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blondchen

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Everything posted by blondchen

  1. You need to check this out: http://truthinthetinsel.com/ We have done this program for Advent four years in a row (since my girls were 5, 3 and 1), and it is absolutely fantastic. It is by far our family's favorite and most meaningful Christmas tradition. My favorite thing about it is that we can add layers of depth to our reading and discussions with each passing year, so the kids will never outgrow it. I can't recommend it highly enough!!
  2. I may be wrong about this (and someone correct me if I am), but so far all the games we've done that use the basic card deck can be done with two decks of standard playing cards with the jokers and face cards removed (my girls prefer using the standard decks - they look more interesting!). Card decks are cheap, and they're sold pretty much everywhere, so you wouldn't need to pay for shipping.
  3. Thankfully, everything we're doing is at least a "like". LOVE Morning Time - Poetry, Theology, Fables, Artist Study, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Hobbit RightStart B - second time through - still crazy good! RightStart D - almost switched to MM after Level C, but so far this level has rekindled my RS love W & R Fable - an excellent follow-up to WWE2 (which is solid but uninspiring). DD absolutely loves it. Getting Started with Latin - so easy to implement and mostly independent for DD9 SOTW - as awesome as ever Science in the Beginning - fun, engaging, easy to use, cross-disciplinary. A perfect fit for this reluctant BFSU dropout. LIKE How to Teach Spelling - solid instruction, but haven't hit my stride yet. I need to spend a bit more time on prep, since it's not completely open-and-go. FLL3 - working well, but nothing exciting. SO glad I didn't waste my time with the first two levels (which I own but didn't really use because they're sooooo repetitive) Pentime - gets the job done OPGTR - third time around - no-frills, gets it done
  4. The train of thought is more important than perfect writing mechanics at that point, imo. To preempt the issue, if I saw words in the exercise that I thought she might not know how to spell (which were generally very few or none), I would quickly write them at the top of the page so she could refer to them as needed. Then I would address spelling or punctuation mistakes when she finished and have her correct them. The only thing I'd interrupt her for would be leaving out an entire word or phrase.
  5. Let them play!! I've read lots and lots of stuff that shows how important free play is for kids' minds and hearts, and I can tell you that it's obvious with my own kids. I've had so many people tell me how imaginative and creative they are, and they do beautifully with their "academics" as well and are not at all behind. If your regular schedule doesn't allow for enough margin to give kids some extra play time outside when the weather is especially fine, you're probably planning too much school work. And certainly they should have at least a couple of hours of free play every day, whether inside or outside. Here's an article by Christopher Perrin (who is no intellectual slouch!!) about why kids need to play to learn. I heard his talk on this at a homeschool convention and it was fantastic. So inspiring. There's probably a way to access his talk online somewhere, but I don't have time to search for a link for that right now.
  6. This. I also agree with other pp's that she needs to go back to just practicing letter sounds. Until she learns all of them well, trying to put words together is going to be difficult and frustrating. I have used OPGTR for two kids and am now using it with my 4yo. It teaches all the short vowel sounds first, then one sound for each consonant, then CVC words, followed by consonant blends and long vowels, rules, etc. Playing around with lowercase magnetic fridge letters while DD was learning the sounds was really helpful, and we still do it just for fun. Our letter set is lowercase, with red vowels and blue consonants. It's great.
