Category Archives: Homeschooling

3rd grade and Pre-school.

Let me get this out real quick.

AAAAHHHHHHHHH!

1. I can’t believe that London is old enough for school! What?!

2. I can’t believe that I now have two kids to teach at the same time (deep breaths).

3. I guess it could have gone a lot worse.

For a long time, I was sad that we missed out on traditional “first day of school” mornings. Then I decided that I didn’t want those memories, anyway. I could make better ones that didn’t include me waking up before dawn and rushing around the house in a mad dash to get everyone out the door on time. Ones that didn’t include me bawling my eyes out in parking lots while I left my child behind (even though I know they’d be fine…but still). So, no longer do I miss those would-be memories.

Now, our first day of school mornings include homemade blueberry muffins. Muffins that we wouldn’t have time to make together if we were rushing to leave the house by 7:30. Or 7. Or whatever break of dawn time school starts, lol!

They were delicious. I leisurely drank my coffee, praying my worries away for the day, and took the time to enjoy blueberry covered chins. You could say I was dawdling, perhaps a tiny piece of me trying to avoid the inevitable chaos I was sure to find around the corner. Here is the get real time: I am ALWAYS nervous. It may seem like I have it all together and homeschooling is a breeze and gosh, I must be so patient…nope. Not in the least. What I do is hard, and requires a dying to self almost minutely as soon as the school bell rings. *gulps coffee*.

The first day went as well as could be expected, I suppose. We start off with calendar/ circle time.

We sing a Days of the Week song, a month of the year song, a color rhyme, the weather, today/tomorrow/yesterday, and Days in School. Jackson also does a section on time and money, which he really likes.

After calendar, I get Jackson started on Read to Self, and then get London started on her first activity.

She did awesome! She colored in her tree and traced her letters.

She laced an apple card. This will take some practice for her; in fact, the whole program will. I am going to slowly build up her stamina for learning; right now she worked on her coloring page and laced the apple and that was it for her. She had decided that she was D-O-N-E. That’s fine. Throughout the rest of the morning I gave her random things to do like color puzzles and pom pom sorting.

Brooklyn got in on the pom poms, too. They have little pinchers they use to pick up the balls and put them in the cup. London loved this and sat there for at least 10 minutes. Progress, right?

After Jackson was through reading, we did a lesson from First Language Lessons, and then I sent him on to Word Work. Today, he did “Write and Stamp”. He took his spelling list and wrote the word, then stamped it out. This was a winner; he loved doing this!

I took time to work with the girls while he was doing this. Then we did a lesson out of Writing with Ease, and afterwards he grabbed his Work on Writing box which had some worksheets on “First, Next, Last” for him to complete. This year we are really focusing on elements of a story and different genres, so we are jumping in head first! I LOVE this idea I found on Pinterest, and can’t wait to use it starting tomorrow!

As we go through stories, we will use Post It notes to jot down the various elements of the story. I think this is really going to help Jackson grasp the concepts of good writing and comprehension.

After a lunch break, we worked on Geography, which will be M/W/F (Science is T/Th). We are using Expedition Earth, and this week is studying the globe. Jackson is learning about the Prime Meridian, hemispheres, etc. this week.

Math is this afternoon. I always save it for when the girls are resting so Jackson can concentrate. He starts multiplication this year, which he is really excited about!

Here is a peek at our schoolroom/playroom. It is divided down the center of the room, which I really like. Whoever isn’t in school can play on one side while the other can work. I left it messy. 🙂 You can see our workbox system over in the corner; I am really going to like that! It will take a week or so to get Jackson in the routine of just getting the box he needs at the right time, but it will come together.

If Jackson is working on something where he needs to spread out a bit, the girls sit over here and play. This little table has really come in handy!

Here is a larger image of our circle time corner. The palm tree is for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom; every week we put up the letter we have been working on and read the story. You can see our All About Spelling board to the right of the calendar, our Story Map board, and then the girls workstation to the right of that. On the floor they have little carpets to sit on. Work in progress still, but its coming together!

It went pretty well, I think. I only thought to myself twice about throwing in the towel and giving up, lol! I just have to remind myself that these first few weeks are the hardest, but it will all come together as the kids settle into our new routine.

