling City, which we've not used but since they LOVE computer games, I figured this would be a place to put those misspelled words instead of writing them. Anything but write them - writing anything but the bare minimum leaves some of my princesses with a bad attitude.
TOG Yr4 W4: Timeline; ; Student Activity Pages (SAPs); Accountability and Thinking Questions (AQ/TQ); Reading - The Gift of Music, Anne of Green Gables, Home Run to Heaven: Billy Sunday, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the 20th Century, The Usborne Introduction to the First World War; Read Alouds - The Story of the World Volume 4, Pollyanna (We have been listening to this during lunch and dinner. I found the audio linked on My Audio School which is an awesome site to go to if you have an auditory learner, or one who is a great reader but finds it easier to comprehend when they hear and read at the same time. I highly recommend it.)
Princess S - 4th Grade - Upper Grammar
McCrabb: Book A Tests 7-9
Growing With Grammar 4 (GWG4): Chapter 1.10 to 1.12
Math-U-See Gamma: Begin lesson 21. After many exclamations of "I can't do this!" she got the concept down and whizzed through this. We'll be testing on Monday.
TOG Yr 4 W4: Quizlet vocab; Important People Copywork; SAPs; Read Alouds - same as above; Reading (again - portions each week) - World War One, The Railway Children (with audio again from My Audio School,) Fanny Crosby: Queen of Gospel Songs. (One of the books that we were to use last week and this week finally came in to the library late today. We didn't use it the last two weeks. Instead, I've utilized a method suggested by My Father's World curriculum - book basket. Often when I go to pick up our books from the library, I go to those sections and grab a few extra books on the topics we are studying. If I don't assign those books, they will most often be read throughout the week at various times. Or if there are questions to be answered that they are having a hard time finding, there are additional sources to look to. We ended up using these a lot the last two weeks.)
Spelling Power: Placement testing revealed we will begin at level F next week. I think she will get through this easily, as I think most of her spelling errors were due to it being right before lunch. But, the extra review won't hurt. And, as she will be competing with her sisters for candy, the bit of easier words will be an ego booster for her, which she badly needs.
IEW and MCT Language Arts: same as above except she chose to do her IEW paragraph on the Wright Brothers and their first flights.
Princess L - K - Lower Grammar
Winter Promise Advanced K: Studied the letter a and its three sounds; read "Fat Cat"; handwriting page; -at word family; Explode the Code Book 1 pg i-8; played Concentration with -an, -ap and -at words; began a year long Picture Dictionary project. We formally discussed the rule of silent e. This is a rule she knows (thanks to the Leap Frog videos) but we never had really read those words last year. I'm amazed at how well she is doing with it.
Math-U-See Primer: We continued working on flashcards for 1s and 0s. We added in the doubles 2+2, 3+3, 4+4 and 5+5. Her goal is all 39 cards in less than two minutes so that she can have a trip to the prize bag. We also did lesson 19A to 19E.
TOG Yr 4 W4: Read Alouds - same as above; Reading - Anne of Green Gables (a simpler version than above). We also read a slew of library books "Just one more time" before they had to be returned. (I'm sure we'll see most of those books again sometime in the not so distant future.)
Princess M - PreTOGGer
Did some games from Letter of the Week. We had several things going on this week, so we didn't do anything formal. There was also some outside playtime in the little pool. Today was much cooler, so outside playtime included warm clothing and mittens.
Finally, we all attended the first meeting of our new co-op in a town near us. I had to lead the first meeting with the older kids. We focused on Henry Ford and his assembly line technology and the Wright Brothers and their airplane. I showed the kids how to fold a paper airplane. Then the two kids that knew it the best each had three minutes to fold as many planes as they could (each did four and were part way through) in three and a half minutes. Then we assigned each of the kids one fold. The got into an assembly line and were given three and a half minutes. They completed about 27 planes, then took another two minutes to finish the others that were in various stages of completion. They ended up with 40 some planes. One boy brought his cookie dough map of WWI, and everyone devoured the battle fields. We asked some of the pop quiz questions on the presidents, the Titanic and the Panama Canal. I also gave a demonstration of two mini-reports. One, which was hammed up as much as possible, which was purposely really bad. The other was in the IEW style of an oral report from a KWO. Each child will be doing some type of mini-report or project presentation every other week. Three children will present each week. The first unit will focus on inventions from the turn of the century through the Depression. All in all I thought it went quite well.
Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
McCrabb: Book A Tests 7-9
Latin For Children Primer A: Review lessons eight (second half) through lesson ten.
IEW: Finished KWO, rough draft and final draft of a paragraph on the Panama Canal.
Math-U-See Delta: Began lesson 22.
MCT Language Arts: Continue reading Grammar Island. We have almost finished our study of the 8 parts of speech, which is really a review. One new thing that wasn't properly learned before was the fact that a conjunction must join two similar parts of speech. IE: two nouns, two verbs, or two adjectives.
Spelling Power: Did placement tests and we will begin tests next week on list H. We will not be following this as the program suggests, I am really just using the leveled tests for the words. We are going to be combining this method, with Spelling City, which we've not used but since they LOVE computer games, I figured this would be a place to put those misspelled words instead of writing them. Anything but write them - writing anything but the bare minimum leaves some of my princesses with a bad attitude.
TOG Yr4 W4: Timeline; ; Student Activity Pages (SAPs); Accountability and Thinking Questions (AQ/TQ); Reading - The Gift of Music, Anne of Green Gables, Home Run to Heaven: Billy Sunday, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the 20th Century, The Usborne Introduction to the First World War; Read Alouds - The Story of the World Volume 4, Pollyanna (We have been listening to this during lunch and dinner. I found the audio linked on My Audio School which is an awesome site to go to if you have an auditory learner, or one who is a great reader but finds it easier to comprehend when they hear and read at the same time. I highly recommend it.)
Princess S - 4th Grade - Upper Grammar
McCrabb: Book A Tests 7-9
Growing With Grammar 4 (GWG4): Chapter 1.10 to 1.12
Math-U-See Gamma: Begin lesson 21. After many exclamations of "I can't do this!" she got the concept down and whizzed through this. We'll be testing on Monday.
TOG Yr 4 W4: Quizlet vocab; Important People Copywork; SAPs; Read Alouds - same as above; Reading (again - portions each week) - World War One, The Railway Children (with audio again from My Audio School,) Fanny Crosby: Queen of Gospel Songs. (One of the books that we were to use last week and this week finally came in to the library late today. We didn't use it the last two weeks. Instead, I've utilized a method suggested by My Father's World curriculum - book basket. Often when I go to pick up our books from the library, I go to those sections and grab a few extra books on the topics we are studying. If I don't assign those books, they will most often be read throughout the week at various times. Or if there are questions to be answered that they are having a hard time finding, there are additional sources to look to. We ended up using these a lot the last two weeks.)
Spelling Power: Placement testing revealed we will begin at level F next week. I think she will get through this easily, as I think most of her spelling errors were due to it being right before lunch. But, the extra review won't hurt. And, as she will be competing with her sisters for candy, the bit of easier words will be an ego booster for her, which she badly needs.
IEW and MCT Language Arts: same as above except she chose to do her IEW paragraph on the Wright Brothers and their first flights.
Princess L - K - Lower Grammar
Winter Promise Advanced K: Studied the letter a and its three sounds; read "Fat Cat"; handwriting page; -at word family; Explode the Code Book 1 pg i-8; played Concentration with -an, -ap and -at words; began a year long Picture Dictionary project. We formally discussed the rule of silent e. This is a rule she knows (thanks to the Leap Frog videos) but we never had really read those words last year. I'm amazed at how well she is doing with it.
Math-U-See Primer: We continued working on flashcards for 1s and 0s. We added in the doubles 2+2, 3+3, 4+4 and 5+5. Her goal is all 39 cards in less than two minutes so that she can have a trip to the prize bag. We also did lesson 19A to 19E.
TOG Yr 4 W4: Read Alouds - same as above; Reading - Anne of Green Gables (a simpler version than above). We also read a slew of library books "Just one more time" before they had to be returned. (I'm sure we'll see most of those books again sometime in the not so distant future.)
