August and September K-2 Chat- Back to School Time

[BusyMom5]

New thread for a new school year!  Have you started?  Are you ready?  What are you most excited about?  

Edited August 30, 2023 by BusyMom5

[Clarita]

We are trying to gradually get back into the swing of things.

There are some changes we are making to our school:

1. Moving from doing written work at the little art table to the dining table
2. Work is posted on post-it notes and kids go there to chose their work 
3. With the freedom to chose work, they are also now more responsible for gathering their things to do work.

With these changes, I thought it'd be nice for us to have a gradual start, so we can see how well certain things work and rearrange if necessary.  I'm excited to teach DD5, she is the stereotypical good Kindergartener just loves to write, read, color and craft. She'd be perfect for Pinterest. DS6 isn't sure whether he likes his teacher's attention divided with another student. Con for him is obviously the divided attention, but he also learned about group work where his sister loves doing all the things he doesn't like to do...  

[Nm.]

nm

Edited August 30, 2023 by Nm.

[Momof4sweetkids]

We will do a soft start next week with MM and AAR and then figure out how to add in FLL, WWE, AAS and BFB Seasons Afield. 

I just rented all the BFIAR and FIAR I could get at the library so those will be fun to go through for ideas! 

I am hoping to do Playing Preschool with my 2 yo and 3yo. We have started and quit twice but I loved it with my oldest! I also rented OPGTR to see how they teach blending since the 3yo knows all her letter sounds but it seems like something that will just click developmentally at some point down the road.

[Nichola]

On 8/2/2023 at 11:40 AM, Nm. said:

I ❤️ this chat… I’m fading off the rest of the boards to focus on schooling but love to pop in on this one- so thank you!!

Dd6 I am doing beyond little hearts and love it.  I have beautiful feet seasons afield, five in a row (all volumes + cookbook 😂),around the world BFB, and early American BFB to pull any other ideas from (I have an aversion to Pinterest and digital ideas- I just never do them so I’ve collected paper guides lol).  I have math with confidence and all about reading/spelling.  Hoffman Academy.  Handwriting with out tears (grade 2).

For anyone who has done MWC- what if I use teacher manual and workbook for activities/teaching only?  And just have her continue math mammmoth?  MWC is pretty slow and not super meaty.. which I know is fine but I love trickier math 😉.  That’s my plan for now.  Today went great and MWC gave me tons of ideas for activities.

DS3- doing little hands to heaven and before five in a row (and more before five in a row).  Letter factory dvd almost daily.  Love it!!  WeefolkArt is on the burner for someday.

I haven’t ever used Math Mammoth, but my impression has been that it’s a more time-consuming curriculum. I suspect it would be hard to use all of MM and all of MWC. I’m not sure from your description what parts of MWC you’re doing, but you mentioned the teacher’s manual and the workbook, so it seems like you’re doing most of it (but maybe I’m misunderstanding). Some suggestions would be to alternate days using them and to make one supplementary to the other, so that you’re either going through it more slowly or not planning to do every lesson in the book.

Edited April 24 by Nichola

[LauraClark]

18 hours ago, Nm. said:

 

Dd6 I am doing beyond little hearts

DS3- doing little hands to heaven

What great resources! I'll have to see if I can utilize those for future children...

[Momof4sweetkids]

23 hours ago, Nm. said:

For anyone who has done MWC- what if I use teacher manual and workbook for activities/teaching only?  And just have her continue math mammmoth?  MWC is pretty slow and not super meaty.. which I know is fine but I love trickier math 😉.  That’s my plan for now.  Today went great and MWC gave me tons of ideas for activities.

 

I have only used MWC K and MM 1 so take this with a grain of salt but you could probably do the hands on teaching and fluency games from MWC and then MM. I wouldn't add the MWC workbook on to MM though. I am using Facts That Stick with MM.

[Clarita]

I just discovered the homeschooling section of my local library. 😲 Now I can read all the things!!!

[Brittany1116]

T minus 12 days. 2nd grade kid is already peeking at all the books. 

I went to the HS resource fair in town today, hoping to find something I didn't know about. Nothing much to that effect, but there is an open gym sample night at the place with a ninja course that coincides with the second day of school. I may surprise them with a quick trip there to run the course. Otherwise the place is WAY out of our price range.  

I kinda maybe also pulled the trigger on HOD for this kid NEXT next year. LoL 

[ElaineSmiles]

Hello!  I am new to the K-2 boards.  We are starting this year on the 10th, and my little guy is finally school aged!  He's my third one, and I have the benefit of knowing my style and what is/is not worth it to do with a Kindergartener.  😆  That feels good.

