Sum it Up Saturday Break

I decided to take a break from my Sum it Up Saturday posts.  Mostly, because I decided to take a REAL Summer break.  Since we jumped into homeschooling, 3 years ago, I have never taken a break to just "be" and plan.  All our breaks were forced due to health issues; a crashing thyroid, a healing thyroid (that in itself was a year and a half process), 2 miscarriages, Arrow's first trimester, bed rest, postpartum....phew!  I'm tired just thinking about it all!  After coming out of those breaks, I'd jump right back into home schooling, feeling behind and stressed.  We have never taken a Summer break.  I have never taken time to sit down, think about our home schooling goals, and try to find a program that fits those goals.  Well, correction, I would TRY to do that, but always in a rushed fashion.  I bought boxed curriculum that I thought looked good during rushed research.  Then as soon as it arrived, we'd jump into it without much prep time on my part because I was so worried the children were behind.  That left both the kids and I muddling through the foreign territory of the new curriculum together, and it always failed. 

Still feeling behind, I was planning to again School through the Summer.  It was causing me great stress though as really, I was just completely burned out.  I randomly stumbled upon a method I thought would fit us well and was cramming to figure it out enough to just jump right in when I got to my breaking point and realized I just couldn't do that again.  I needed a break!  The program suggested really prepping yourself first before starting up with the kids, as its more about implementing a methodology than completing a program.  That night I decided to throw schooling through the Summer to the wind and take our first official, HEALTHY break!

So I've been reading through every link, rabbit trail and related blog I can get my hands on.  I've made Pinterest boards to keep things organized, bought books, made notes of what our library has on hand that we'll need, made goals, and am working on sprucing up our home school work area.  Zac is also jumping in with me, reading up on the methodology of Charlotte Mason, and helping me form plans and goals.  We are planning to use Ambleside Online, Year 1, with both Felicity and Logan next year. 

I will plan on coming back to the idea of Sum it Up Saturday posts when we start up again.  It really helped me stay accountable. 

And since this was such a wordy post, I'll leave you with a few random, cute pictures.

 

Happy Summer (almost)!

Sum it up Saturday

This week, we learned about the ancient citadel cities of the Indus Valley in Story of the World.  I was going to move on to the next chapter mid week, but the kids were so enthralled with citadels that I decided to follow their lead and just focus on that this week.  MANY citadel cities were built with blocks this week.  Many "bad guys" attacked many cities and many citizens (and star wars characters....ahem) ran to their citadels for protection. 

I've been spending most of my down time getting a plan together for next year.  Right now, I'm planning on using Ambleside Online.  Its a free plan using the Charlotte Mason approach.  I decided to put some of Ambleside Online's practices to use this week, just to see how the kids responded to it.  Quite honestly, we naturally have a Charlotte Mason feel in our home school, so I'm not sure the kids noticed a difference.  We started reading Bedtime Stories by Thornton Burgess.  The kids love these sweet little stories.  I love how each one has a moral.  Logan did copy work from the Burgess book, for handwriting, while Felicity worked on what we call "rainbow letters" (letters with arches, such as r, p, b, and h). Both of them did fantastic handwriting this week.  Some of their best work ever. 

Thornton Burgess, copy work, and Sweet Child o' Mine on repeat.

I love how he has his own unique taste in music.

On Friday we had our last science group of the year.  We went to one of the family's homestead and learned about goats.  The kids made goats' milk soap and goats' milk ice cream, and the Mamas enjoyed home made chevre and goats' milk cheese cake.  The Mamas also had a milking competition.  It was my first time milking a goat.  I lost, big time, but oh, it was so much fun!  I'll be back to improve on my skills for sure.  :)

How was your home schooling week?

Leave a comment if you wish, or feel free to write your own Sum it up Saturday post and link up.