Princess M - PreTOGGer
Did some games from Letter of the Week. We had several things going on this week, so we didn't do anything formal. There was also some outside playtime in the little pool. Today was much cooler, so outside playtime included warm clothing and mittens.
Finally, we all attended the first meeting of our new co-op in a town near us. I had to lead the first meeting with the older kids. We focused on Henry Ford and his assembly line technology and the Wright Brothers and their airplane. I showed the kids how to fold a paper airplane. Then the two kids that knew it the best each had three minutes to fold as many planes as they could (each did four and were part way through) in three and a half minutes. Then we assigned each of the kids one fold. The got into an assembly line and were given three and a half minutes. They completed about 27 planes, then took another two minutes to finish the others that were in various stages of completion. They ended up with 40 some planes. One boy brought his cookie dough map of WWI, and everyone devoured the battle fields. We asked some of the pop quiz questions on the presidents, the Titanic and the Panama Canal. I also gave a demonstration of two mini-reports. One, which was hammed up as much as possible, which was purposely really bad. The other was in the IEW style of an oral report from a KWO. Each child will be doing some type of mini-report or project presentation every other week. Three children will present each week. The first unit will focus on inventions from the turn of the century through the Depression. All in all I thought it went quite well.
6/18/10
Plans for 2010/2011 School Year
I decided that it would be helpful to do an entry on what we are going to be doing for next year. I'll break it down by subject.
Math
We will continue with Math-U-See. Princess L will finish lessons 19-30 of Primer and continue on to Alpha. Princess S will finish lessons 21-30 of Gamma and continue on to Delta. Princess E will finish lessons 21-30 of Delta and continue on to Epsilon.
Science
We were given three books in the God's Design For Heaven and Earth series by Answers in Genesis. (This series has been reworked and we have the old version without a CD-ROM.) We started working through the first book during our spring break this year, and will work through the summer to finish it up by the time we begin in the fall. We will then do the second book during our regular school break times.
Humanities (History, Literature, Church/Bible History, Fine Arts)
We will continue to use Tapestry of Grace. Princess E will be D level (dialectic level for you non-TOGers), Princess S will be UG (upper grammar) and I will read a select few LG (lower grammar) books with Princess L, based on what is available at our library. We will be skipping year three in order to line up with a co-op near us that will be doing year four. Both of the older princesses will do a brief unit study this summer on the civil war and reconstruction, as these ideas will be central to much of year four. I am excited to meet with some awesome women who love TOG as much as I do. It will be a bit time consuming to pack everyone up, eat lunch in the van, and travel to co-op every other week. But is is an experience I think we desperately need. The co-op is small, but there is room to grow. If you are interested in TOG, please click the link on the right to check it out.
Music
Both princesses will continue with their piano lessons. Princess E is hoping to qualify for a scholarship to take vocal training lessons at a local music school. Princess L really wants to start piano this year but she has to wait one more year like her sisters.
Writing
I am planning to have the oldest two princesses begin IEW this year. I purchased TWSS and SWI-A for them. I haven't figured out yet how we will work these into the schedule, as we really need a block of time without interruptions from the little two. Perhaps we'll just have to set aside nap time for Princess M and find something for Princess L to do.
Spelling
We didn't do spelling this year. (Blush!) This is mostly because Princess E and Princess S seem to have DH's and my natural spelling ability. But I was very intrigued by the Pioneer Woman's description of how she does spelling with her kids, and am planning to adapt it to fit our schedule. I will dig out my copy of Spelling Power and use those lists to do a spelling bee three times a week (with the option to par down to twice a week if it becomes necessary) and let them earn small things like M&Ms, Skittles or Pretzels.
Grammar
Princess S will be doing Grade 4 of Growing With Grammar. I love the simplicity of this series. Princess S has attention issues and tends to get distracted by colors and pictures. This lovely book has no color and no pictures. And it is so simple, most of the time she can read the handbook and do the workbook without any help from me at all.
Latin
Princess E will continue with Latin, but she will be switching over to Latin For Children. We had some issues with our computer speakers not working and I was not able to get the files downloaded to a CD. So while she can read the first year Latin words, she can not pronounce nor understand spoken Latin. So this series will be a blessing. There is both a CD and a DVD.