Our focus is going to be math and handwriting (fine motor skills in general).  He is already reading very well, so I am going to do shared reading with him and begin Explode the Code for "spelling" sometime in October or November (depending on writing skills).  He is going to get to join the homeschool co-op and is happy about that! 

 

[countrymum]

We haven't started yet not till after Labor Day;) I am elbow deep in freezing and canning...I am sort of excited to start and sort of dreading it;) it seems rather daunting to have 3 in school a preschooler, toddler and baby.....I not sure how much past the 3Rs we will get to....also no one is very independent yet....we're working toward that in some things though.

[Tanager]

On 8/4/2023 at 4:51 PM, Clarita said:

homeschooling section of my local library

Wow, I need to look into this. I hope mine has one! But wait, Story of the World is shelved in the with regular books. :( 

[Tanager]

We are slowly getting things together here and adding to our homeschool portion of the day. Most of our stuff will be at home. Dad saw a mountain lion this morning so we are learning all about them today.

Bookclub (online) has gone through through most of the summer and my youngest has finally gotten comfortable talking and is sharing ideas. Yay! So we will keep going with that. 

There is an outside science day at a farm near us - we signed up for once a month. It sounds great - I hope it is.

He will also be doing an online class at Athena's which starts soon. He's super excited about it :) Love that!

[Green Bean]

So far, it has been a crazy month with my DS 24 getting ENGAGED!!!! and bringing his fiancee here to meet us all for a week. Any other thoughts I have on that are beyond the scope of this thread, though. But I want to talk about it!

The new things I bought for Little Man are playing out very well. He is being a hiney about sitting and doing his work, but I expected that. He will get used to it. I really want to add RS4K to his mix except he is being the aformentioned hiney about just the core stuff. He needs to build stamina for handwriting.

 

[keirin]

Beautiful Feet Seasons Afield is really popular here! We actually just got our box in a few days ago for Seasons Afield (before I ever read this thread!) and I'm excited about trying it BUT as we are in Florida I'm a little unsure how well some of the seasons in the materials will translate for us here in the land of eternal sun.

We started easing into school this week but I got hit with a ton of work from my part time jobs so my littles got left behind a bit. I will reset and try again next week.

What we did do : started up gentle 5 minute reading lessons with progressive phonics for my kindergartener. She really likes it. I'm still on the fence about pulling out AAR. Still doing a little wisom wonder project directed singapore math as well.

[Nm.]

🙂Nm 

Edited August 30, 2023 by Nm.

[BusyMom5]

Added September to the title.  I'm sorry I haven't been on here much- we've been really busy! 

[LauraClark]

School has been going well here. Ds6 has really grown since last year. He does not enjoy any writing that I assign and just wants to get all the writing things done first. He's my first right handed child (older brothers are lefties-the left hand genetics run strong in our house), and probably writes the neatest. Correlation? Probably. We're getting really close to finishing Ordinary Parents Guide-I could probably assign double lessons and just finish it out, but that might kind of kill his love of reading. So, small bites it is!

[Clarita]

School is going much better than I envisioned back in end of July beginning of August. I didn't know how we were going to do all the things and then the last few weeks I've been done with school at 11:30am going maybe I should pull out more work?? (No I really shouldn't because it's probably the reason school has been going so well.)

DD5 is doing so much writing. I started doing spelling alongside AAR because she is just so into it. Although it makes spelling time a little chaotic because I'm over here trying to do spelling with two students who are not spelling the same thing. My children have been insisting on doing the same subjects at the same time. I think I can keep this up for K and first grade but I don't know how mentally sustainable it is for me when their subjects get more complex.

 

[keirin]

Going into September update:

School has started to settle into a routine, and it is going well!

Reading: Progressive phonics, dash into learning readers, the pdx dyslexia toolkit level 1 games (this is a great resource for any kid, not just kids with dyslexia). My 5 year old is blending cvc words 😀 I'll probably move to AAR1 eventually but skip to where she is skill wise... I feel that their cvc sections are a bit tedious.

Math: Singapore math standards edition kindergarten with wisdom wonder project. We hit about 4 lessons a week.

Handwriting: a little each day with abeka. She likes this the least. 😅

Morning time: we do geography, history, and science here so she is getting a little. Zoo homeschool academy starts soon and this will be her first year attending.

I'm happy with it! We will see if we can keep it up.

[Momof4sweetkids]

We just finished week 3 over here. It hasn't been as difficult to add in WWE, FLL and BFB Seasons Afield as I had imagined. We are loving Seasons Afield. FLL is so gentle, it's nice to have something she's always successful at. I think @Green Beanmentioned the beginning geography workbook and DD5 is doing that for fun in her free time. 

