amyrobynne
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Posts posted by amyrobynne
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2. I, for one, relate to my children better through academics. I enjoy teaching grammar and history and math. I do not enjoy Monopoloy or card games. That is my husband's domain. Reading books together or talking about math in the car? Count me in. Need a kidney? Sign me up. But please, do not ask me to play Battleship! Whether that has anything to do with being an attorney, I do not know, but that is a big reason that I like homeschooling. It is not why we started, but it is a perk.
Oh my gosh, yes. I do. not. care. about my kids' train simulator games or minute Star Wars details. I do like explaining multiplication to them. I love reading everything with them. I'm actually happy playing card games and real games now that they can handle Settlers and whatnot. But Battleship? No. I threw out Chutes and Ladders and Candyland because I didn't feel like anyone should be forced to deal with those horrible things. But in general, I feel like I relate to them through their academics now instead of not wanting to share their freetime fun.
I always think it a lovely, metaphorical "spit in the eye" to "the establishment" when public or private school educators homeschool their children!
My husband didn't enjoy telling his coworkers that we were taking the kids out of his fancy private school to homeschool but everyone's been supportive now that they know. It's fun to talk to them about what was and wasn't working.
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We're first year homeschoolers. I gave my rising 1st and 3rd graders the PZ placement test (the one for 3rd-5th graders) last summer. My 3rd grader got 48/50 right and my 1st grader got 20/50 right. The suggestion is that anyone who gets fewer than 25 right should do AAS. My first grader started the year in AAS level 1 and is going to just about finish level 3 at the end of the year. PZ level A is supposed to follow AAS level 3, so he'll be starting PZ early in second grade. I tried to convince my oldest to take the next placement test (I think 44 or better means they're supposed to take a harder placement exam.) but he was burnt out and didn't want to and I didn't force it. I started him with PZ level B although I suspect he would have placed into level C because I figured he'd rather do well and cruise through it than take 2 weeks to pass each test. He's had a bunch of lessons that he got 100% on the first try but some are tricky and take him 5 or 6 times. I give him hard words for the every-5th-lessons too. He's going to get close to finishing level B by the end of 3rd grade. Both my boys are natural spellers, though. Next year I think I'll drop spelling as a subject but have him do some formal spelling bee prep with our co-op.
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There was a snow day last month and we did light school that day. Math and history, I think because I started our math books late and want to finish by the end of the year and history because we were doing a Pope/conclave study and was trying to get done before the new Pope was chosen.
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I've used PB2 instead of peanut butter at times.
My standard morning shake is 1 cup milk, a few frozen strawberries, part of a frozen banana, 2 scoops of Trader Joe's vanilla protein powder, and ice cubes.
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I just ordered my seeds from Seed Savers Exchange today :)
The past couple years have been terrible re: squash bugs in our area -- my community garden requested that no one plant any varieties of squash to attempt to cut down on the pests last year. So I'm skipping those, except maybe for a zucchini hill in my herb garden where I haven't had issues yet.
I have a shady backyard garden and a 10x12 community garden plot and will probably be adding another 20x20 city garden plot this year if I get a space. I tend to grow the early plants in my yard garden before the trees leaf out. So once the snow melts (someday, someday), I'll put peas and lettuce there. I also have black raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus in there.
I've grown mostly tomatoes in my community garden plot for the past 3 years, so I know I should rotate plants, which is why I'm hoping for the city plot. I got bush beans (yellow, purple, and green) so I don't need to trellis everything this year, plus MN Midget melons and some cold-weather-friendly watermelon. I'll plant slicing cukes too (I pickle cukes, but buy a half-bushel of same-sized ones at the farmer's market) if I have the space.
I start the tomatoes and lettuce under grow lights. I usually try to start by mid-late March, but with the way winter's hanging around this year, it'll be okay to get a late start.
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I'm not sure how different the Town and Country is from our '07 Dodge Caravan SXT, but today we fit 5 kids and 2 adults in it. My newborn niece and my 3 year old niece were in the middle row (rear facing infant seat and FF convertible). Those are captain's chairs and an adult would fit as well as a carseat. My three kids were in the back row -- my 9 and 7 year olds were in backless boosters on the sides and my 2 year old was in his skinny Radian 65 FF in the middle. Fitting them 3 in a row is fine and I'm pretty sure a backed booster would be okay too, although I had to help my 7yo reach his seatbelt. I think if I had a 5 yo instead of a 9 yo, I'd keep him in a 5 pt harness because once that's clicked into place, you don't have to reach between the seats.