Handwriting/Copywork
For Princesses L and S, I used my StartWrite software to make copybooks out of their Awana verses for next year. This way they are getting double practice every day. I haven't decided if I will do one for Princess E, but I am leaning towards having her work on keyboarding skills, as she will be using the computer a bit more this year. I also made a Presidents book for the older two princesses. For each president and first lady there is a facts page for them to fill in and two pages of practice with a famous quote from each president and some of the first ladies.
Phonics
For Princess L, I will be using Winter Promise Advanced K. I'm a little concerned because she has only really worked with the short sounds of the letters. She does know, thanks to the Leap Frog videos and toys, that many of the letters have other sounds and what those sounds are. She just hasn't learned any of the rules for their usage. I may need to take a little longer than the three scheduled weeks of sounds review before we dive into this. But it is a lot of hands on and really great simple readers, so I know she'll have fun with it.
Language Arts
Though I've already listed curriculum considered LA, I was dismayed at some bad habits, bad attitudes and "uncreative thinking" that was rearing its ugly head by the end of the year. To that end, I researched some things to add to address some of these specifics. Therefore, both of the older princesses will be doing one of the exercises from McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading each day. The goal is to practice reading for meaning rather than to simply finish the assignment as fast as possible. I will also be having Princess E begin with Dynamic Literacy's Foundations 1 book. She will do one exercise per day. Finally, I purchased the teacher's books for the first level of Michael Clay Thomas's Language Arts program. This program has a unique way of presenting grammar, writing, and vocabulary using challenging passages from classical works. I believe that the first level will pretty much be review for both of them. But I think it will help to pull together the various areas of LA which they are pretty good at individually, but struggle when they must put them together in, say, a writing assignment. The methodology is similar to TOG in that you read the beautifully and creatively done stories together, then lead them in a dialectic discussion about the various elements taught in the story.
Princess M
To be honest, I do not know where I will find the energy, with all of the above, to do very much with this little one. I'm leaning towards the "better late than early" idea with her. I purchased the Letter of the Week activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I plan to print out a few activities for each letter and put them in either a ziplock or a file folder, depending on the activity, and pulling out one or two a day when I need her occupied. I also plan to schedule each of the older princesses to do "school" with her for twenty minutes a day each.
Scheduling my crew is always a challenge. Whenever we have tried to implement a schedule a-la-Managers of Their Homes, we all end up frustrated and in tears. We tend to do better by listing the order of our activities, but not expecting to do anything at a particular time, with the exception of a few things like piano, lunch and co-op. Princess S cannot work when given a time frame to work in. She does better if I challenge her to try to finish something in x amount of time and give her a food reward if she accomplishes it. Princess E can finish most everything in a time frame, but her accuracy and creativity suffer greatly as a trade off. Princess L still needs me with her at all times. Princess M will tear a room apart in seconds if not adequately monitored. So I struggle with how to get everything in from day to day. Last year, I printed out a daily task schedule from HST+ for Princess E. She had no say in what assignments she had each day, but she was allowed to complete them in whatever order she pleased. Princess S was using the workbox method. I changed how I did them halfway through the year. She really disliked this method and wants to go back to a paper schedule. Therefore, I will attempt to do with her what I did with Princess E last year. For Princess E, I purchased this planner. One of the things that TOG stresses is teaching your children to take responsibility for their own learning by having them schedule their work themselves. We started this in the last unit to some extent this past year. My plan is to give her a laminated card with the target days for certain subjects. This is necessary because I have to be able to plan out times for correcting their work. For her reading assignments, I will print a list on Thurdays for the following week. She needs to plan on doing some reading on the weekends. (I know she will be devastated by this, but she's beginning middle school and this would be expected in a public school setting.) She can decide how to complete the reading assignments and put them in her planner, and will be expected to have everything read by Tuesday evening. She will have to work on her AQ/TQ questions on Wednesday and Thursday for our discussion on Friday. I will be having a daily meeting with the older two princesess to go through their assignment goals, give them their checked assignments needing corrections, and the McCalls reading test. My goal is to have these meetings last 10 to 15 minutes tops. While I am meeting with the one, the other will have their time with Princess M.