So, we are off! Is it May yet? 😉

I’m lucky to be able to say that I’ve taught in the public school system. It solidified my decision to not have my children go there, for sure, but it also gave me a huge advantage when it came to teaching my own children. I know, for the most part, exactly what I need to do and when I need to do it. I know what to look for in curriculum, how to adjust my style of teaching across a group of students with different learning styles, how to change things up at a moment’s notice if I need to, and how to research.

Even with all that, though, I still struggle. I still struggle with patience. I struggle with being quick to anger. I struggle with my expectations.

I struggle. It has taken me a looooong time to come to a realization that has been life changing for me when it comes to homeschool: I am SUPPOSED to struggle. Of course this isn’t easy! You know how you pray to be more patient, more kind, more organized, more…everything? If you want the fast track to the Refiner’s Fire…then homeschool. I can honestly say that there has never been a period of greater growth for me when it comes to those areas than since I’ve began the responsibility of teaching my children. Can everyone do this? YES. YES, YES, YES. I am not special…I am just learning. I am putting myself last and them first…and there is never a day where that is easy. Except today, since we went to the pool, lol! 😉

So, part of this whole journey is trying to figure out what works for us. I am lucky. When you teach in the public schools, you don’t get to choose your curriculum. If the school chooses Saxon math, you do Saxon math, even if  you or your students don’t understand it. You don’t like a certain literature book? Too bad, you are doing it. Science curriculum too dry? Too bad. So, its extremely nice being able to use something and stop it halfway through and say, “This isn’t working, lets try something else.”

I got to this point with our Sonlight Language Arts program and our Sonlight Science program. I love Sonlight, I do. But this is why these two parts didn’t work for us. Here is a picture of the “sample” piece of writing that Jackson was supposed to do this week:

from my iPhone, sorry for the quality, lol!

Really? Raise your hand if you have a second grader who can write a story like that. *crickets* Now, I understand that they aren’t expecting this EXACT paragraph, but this is the only sample they give, so its hard to know exactly what they are expecting of a student. It would be much better if they would show the work of other second graders, or give realistic samples!

Also, another issue is that the Language Arts program is tied to the level of Readers (what they can read aloud to you) is. You don’t get a choice. So, if you have a student like mine, whose reading level is FAR above his language arts ability, you have a huge problem. We ended up stopping halfway through and went with a different LA program, which we love. We will still order all our literature (both Read Alouds and Readers) through Sonlight, but we won’t use the LA program.

As for Science, I can’t WAIT to show you pictures of what we are doing! We stopped using Sonlight’s a few weeks ago. This is why: you would spend all week learning about a particular sub-unit, like the animals of the rainforest or something like that. Then, you’d do an experiment on the fourth day that was a completely different lesson that had nothing to do with what you are learning about. So, we’d do rainforest animals all week, and then do an experiment on magnets. That doesn’t even make sense, and it would make it so much harder for me because I’d have to teach an entirely new lesson! So, we now use Apologia and it is phenomenal! I was lucky enough to attend a few workshops led by the author at a homeschooling convention I attended about a month ago, and I cannot speak highly enough of her or this program. Awesome stuff!

We are finishing up our first lesson in Apologia: Human Anatomy and Physiology (one lesson takes two weeks) and I’ll post pictures that show what we are doing. You will LOVE it! 🙂

Side note: For those of you who send your kids to school…make sure to take some time to truly thank your child’s teachers. Most of them spend their own money outfitting their classrooms and buying supplemental stuff. They make, on average, about $33-35,ooo a year (in Arizona, at least) for about 50 hours a week of work, if not more. They are up late every night preparing and grading, researching and printing, cutting and pasting. So, as this school year approaches its end, perhaps bless them! Popular things they love are restaurant gift cards, movie tickets, Starbucks cards, gift cards to your local learning stores (like Lakeshore Learning), etc. A lot of teachers use a site called Teachers Pay Teachers, where they can buy pre-made unit studies, so a gift card/online code would be fantastic as well! I promise you, you will make their day! 🙂

I’m off to make an edible cell with Jackson! Enjoy your day! 🙂

I really couldn’t say it any better!