Sum it up Saturday

Grammy had Monday off, and the weather was hot, so we took the day off school to go swimming at her house.  Then we had friends from out of state visit for two days.  We enjoyed time with them while they were in town.  And on Friday, another friend came over for the day to visit.  That left Tuesday free to do school.  So we didn't.  :) 

We took the week off to enjoy family and friends.  I'm so thankful for home school which allows my kids the freedom to love and enjoy people so much.  I'm glad they're not locked up in a classroom with 30 other kids their age all day.  Hooray for being free to hang out with lots of different people of all ages.  :)

 

How was your home school week?

I'd love to hear about it in the comments section.

And if you do your own Sum it up Saturday post, please leave a link!

Sum it up Saturday

 

That?  Oh that's just your every day drawing in the street of a massive person. 

 

I was kind of embarrassed when my neighbor left for work in the morning and found me in the street before 7am drawing a massive human shape.  But she just yelled, "Good morning honey!  Working on a lesson?"

My neighbors know me better than I thought!  :)

 

It was my turn to teach at our science co op this week (we meet every other Friday and the moms trade off teaching and snack duties).  Well, I had the job of teaching circulation.  I was not thrilled.  Why couldn't I have something beautiful and fun to teach like metamorphosis?  Ugh...I was NOT looking forward to teaching this lesson.  But then a friend told me about a game her home school group did to teach circulation that sounded perfect.  I tweaked it a bit for our young group and came up with our own version.  Inside, we had a small lesson about our heart; how its a muscle, how it beats, how it pushes blood through our body, etc.  I taught them that our blood feeds our cells oxygen, and flushes out carbon dioxide.  I told them the blood was kind of like the lunch man who delivers the lunch (oxygen), and then takes out the trash (carbon dioxide).   Once outside, I placed the kids on two teams and each team had three jobs; a cell, blood transporting oxygen to the cell, and blood transporting carbon dioxide away from the cell.  Our cells sat way down at the big toe.  Next to the cell sat our carbon dioxide transporting blood.  Up at the heart stood our oxygen carrying blood who each held a bag of felt food.  At "GO!" the oxygen carrying blood would follow the blood vessels drawn on the ground and run their way down to the cell in the big toe, one on the right and one on the left.  Once they reached their cell, they gave the cell their food.  The cell took the food out of the bag and handed the bag (trash) to the carbon dioxide transporting blood who ran the trash back up to the heart.  Which ever team got to the heart first won.  Are you following?  HA!  The kids had a lot of fun with this activity and we played a lot of rounds of it.  We also did an experiment to see how blood pumps into our hearts, using a turkey baster, and another experiment to show how we bruise, using grapes in plastic bags.  But this is getting wordy enough so I'll spare you the details.  :)

 

Other than our science co op, our week was pretty normal.  I finally got my act together and arranged a birthday party for Logan and his friends.  We went to our favorite park that literally sits on the marina where you can watch seal swim and pelicans dive.  These California kids have it rough I'm telling you!  His two home school buddies and their siblings and Mamas joined us for a day of play and treats.  I LOVE watching home schooled kids get together to play.  I'm always touched by how all inclusive they (usually) are.  Age and gender don't seem to phase them and they just all play together.  We took the kids to the park but I think they really never played on the park.  They soon found two overgrown patches at the parks edge and turned them into forts.  They divided themselves into two teams and played some sort of war game where prisoners were taken and rescued over and over for hours.  Sword fights a plenty! 

 

 

Papa came over on Monday for some "Papa School".  Oh how I'm loving this wonderful routine!  I feel so spoiled to cook away in my kitchen while the kids are being schooled!  Such luxury!  :) 

 

How was your week of home schooling?

Please feel free to share about your week in the comments,  and please leave a link if you care to join me in a "Sum it up Saturday" post.