  7. Oh, how we love picture books! I hope my kids never entirely outgrow them. I will cry a river if/when they do. These are ones that I love to read, and/or that all of my children have loved and asked for consistently from a very young age (my youngest is 4, and I know that her interest in these started around 2 or 3. Some of them are a stretch for a 2yo, but of course it depends on the child). Beatrix Potter - any and all. Our faves are Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Jemima Puddle Duck, and the Tale of Samuel Whiskers Robert McCloskey: Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine Joyce Sidman: Red Sings from Treetops Barbara McClintock: Adele and Simon, Adele and Simon in America Ezra Jack Keats: Jennie's Hat, The Snowy Day, Peter's Chair, A Letter for Amy Janice May Udry: A Tree Is Nice Munro Leaf: Ferdinand Tomie dePaola: Strega Nona Barbara Cooney: Chanticleer and the Fox Donald Hall: Ox-Cart Man Janell Cannon: Verdi, Stellaluna Jane Yolen: Owl Moon Virginia Burton: The Little House, Mike Mulligan Margaret Wise Brown: The Little Island, Big Red Barn Roger Duvoisin: Petunia Ian Falconer: Olivia books Sarah Stewart: The Gardener, The Library Marjorie Flack: The Story about Ping Don Freeman: Corduroy, A Pocket for Corduroy, Dandelion Bill Martin: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Gail Haley: A Story, A Story Dr. Suess: The Lorax The Emperor's New Clothes, illustrated by Virginia Burton (Folk Tale Classics edition) Poetry: A Child's Garden of Verses (we love the one illustrated by Tasha Tudor)
  8. I am still liking OPGTR (doing it with my third child now). It's not exciting, but all of my kids have enjoyed it well enough, and it has been very effective for us. I consider it to be a solid, no-frills program that gets it done efficiently. We also supplement with buddy reading of Dr. Seuss, etc. pretty early on (once they can sound out CVC words). That adds the fun element, without bogging down the lessons themselves with a bunch of extra stuff.
  9. I remember just how I felt when my oldest was 4 and I read TWTM and attended my first homeschool conference. I was SOOOO excited to get started...but my bubble burst a bit when I realized that there really isn't much that should be done at that age. Young kids just need lots of reading aloud and to play and to be exposed to the good, true and beautiful things of life (quality books, art, music, nature, the family's religion), and when they're ready, to learn to read (which many 4yos can). Other than that, just teach them about life as you live it, and incorporate math concepts and other stuff as it comes up, if you're inclined. Be patient with the formal academics. There is plenty of that later!!! I use OPGTR for reading and just go at a pace that's comfortable. No rushing, no pushing. It has worked well for all three of my kids. For read alouds, I love Honey for a Child's Heart, which is an annotated list of great books for children. Such a treasure. And along with TWTM, I highly recommend reading the book Consider This. It gave me a vision for what a classical education could be, in forming my children as whole persons. Very inspiring.
  10. My DH is a pastor whose only full day off is Monday, so our whole family takes Mondays off. We school Tues-Sat and it's great. We do a shorter day on Saturday, because my girls spend every Sat afternoon with the grandparents. And we are all going to do art together on Mondays, because DH (a former professional artist) wants to be in on it and doesn't have time the rest of the week. One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the flexibility in scheduling.
  11. We divide our Morning Time into two sections, back to back - the first we call "table time" and it is at breakfast, when everyone is finished (or almost finished) eating. We do all of these every day, year round, so it's not associated with school - it's part of our life as a family: Scripture memory/recitation Catechism Psalm Prayer Next, on school days we do our reading on the sofa, which we call "sofa time". Our plan for this school year includes: Bible story Poetry Fable Short Story (Beatrix Potter, Pooh, Fairy Tale) or picture book Chapter book Artist/Composer study (block scheduled, alternating artist and composer) I use block scheduling within each category. For example, with the short stories, last year we read all of the Beatrix Potter stories in a row and then moved on to Winnie the Pooh, which we are not finished with yet. After we get through all of Pooh, we'll move on to fairy tales. No actual schedule - it's all just do-the-next-thing. My goal is to get everything in, every day. If time is short, I just skip something that day and make sure we get to it the next. If I find that I've bitten off too much with the sofa time this coming year, I'll probably loop some of it, or schedule an additional reading session before our afternoon quiet time in order to do all of it. I LOVE reading to my kids.
