Although I am homeschooling year-round, this time of year makes me think about new things, new paths and new opportunities. Tomorrow, as far as record-keeping goes we begin our new school year and with it a few new studies and hopefully a little more faithful adherence to our new schedule. Since tomorrow is the future and I have heard "always start where you are," I have been reviewing our summer, success and not-so-much success.
Summer Wrap-Up
This summer we really relaxed and I tried to focus on each child's interest in planning our days. Field Trips, family trips and nature studies ruled the days. Books and pencils were brought out only a few days a week, and then were mainly used as a way to provide structure on those totally unstructured days.
My primary goal of having MB reading independently was a not-so-much success. We headed into it working diligently through May and early June. I grew tired and frustrated by the arguing and pouting about reading lessons, and began to approach it warily and half-heartedly by the end of June and through July. By the end of July and MB's big trip I have put away the phonics and sight word books and lessons. They will continue to gather dust for a few more months until I believe we are ready to attack it more positively. The success from it has been that since MB has returned from her trip she is much more interested in knowing what words are when I am reading and is spelling them outlou to herself after I tell her what they are. And, while we were visiting last week we happened to catch an episode of Between the Lions and I caught her sounding out the words as they popped up on the screen. I am ready now to let her figure out when she is ready to read on her own.
Math has been a success for us this summer. While we have been learning about money together, MB has learned her +1 - +3 facts on her own.
MB can recognize four different types of butterflies while in flight.
MB taught herself how to tie shoelaces
Oregon Trail study was a huge success and a great example of how we should do other studies
MB was able to watch a dog give birth and recently we have adopted one of those puppies
For MB, the largest success has been in her confidence and attitude improvements over the summer.
K can count objects to about 15
K can look at a group of objects and tell how many are there (5 and under)
K can recognize about 8 letters on sight
K can recognize her written name
K has her color and shapes down cold
Both MB and K can recite The Lord's Prayer
Fall Forward
So now that I can look back on our summer and feel with some confidence that I am not entirely messing up the kids, I can look forward to the fall and plan our next steps.
First of all, I am continuing the phonics/active reading teaching hiatus. We are not going to have reading lessons for the foreseable future. Instead we are going to concentrate on Math, Science and History with learning through reading and craft activities.
For the next few weeks in math we will be continuing with money. We are going to do money until MB can understand currency and how to figure out what coins/bills she needs to use to make a purchase. Then we will be moving on to learning time.
While, we are actively working on money and time, we will also continue with MB self-teaching herself addition facts. For this I have several different games and activities that she already enjoys doing.
Since we are following SOTW I for history we did history an archaeology last week and are moving into early man for the next couple of weeks. Our planned additional history reading include:
The First Men - Julian May
How They Lived: An Ice Age Hunter - Lucilla Watson
First Painting - Kathryn Lasky
In science we did an introduction to mammals last weeks. This week we will begin a couple of weeks on wolves and other wild dogs. Science reading will include:
Wolves - Betty Polisar Reigot
World Book's Animals of the World: Wolves and Other Wild Dogs
Look to the North: A Wolf Pup Diary - Jean Craighead George
And our reading that integrates both science and history are:
Just This Once - Alice and Joel Schick
The First Dog - Jan Brett
Night-time/Literature read-aloud is The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
Those three subjects are going to be our primary focus. We will of course still do our nature studies, basic geography workbook, copy work (copying familiar nursery rhymes), arts & crafts and various other child-interest.
This week we are beginning our bible study which will be for MB & K. We are beginning with the story of creation and will actually spend 4 weeks on it. Each day will have some craft or music activity.
K's work is really going to continue to be a lot of play. She likes to write and draw and I am going to try some table work with her each day working on at first holding a pencil correctly and drawing/copying lines. We will also continue our letter play and various other things.
On another note, my prayers are with all those people who live along the gulf shore and in the entire gulf states. Katrina is big, bad and mean. If you live in one of the gulf states and are in land, please do not let down your guard these storms can carry a mean and nasty wallop inland. I have lived in NC through both Hugo and Fran and have seen those storms create more chaos and destruction 100 miles inland than it did on the immediate coast.
Peace
Amy
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