Sum it up Saturday

We've made tally marks, worked with the clock, played with nickels, planted seeds 5 inches apart, picked up toys in groups of five, counted carnival tickets by groups of ten, used the beautiful number grid in the back of Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 to skip count, and simply practiced together in the car while driving.  And this week, it clicked!  He still stumbles over the order some, especially through the teens, but this week Logan mastered skip counting.  I screeched and hugged him too tight the first time he counted from 5 to 100 by 5s.  Its victories like this, which *I*, not a school teacher, get to share with my kids, which makes home schooling so amazing.  We have worked hard together, and we celebrated together.  :)

This week was a jumbled week.  Arrow wasn't feeling too well and pretty much did not sleep for three nights, which means this Mama didn't sleep for three nights.  I had to look back into my camera to even remember what we did this week.  It was the type of week I tend to call "free".  Not free because we don't do anything, but free because we followed the kids' lead more than the books.  These weeks used to scare me because I worried we didn't accomplish anything.  Now I'm learning that we accomplish so much in these "free" weeks and its not always about having a completed worksheet.  So much learning goes on outside of worksheets!

 

Logan wanted to make his cousin a birthday present.  Zac helped him, but Logan used most of the tools himself.  He was very proud.

I introduced the kids to Mr. Rogers this week.  I wouldn't say I loved T.V. as a kid, but I do remember loving Mr. Rogers.  We streamed his shows from the PBS website.  The kids love it, especially Kian, as its geared towards his age range.  Its fun to hear the things they retain from these episodes.  One episode featured the group Stomp.  The kids were enthralled by Stomp so we got on youtube and watched more of their shows.  They were especially excited about this video, where Stomp members are shown making music while hanging suspended from a billboard.  With brooms, my old ironing board, drum sticks, an old metal serving plate, and wine barrel hoops hung from a chin up bar, the kids reenacted Stomp.  They had so much fun!

The kids got to do a bit of phonics and handwriting with my Mom yesterday.  I love when others offer to do school with the kids.  Its fun for them and I think its good for them to learn how to take instructions from someone other than just me all the time.  They both learned new concepts in phonics this week.  Felicity learned a new blend and Logan learned to read two syllable words.  Grammy said they did great with it.

This week I read a little bit about how the children in Finland are taught.  One article said they are let outside to play every 45 minutes.  When a teacher was interviewed and asked how she could ever teach them enough when they break every 45 minutes, the teacher said there's no way she could teach them if they DIDN'T get their energy out every 45 minutes.  Play is such a huge part of learning, and for the home schooler, I think it is especially big.  We can take play breaks whenever needed and I'm trying to do that more.  That being said, when we are home all day, we are limited to our SMALL backyard and the cul de sac for outside play.  We've tried to be creative with space to really give a lot of space over to the kids and this week we added something new to the backyard.

Hooray for play!

 

How was your home schooling week?

Feel free to do your own Sum it up Saturday post and link up in the comments area.

Sum it up Saturday

So I had a home school freak out this week.  Normally when this happens, everything comes to a screeching halt.  But thankfully, we just kind of swung into unschooling mode.  I'm so thankful for that.  It allowed me time to step back, calm down, do some research, and not feel guilty.  My kids weren't running wild.  In fact, in the end, I can look back and say that other than some anxious thoughts, we had a very enjoyable week.

Papa came again on Monday for "Papa School."  I can't even tell you how priceless these times with him are.  He got the kids through their Hooked on Phonics work and then moved into skip counting with Logan.  He brought a nice big clock from his house and introduced time concepts to him.  He also brought pennies and nickels to do skip counting with.  Papa got a taste for a "true Logan day", which is basically a day where Logan's thoughts are in outer space, then the deep ocean, then to make believe worlds of dragons and who knows what else, in about a 3 second span of time.  That can be hard enough to work with, but Logan also can sometimes add in an attitude that's a bit of an amped up, lack of self control type of thing.  He can get upset and take things personal when he doesn't instantly grasp a concept.  Needless to say, these moments are hard and Papa plugged through and was able to give Logan the foundations for telling time and counting money despite it. 

Another thing I did to help Logan grasp skip counting, was to introduce him to tally marks.  The play porch was a disaster so I gathered up all the baskets and set them in front of me.  I had the kids race to bring me 5 toys at a time.  Once the toys were deposited into their correct baskets, they could give themselves 5 tally marks.  After everything was put away, we counted, by 5s, who had the most points.  The winner got to choose a movie to watch during lunch time.  But I think I was the winner here because the play porch was cleaned in record time and by the end of the game, both Felicity and Logan totally understood the concept of how to do tally marks and it gave them more skip counting practice.