So that is how I've spent all my thinking energy and time for the last two months. I'll post another time on how we have been doing our Bible time, as I plan to continue with that method for now. When I finish going through our school room and get some badly needed bookshelves, I'll also post some pictures.
Math
We will continue with Math-U-See. Princess L will finish lessons 19-30 of Primer and continue on to Alpha. Princess S will finish lessons 21-30 of Gamma and continue on to Delta. Princess E will finish lessons 21-30 of Delta and continue on to Epsilon.
Science
We were given three books in the God's Design For Heaven and Earth series by Answers in Genesis. (This series has been reworked and we have the old version without a CD-ROM.) We started working through the first book during our spring break this year, and will work through the summer to finish it up by the time we begin in the fall. We will then do the second book during our regular school break times.
Humanities (History, Literature, Church/Bible History, Fine Arts)
We will continue to use Tapestry of Grace. Princess E will be D level (dialectic level for you non-TOGers), Princess S will be UG (upper grammar) and I will read a select few LG (lower grammar) books with Princess L, based on what is available at our library. We will be skipping year three in order to line up with a co-op near us that will be doing year four. Both of the older princesses will do a brief unit study this summer on the civil war and reconstruction, as these ideas will be central to much of year four. I am excited to meet with some awesome women who love TOG as much as I do. It will be a bit time consuming to pack everyone up, eat lunch in the van, and travel to co-op every other week. But is is an experience I think we desperately need. The co-op is small, but there is room to grow. If you are interested in TOG, please click the link on the right to check it out.
Music
Both princesses will continue with their piano lessons. Princess E is hoping to qualify for a scholarship to take vocal training lessons at a local music school. Princess L really wants to start piano this year but she has to wait one more year like her sisters.
Writing
I am planning to have the oldest two princesses begin IEW this year. I purchased TWSS and SWI-A for them. I haven't figured out yet how we will work these into the schedule, as we really need a block of time without interruptions from the little two. Perhaps we'll just have to set aside nap time for Princess M and find something for Princess L to do.
Spelling
We didn't do spelling this year. (Blush!) This is mostly because Princess E and Princess S seem to have DH's and my natural spelling ability. But I was very intrigued by the Pioneer Woman's description of how she does spelling with her kids, and am planning to adapt it to fit our schedule. I will dig out my copy of Spelling Power and use those lists to do a spelling bee three times a week (with the option to par down to twice a week if it becomes necessary) and let them earn small things like M&Ms, Skittles or Pretzels.
Grammar
Princess S will be doing Grade 4 of Growing With Grammar. I love the simplicity of this series. Princess S has attention issues and tends to get distracted by colors and pictures. This lovely book has no color and no pictures. And it is so simple, most of the time she can read the handbook and do the workbook without any help from me at all.
Latin
Princess E will continue with Latin, but she will be switching over to Latin For Children. We had some issues with our computer speakers not working and I was not able to get the files downloaded to a CD. So while she can read the first year Latin words, she can not pronounce nor understand spoken Latin. So this series will be a blessing. There is both a CD and a DVD.
Handwriting/Copywork
For Princesses L and S, I used my StartWrite software to make copybooks out of their Awana verses for next year. This way they are getting double practice every day. I haven't decided if I will do one for Princess E, but I am leaning towards having her work on keyboarding skills, as she will be using the computer a bit more this year. I also made a Presidents book for the older two princesses. For each president and first lady there is a facts page for them to fill in and two pages of practice with a famous quote from each president and some of the first ladies.
Phonics
For Princess L, I will be using Winter Promise Advanced K. I'm a little concerned because she has only really worked with the short sounds of the letters. She does know, thanks to the Leap Frog videos and toys, that many of the letters have other sounds and what those sounds are. She just hasn't learned any of the rules for their usage. I may need to take a little longer than the three scheduled weeks of sounds review before we dive into this. But it is a lot of hands on and really great simple readers, so I know she'll have fun with it.