  12. I second the Pentime recommendation. It is simple and cheap, and has been very effective.
  13. I'm teaching my third child to read now. I started them all at 4, because they were excited to learn, and because I wanted them to be able to enjoy books on their own, if they could. We use OPGTR, which can go at whatever pace you choose. My current 4yo doesn't sit still for as long as her sisters did, so her lessons are about 5-10 minutes, and we often do only a partial lesson from the book. I do as much as I think she's ready for, and we keep it relaxed and fun. I think it's absurd that it somehow damages a child to learn to read "too soon". Forcing a child whom you discover isn't ready is one thing; introducing a child to sounding out letters is entirely another. If the child IS capable, and especially if he/she is eager, it opens up a whole new world. Don't stress about that. It doesn't matter.
  14. We do a modified year-round schedule, but there's no real rhyme and reason to it. In my state a school day is any day in which an educational activity occurs. According to that standard, we rack up WAAAAY more than the required 180, so I don't need to count days. Generally, though, I plan for about 36 weeks, because I need some kind of structure to go on. We like to start in mid-July and take off whenever we schedule our family vacations (4 weeks per year, which are usually taken when everyone else is in school), at least two weeks in December, and about six weeks in June/July. Other than that, we just take off days when we need to. This year I'm going to schedule some week-long school breaks in addition to our vacations so I have time to regroup and adjust here and there.
  15. Even though I may have a better solution for myself (having my kids practice at church), I will say that what has worked so far is having everyone who's not practicing (including myself) do stuff that doesn't require much concentration - like handwriting, drawing, working with their hands, chores, etc. And practice time is scheduled, so appropriate activities can be done the same time. If we didn't have the option of practicing at church, that's what I'd continue to do (and may very well continue to do, if practicing at church doesn't work out). I don't think anyone should be expected to do math or discuss literature while someone is banging on an instrument within easy earshot. If this were a long-term problem with no other fix, I'd buy a Clavinova and have them use headphones.
  16. I am mostly using Plan Your Year by Pam Barnhill. It is customizable and has many options for which forms you want to use, and it comes with a guide book to help you with the actual planning. http://edsnapshots.com/plan-year-homeschool-planning-purpose-peace-2/ You can use her forms as fillable PDF's, or print them blank and write in the content. I do both, depending on the form. My planner is a combo of some of her forms and some I have made that are based on her ideas. I'm thankful for something I can tweak to suit my preferences, but which has a lot of the organizing work already done for me. I have a weekly schedule overview printed out - no specifics - just which subjects are to be done in which block of time on each day. This won't change from week to week unless I decide something isn't working, in which case I'll edit it and print a new one. I also have a standard daily checklist for myself (with all the subjects for all children listed) and a daily checklist for each child to use. It's kind of like using the spiral notebooks method, but backwards - instead of writing out each subject and assignment from scratch for each child every day, I have all the subjects already listed and I cross off the ones that aren't assigned that day, and I fill in the blank next to each subject that is assigned, if necessary. Most of our curriculum is do-the-next-thing, so I don't need to plan way ahead for particular lessons on particular days or weeks. I just need to know approximately how many lessons per week we need to complete in order to keep the pace I want, and if we get behind, I'll need to make adjustments. I used to keep those checklists in a week-at-a-glance format rather than daily, which worked pretty well, but I realized that the visual clutter is overwhelming for me and I do better with less info on one page. One reason I generally can't use a pre-printed planner is that we school Tues-Sat, and most planners use a Mon-Fri format (and I can't just make the mental adjustment - it would drive me batty). Pam customized her Mon-Fri forms upon request so that I can fill in Tues-Sat instead.
  17. I wish. If there were someone working at the church building, I'd absolutely do that, but DH's office is in the parsonage, and the part-time administrator also works from home - the one office in the church is too small for a pastor, and the admin uses it only for copying and filing. The church is working on a plan to change all of this, but it's not going to happen anytime soon, so for now this is what we have to work with. DH and I are going to talk this week about some different things we can do to make things work better for all of us. Piano practice at church may turn out to work for us.