We spent all of Thursday at the beach with friends.  Its an hour drive for us so we sang lots of our school songs on the way, and practiced skip counting.  I took 2 nature guides and slipped in some quick animal identification with the kids.  I really want to keep nature journals.  I've wanted to for years.  But honestly, I'm afraid my distractible boy will not do well with sitting, drawing, and observing.  Fearing it will end in a fight, I haven't done it.  I know, I'm totally in the wrong.  I'm looking into doing Ambleside Online for next year's school plan, and they do lots of nature journaling. I figured I'd start implementing the concepts slowly in hopes that by next September, it may be a smooth transition into full nature journaling.  At the beach we identified squirrels.  The next day at home (before home school friends came over to play in our sheep trough thanks to the 100 degree heat), we took our bird book into the back yard to determine which species of woodpecker our little resident guy is.  It took us a while to decipher between two species that look very similar, but in the end we are confident that he is a Downy Woodpecker.  I'm excited to add in these beginning steps of observing nature around us more completely.

I'd love to hear about your home school week!  Leave a comment letting me know what you're up to, or leave a link to your own Sum it up Saturday post.  Has anyone had any experience with Ambleside Online?  I hope you had a great week with your children.


Sum it up Saturday

This boy turned 8 this week!

(more on that later)

Zac didn't have much work this week, which meant lots of family time.  Add in Logan's birthday, and school just wasn't a top priority this week.  But I squeezed it in when we had time here and there, focusing mainly on History.   In Story of the World, we read about Joseph, which has always been one of the kids' favorite Bible stories.  Since the kids love it so much, we parked it in this chapter all week.

I'm trying different ways of reading aloud to my kids.  This week they painted kindling while I read, and it was pretty successful.  Logan especially seems to benefit from doing something quietly with his hands while I read.

To focus more on this chapter, I found these two worksheets online.  Felicity loved the color by number paper and took a lot of pride in it.  I'll have to find her more.
* Add colors to Joseph's coat
* Joseph's color by number coat

We also watched Joseph King of Dreams on Netflix, and the episode on Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors from a Bible stories series that we own (which I can't find online, sorry).

I was excited that Logan received some new games for his birthday.  He also got LOTS of Legos.  So this week we played board games and built a lot with Legos, both of which I TOTALLY count as school!  In the above picture, we are playing "The Ladybug Game" which is a really cute game that was invented by a 6 year old.  You have to get your ladybug from the dirt patch to the rose bush, collecting aphids along the way, which you pay to the ants like a toll to get past them.  The kids really enjoyed it.

 

Logan also got checkers, which Kian finds intriguing.  I'm trying to teach him to play it, but its still a bit confusing to him.  On this day, the big kids were out with Zac, spending Logan's birthday money, while I stayed home with the napping little boys.  Upon waking from his nap, Kian said, "Hello Mama.  Can we play checkers?".  And so we did.

 

That was our week.

How was your home schooling week?

Feel free to link up and keep the conversation going!



Sum it up Saturdays - The First Post

Well, I'm getting my very first Sum it up Saturday post up on the blog a bit later today than I'd like, but that's ok, because that pattern kind of sums up our week.  We've had a very needy baby on our hands this week.  We have done school when we can, here and there.  One morning, Arrow slept in so I took Logan out onto the deck with me and had him read me his hooked on phonics book while I sipped coffee in the sunshine....eyes still closed.  :)  Yep, one of THOSE weeks. 

The kids are moving forward well with Hooked on Phonics.  Logan passed another book this week.  He is basically in the middle of the 1st grade program and picking up speed as we go.  If he had more confidence, he'd move forward even faster.  He will resort to sounding out words he knows, just to make sure he gets it right.  He second guesses himself and it slows him down.  Ideas to help him gain confidence?
Felicity is currently working on the K Hooked on Phonics program but is still in the beginning of the program.  We are taking it nice and easy. 