I used to have my 3 kids in the back row of a Civic using an infant seat and 2 Radians -- they're great for squeezing kids into tight spaces.
I hated giving up my 30+ mpg for my 18 mpg minivan. It would be even worse to drop to 12 mpg with a full-sized van if I didn't have to.
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I've been assuming that it's about 6 months. Something this season showed July, I think on one of the kids' videos, so I figured it started in Aug or Sept. Between the first show and last week's show before they went home, Danni's doc visit said she'd built the muscle in 101 days, I think, so the filming took 3.5 months. Then I figure that they finish filming before airing starts.
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Is there a particular age when it would be best to start this, or does it not matter too much?
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Boscopup, you're right -- the Brother toner I'd need is $42 on Amazon. Great to know! That's free shipping too! Can I just auto-like everything you post? Your boys are near the same ages as mine but you have extra years' homeschooling experience and know all the things I'm trying to figure out.
I'm scared to try to clean the printer feeder things, but my husband mentioned the possibility, so we probably ought to try that and just go for the Brother laser if it fails.
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My all-in-one inkjet isn't feeding paper anymore and I'm checking out the OfficeMax circular, trying to figure out what a new one would cost.
First, has anyone had a printer fixed? Is there any chance it's cheaper than replacing it? Of course I just replaced the ink and have another one waiting.
Second, if we replace it and switch to laser, will I miss color printing? I print in color sometimes now, but I'm not sure how often it's necessary, just desirable.
How much cheaper is it to run a laser printer? I'm looking at the Brother 7360 and high-yield toner costs $72 and says it prints 2600 pages vs my current inkjet cartridges which cost $23 and print 460 pages. Our current printer won't let us use generic ink. Do Brother laser printers generally let you use generic ink? That would help so much. That Brother would cost $120 at OfficeMax this week after trade-ins and discounts. It doesn't do double-sided, which would be a nice touch but does do wireless printing which would be handy with the iPad.
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This has been really helpful, thanks!
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Has anyone used it? I found a couple reviews, but there isn't much. I've never liked poetry much and I need handholding to convince myself to teach any to the kids. My middle son will do FLL2 next year and that has enough poetry memorization for me. My will-be 4th grader will be doing MCT Island and I know Music of the Hemispheres covers poetry, but aren't most of the poems his? So I was thinking about doing IEW'S Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization with him. Can it be done 2-3 days a week? Every day seems like overkill to me. I'd have him to poetry on the same days his brother covers poetry in FLL.
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My 9 and 7 year olds fall asleep around 9:30 and usually get up around 8. It's so much better than last year when, at the earliest, they fell asleep around 9 but they had to get up for school at 6:30. We are not morning people here.
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My first grader sounds a lot like your son. We started homeschooling this year and I started at the beginning with AAS1 even though he's been reading since he was 3. I figured it would catch any phonics stuff he might be missing since I wasn't going to do a formal reading program with him. We do AAS about 4 days a week and only took a day or two per step in level 1. Most of level 2 took 2 days per step. We'll finish level 3 by the end of this year, I think. So far, the steps are taking 2 days each, but we haven't gotten to the writing station part, so maybe they'll take longer. This week was the first time he misspelled any words and that was largely because I accidentally gave him sentences to dictate that included words where I hadn't yet explained the rules (little, middle). Learning the rules will be useful as words get harder, I think. I'm learning lots about letters words never end in -- very handy playing Words with Friends! I do think I'll switch to Phonetic Zoo after he finishes level 3 because the independent instruction would be easier on both of us, but I'm glad I chose AAS for this year. I'll start it in kindergarten with my next son if he solidly knows his letters and is reading by then.
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I have no problem combining my 1st and 3rd graders with volume 1. I'll have my 3rd son 4 years behind and my hope is that he can do volume 1 while the older boys are doing volume 2 and work in the same thread. I could maybe see folding a 4 year old in with the older boys and giving different supplemental books to each and expecting different levels of retention. But more than a 4 year range doing the same lesson would be pretty tricky.
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I took the same approach as the OP - we did math and our Pope unit, but skipped FLL, science, and everything else. I'm trying to finish our Pope unit before we have a new Pope and spring break and I'm already squeezed to finish their math on time this spring. They were ticked, especially since my husband had the day off. But we were done by 11am so it wasn't awful for them. I reminded them thay I'd already agreed to no math for #1's birthday on Friday and we're spending the entire day at the history center for #2's birthday next wee. The schooled kids don't have those privileges.
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My kids really enjoy these:
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My oldest 2 are 2 years apart (both have birthdays in the next week) and my 3rd will be 4 years behind #2. Ideally, I'll have a #4 who's 4 years behind #3. Anyway...