Language Arts
Though I've already listed curriculum considered LA, I was dismayed at some bad habits, bad attitudes and "uncreative thinking" that was rearing its ugly head by the end of the year. To that end, I researched some things to add to address some of these specifics. Therefore, both of the older princesses will be doing one of the exercises from McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading each day. The goal is to practice reading for meaning rather than to simply finish the assignment as fast as possible. I will also be having Princess E begin with Dynamic Literacy's Foundations 1 book. She will do one exercise per day. Finally, I purchased the teacher's books for the first level of Michael Clay Thomas's Language Arts program. This program has a unique way of presenting grammar, writing, and vocabulary using challenging passages from classical works. I believe that the first level will pretty much be review for both of them. But I think it will help to pull together the various areas of LA which they are pretty good at individually, but struggle when they must put them together in, say, a writing assignment. The methodology is similar to TOG in that you read the beautifully and creatively done stories together, then lead them in a dialectic discussion about the various elements taught in the story.
Princess M
To be honest, I do not know where I will find the energy, with all of the above, to do very much with this little one. I'm leaning towards the "better late than early" idea with her. I purchased the Letter of the Week activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I plan to print out a few activities for each letter and put them in either a ziplock or a file folder, depending on the activity, and pulling out one or two a day when I need her occupied. I also plan to schedule each of the older princesses to do "school" with her for twenty minutes a day each.
Scheduling my crew is always a challenge. Whenever we have tried to implement a schedule a-la-Managers of Their Homes, we all end up frustrated and in tears. We tend to do better by listing the order of our activities, but not expecting to do anything at a particular time, with the exception of a few things like piano, lunch and co-op. Princess S cannot work when given a time frame to work in. She does better if I challenge her to try to finish something in x amount of time and give her a food reward if she accomplishes it. Princess E can finish most everything in a time frame, but her accuracy and creativity suffer greatly as a trade off. Princess L still needs me with her at all times. Princess M will tear a room apart in seconds if not adequately monitored. So I struggle with how to get everything in from day to day. Last year, I printed out a daily task schedule from HST+ for Princess E. She had no say in what assignments she had each day, but she was allowed to complete them in whatever order she pleased. Princess S was using the workbox method. I changed how I did them halfway through the year. She really disliked this method and wants to go back to a paper schedule. Therefore, I will attempt to do with her what I did with Princess E last year. For Princess E, I purchased this planner. One of the things that TOG stresses is teaching your children to take responsibility for their own learning by having them schedule their work themselves. We started this in the last unit to some extent this past year. My plan is to give her a laminated card with the target days for certain subjects. This is necessary because I have to be able to plan out times for correcting their work. For her reading assignments, I will print a list on Thurdays for the following week. She needs to plan on doing some reading on the weekends. (I know she will be devastated by this, but she's beginning middle school and this would be expected in a public school setting.) She can decide how to complete the reading assignments and put them in her planner, and will be expected to have everything read by Tuesday evening. She will have to work on her AQ/TQ questions on Wednesday and Thursday for our discussion on Friday. I will be having a daily meeting with the older two princesess to go through their assignment goals, give them their checked assignments needing corrections, and the McCalls reading test. My goal is to have these meetings last 10 to 15 minutes tops. While I am meeting with the one, the other will have their time with Princess M.
So that is how I've spent all my thinking energy and time for the last two months. I'll post another time on how we have been doing our Bible time, as I plan to continue with that method for now. When I finish going through our school room and get some badly needed bookshelves, I'll also post some pictures.
5/1/09
A Shout Out to My Wonderful Spellers
This morning we had an informal spelling bee at our co-op. After looking at the graded lists earlier this week, I decided that Princess E needed to receive the sixth grade words and Princess S needed the fifth grade words. In reality, I could have bumped them up even one more, but didn't want to completely frustrate them seeing as how they also have their piano recital tonight. The each correctly spelled every word they were given. Even more cool was Princess L. She doesn't read yet, but knows all her letters and their sounds. Her friend who is 5 and doing kindergarten work decided to do the spelling bee. So, Princess L wanted to as well. She correctly spelled cat, mad, mat and her own name. For a just turned 4 year old who hasn't officially had phonics yet, I was pleasantly surprised. I helped her by telling her to name the first sound, then the second, then the third. She was so pleased with herself. Isn't this what homeschooling is all about?!
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