I invited my Papa to come do school with us on Monday.  Best idea ever!  Oh my goodness, the kids had so much fun with him.  He walked the kids through their reading and handwriting lessons.  Then he sat in on our History lesson.  It was such a boost for us all!  It was amazing to see my kids work with someone else and it was good for me to see someone take different avenues with our same old same old. 

 

We started Story of the World Volume 1 recently and are really enjoying it.  This week we learned about the first forms of writing.  Here's some pictures of the kids giving Cuneiform a try using play dough and popsicle sticks. 

 Can you see Kian's K?

 

 Logan's "J".

 

 I wrote the kids' names in both Cuneiform and Hieroglyphs.

The kids LOVED learning about a Pharaoh in Egypt named Narmer who conquered another king, joining "Upper" and "Lower Egypt" into one country.  However, they weren't too interested in Sargon, King of Mesopotamia who basically did the same thing.  Hmmmm.  I have a feeling its because King Narmer was portrayed with an eagle on his arm.  The boys ate that up!

 

We started "Bible Copy" this week.  A few months back I figured what better way for the kids to learn reading and handwriting than straight from God's Word.  Zac wasn't sure if the kids would be ready for it but after stumbling upon a blog where another home schooling family did the same thing, I decided to just give it a try.  If they're too young, we can always stop and try later.  Logan did really good and I look forward to doing this with him.  I decided to hold off with Felicity though and have her just practice copying small sentences that I write for her.  Logan and I are starting in Genesis and just going for it.  We'll see what becomes of it but I'm excited.

No math this week as a friend is taking a look at our curriculum.  But Logan is having a hard time grasping skip counting so any tips would be appreciated!

So, how did your homeschooling week go?  I'd love to continue the conversation in the comments field.  And if you care to write your own Sum it up Saturday, PLEASE leave a link!  I'd love to read it.

Sum it up Saturdays

When I love something, I tend to want to throw myself into it, and rarely tire of it.  I think of it constantly, make plans for it, dream of it, etc.  For example, I love to garden and sew.  When its Spring and we are FINALLY planting our jiffy tray sprouts into the garden, I would let everything go...laundry, home school, dishes, meals....if I could just be in the garden all day.  Of course I can't do that so I have to try to remember that other things exist.  But its hard.

I've often thought "I WISH I'd just get the home schooling bug!"  That and the read my Bible every day bug.  That would be great.  For years I've wished I loved home schooling so much that I dreamt about it (and not in a nightmare kind of way), and wanted to let everything else go just so we could get in one more chapter of Story of the World.  I'm not quite there yet, but I feel like something is stirring!  And trust me, I'm going to help that stirring along ALL I can.  So, I've decided to start "Sum it up Saturdays" where I will post what we've done all week in our little home school.  It will be a good place for me to record our accomplishments so that, on the hard days, I can look back and see that we ARE making progress.  It will also, simply, be a place to record our progress in case the dreaded "they" ever ask for proof on what all these kids do at home all day long.  And, like a garden journal, it will be a good place to simply mark time.  That way, I can look back when its time to do Hooked on Phonics K with Kian, and see the simple little things I did to make it fun with Lissy when she was in HOP K. 

Also, I THRIVE off of accountability.  So, I'm hoping to get other bloggers to join in on "Sum it up Saturdays".  I'm not going to create a "link up party."  For one, I have no clue how to do that.  And two, I like my simple little blog.  Link ups seem distant.  I'm hoping other Mamas will leave comments and/or share a link to their "Sum it up Saturdays" post in my comments area.  That way we can have a growing conversation in the comments area as well as links to each others' blogs where we can go see what we're all up to, therefore gaining ideas, inspiration, and accountability. 

I hope all my home schooling Mama blog friends will consider joining in.  I'd love to learn more about what you all do each week so that we can encourage one another, learn from one another, and, when needed, commiserate with one another. 

I'm looking forward to this Saturday.

Will you join me?

 

Making cheese with rennet, just like Ma.