We started homeschooling this year, with the boys in 3rd and 1st grade. Their former school covered ancient Egypt in kindy, so I decided they'd both done Ancients enough for the time being and started with the birth of Jesus/Roman Empire in the fall. We're using Connecting with History, which has a slightly different approach to the 4 year history cycle and volume 2 began there. But I decided to start incorporating SOTW vol 2 this spring to make sure they're seeing different parts of the world. I'm assuming this will stretch out how long it takes to get through the material. They've really enjoyed reading about history, so I'm happy to linger on things.
I'm fairly sure I'll send them back to their private school for high school, although when I looked into it, it mostly follows the 4 year cycle. Those kids cover Civics in 8th grade.
We'll get to about 1000AD by summer. So I'm thinking that I'll spread 1000AD-Modern Times over 4 years, with 4th/2nd - 7th/5th (probably doing something different with the then 1st grader), then cover Civics when they're in 8th/6th. I'll have to figure out what to do for 7th and 8th for my middle son. Maybe he and son #3 can spend 2 extra years on American history. Then I'd have a 4th grader and probably a kindy/preschooler and could go through the 4 year cycle from the beginning. Hmm, I'll need to think through this. I think it'll work for the oldest 2 at least. I just know I'd rather spread the cycle out a bit than rush through it twice, but I only have 6 years of my oldest to work with.
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We follow my husband's private school schedule, so we'll take the last 2 weeks in March off this year. If break hadn't fallen during Holy Week, we would have taken that off instead.
The local public schools get the last week of March off.
We have a bunch of field trips and homeschool activity days planned during break, where I'd normally have skipped half of them. If we don't have to get our seatwork done, then sure, let's go check out that activity!
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I'm going to be combining RCHistory and SOTW for the Vikings time and RC History offers some Vikings books, so I know these are currently published but you could check for them at your library, too.
http://www.rchistory.com/vikings-dress-eat-write-and-play-just-like-the-vikings/ This one has activities in it.
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For 3B, I'm having my son do half a page twice a week, which will spread the 15 pages out for about the same number of weeks that the program takes him. I had him do full sheets once a week in 3A and he complained about it and I realized that one column isn't so intimidating. He writes them, but I can definitely see doing them orally with my second son instead based on their learning styles. I'm not doing the 2B mental math with him yet because he's doing the mental math chapter and it would be overkill. I'll use them as a review when he's learning other topics.
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We had a sleeper sectional for 5 years in our family room. Between the kids and the cat, the slipcovers were trashed, but I found the identical slipcovers on Craigslist for $75. Some of the cushions were wearing out but it was very usable still. I'd buy it again. We eventually sold it on CL for $300 (with the new slipcovers) when we redid our basement and couldn't fit the sectional in the new space.
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Math: Singapore 3a/3b with Beast Academy
Language Arts: Leaning towards WWE 2 and FLL 2 but not sure yet
Phonetic Zoo A
Science: 2nd half of BFSU vol 1 (with 4th grade brother)
History: RC History vol 3 / SOTW vol 2 (with brother)
Religion: Faith and Life 2
Art: Artistic Pursuits?
Foreign language: ?
Music: maybe finally formal piano lessons. We're unschooling composers at the moment. -
I get a big pile of books for each subject for my 1st and 3rd graders, requesting whatever I can find. It usually turns out that some are too hard and some are too easy. I assign them a chapter/picture book to read per day. Sometimes those books are fiction, other times they connect in with history or science. So from the pile I request , only some will manage to come in by the time we're covering that subject and I'll choose the ones that look most appropriate for their reading levels and assign a couple picture books to my 1st grader and probably 1 chapter book to my 3rd grader over multiple days. I'll make a point of telling them about the similar books in our book basket. I don't require them to do book reports of any sort on those books, but they both bring up info they learned over the following days without my asking, so I know they're getting something out of reading them. Sometimes my 3rd grader's IEW assignments will come from his science reading, but that's only occasionally. We also do some science read-alouds depending on what else is going on.
What age do you start IEW? Watching TWSS right now and surprised.
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I tried to use it with both my 1st and 3rd graders this fall. My 1st grader did well at KWO's but freaked out at the concept of turning them back into full paragraphs and I decided to table it for awhile. I was willing to have him dictate a lot of it but I was going to end up doing everything for him. He was already a strong reader but not a strong writer.
With my 3rd grader, I ended up having him dictate the rough drafts and he'd write KWOs and final drafts. I was happy I started this year for him. I think 2nd grade would have been okay with a lot of hand holding but 3rd has been better.