  18. I can't say from experience, but I just finished going through Science in the Beginning (by Jay Wile) to prep for next school year, and it looks great! It's designed to be used with multiple ages (through about 6th grade, I think). The follow-up questions at the end of the lesson are at three different levels, and the oldest kids are given notebooking instructions. My kids are 9, 7 and 4 and I think it will work well for us. Obviously it will be a bit much for the 4yo (who is really just tagging along) but she'll probably enjoy it, and I think it's in the sweet spot for the others. And it's inexpensive - about $40 for the one manual + teacher helps, and the experiments use mostly ordinary household items. I don't have to buy anything at all for the first unit. We also plan to supplement with living books, many of which I found on the lists in BFSU.
  19. OP, I'm so glad you posted this thread. I am stressing out about this very issue myself right now. In your case, I would have them go to their bedrooms to READ during practice time. Maybe they'd rather not, but at least they have somewhere to go, and I would think that at your kids' ages they'd be reading for at least an hour a day. And if it's just reading, they shouldn't need your help or attention, right? I don't have that option, since our house is TINY and even the bedrooms are so close that you can't get away from the noise anywhere. But I'd utilize bedrooms in a heartbeat if I had an upstairs. So far I've had one studying piano (with me) and I'm about to add another. Listening to 30 minutes of piano practice in the same room (and not commenting on it!) has been hard enough - not sure how I'd manage more than that. Ugh. After reading this very timely thread, it occurred to me that I might have my girls do their daily practice at church. DH is a pastor, and we live in the parsonage about 100 yards away. We could walk over once a day, and piano practice could be in the sanctuary while I do some seat work with the others in the fellowship hall, which is adjacent but separate enough to be sound proof. That would require leaving the house every day with some school stuff, but it might be worth it for my sanity.
  20. Jackie, this is great!! Thank you for sharing!!
  21. That's really impressive!! :) I should clarify that it isn't the lack of art training that makes DWC challenging to teach - it really is the prep time in reading the material and planning the lessons, which is just too much for some of us. I couldn't make BFSU (science) work for the same reason. I want open-and-go, if possible, and DH needed it too, because of his time constraints. OP, I forgot to mention in my previous post that DH really likes Mark Kistler. We have the Draw Squad book. But Art for Kids is a lot cheaper and may work for you, at least as a start with the fundamentals of drawing.
  22. My DH used to be a professional artist, and he said that Drawing with Children is a solid program with a great philosophy, but that it is hard to teach from because you have to figure out your own lesson plans. Even as an experienced artist, it was just too much hassle for him. We switched to Art for Kids, which DH said is much easier to figure out, but we finally accepted the fact that DH doesn't have the time to do the actual instruction himself. So, we are considering The Virtual Instructor for next year so he can be involved (which he loves), but not have to figure out how to teach the lessons.
  23. I can't answer your question about a color printer because I only have a B&W printer, BUT, I find that b&w is sufficient for almost all of our homeschooling printing. Once in a while I'm bummed that we don't have a color printer, but that mainly applies to non-homeschool things, actually. I am considering getting a color printer to use only when we need color, but our Brother 2270DW laser printer has been a workhorse and it's wonderfully efficient, especially on toner save mode (which I use for almost everything - it's fine for school worksheets, etc). Regarding binding, I am IN LOVE with my Proclick. I don't know what I'd do without it.
  24. Yep, my 9yo has beautiful cursive, developed entirely via the Pentime books. It's a straightforward, traditional cursive (I think almost identical to Zaner-Bloser) and the books are cheap. DD does one page per day, which is a good pace. I have (but do not currently use) ELTL and I just checked the workbook. It looks to me like the slant cursive is very similar to Pentime. So, if you wanted to use Pentime for tracing and practicing letter formation, you could probably do the ELTL cursive copywork with no problems.
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