My 3yo is loving Tiny Polka Dot card games/activities. 

[Momof4sweetkids]

2 hours ago, keirin said:

 

Handwriting: a little each day with abeka. She likes this the least. 😅

 

DD went from hating to loving handwriting when we switch to TGTB because they have a little maze or drawing activity on each page. I don't use any other TGTB but the handwriting is great!

[keirin]

On 9/1/2023 at 9:55 PM, Momof4sweetkids said:

DD went from hating to loving handwriting when we switch to TGTB because they have a little maze or drawing activity on each page. I don't use any other TGTB but the handwriting is great!

I might have to look at it again - I tried their preK handwriting this last year and she liked it too much and just took the books from me and did them all in like a week. (But without supervision - if I tried, she also didn't like it! Hah)

[Brittany1116]

We are doing well. I signed him up for a K-2 nature club where they will do nature walk and games and crafts once a month at different parks. 

We are rotating CLE math (midway through 200s), LOF (finishing Cats), and a cheap math workbook that has a different skill on every page. We do CLE 2-3 times a week, and the other two 1-2 times a week. This is so he really cements some of the concepts CLE runs through quickly. It's hard for me to not compare to big brother but I'm working on it.

[Xahm]

Things are going pretty well. We started with basics and are adding more in this month, so we've just started history. This is the first time that the history will be aimed squarely at this child. Before he was tagging along with older siblings, but now he's taking part with big brother and little brother is the tag-along. I'm a little nervous he might fall back into the habit of wandering out of the room if things aren't interesting. That was ok when he was just asking for the ride, but not now. Hopefully he'll find ancient history interesting. I think he will, at least most of the time.

[Nm.]

DD6 I’ve been busy with my older kids so we haven’t done much.  I try to get the 3r’s done but she’s definitely had days where she has not done a thing for school.  We’ve been out and about a lot.  After this week things will slow down for about 5 weeks.

ds3… well I’m still ordering him BFIAR books from library, but not really doing the manual.  Just reading to him.  Haven’t touched much of anything else.

Still happy with curriculum.  For handwriting I’ve only been watching them while they write for spelling and correcting them/ slowing them down.  I just can’t add one more subject.  Tried Tgtb handwriting before and it was still too much extra.

[BusyMom5]

I feel badly that I haven't spent much time with my little DD.  She's just so young that it doesn't matter, but she wants to do school.  She would be in Kindergarten this year age-wise.  I've gotten to the point in reading where we need to pause for more fluency.  LoE B lesson 70, AAR2 lesson 20. She loves the games for both programs, so we do a lot of that.  I've went through a bunch of old readers and have been trying to get her to read more "real books."  

Moffat Girls Spelling, I think I'm using this more for reading reinforcement than Spelling.  Writing is still a challenge and she's just so young.  It has been very good, though!  She loves the worksheets and this is her favorite thing to do right now.  It's been good for handwriting- I have McRuffy, too, but i think its still too hard for her.  Handwriting is one of the main focus areas I'm working on this year bc she struggles with it.  Aside from B and D, most letters are the correct orientation now.  Still working on correct strokes. 

Math- we are just getting 3ish lessons a week, but I think that's okay.  She does love to play games, so gets a lot of math with that.  Handwriting holds her back a bit- accuracy in orientation:  2- 50%, 3-70%, 5- rarely 🙈, 9- 60%.  Finally feel like 7 is correct most of the time!  I cannot believe the 10 digits have been so hard, but they have.  We've done a lot of tracing and I gently correct sometimes.  My goal is 90% accuracy for all digits by the end of the year.  

My big kids are hard this year- Physics and Saxon Advanced Math take about 3 hours of the day. I'm not doing all the teaching,  but they need little DD out of the room and quiet when they work.  I usually sit with them for the whole time they do math so I can help (sort of, it's hard).  They also need me to spend 30-60 minutes with direct teaching I'm English!  It's really hard to juggle all these ages.   

[Momof4sweetkids]

@BusyMom5 Are you doing anything special to teach letter and number orientation? DD5 really struggles remembering orientation and gets so frustrated about that during math but she doesn't want me to write for her and refuses to look at the note card I gave her 🤦🏼‍♀️ She struggles with it in writing too but usually doesn't write other than copywork or a handwriting page so it doesn't affect as much.

[Clarita]

I know you asked @BusyMom5, but for me I've found for my eldest to put up the letters on a wall. So he can refer to them without having to admit to referring to them. My youngest is still working through reversing them, but having the letters up has helped her too.

I also write the letters on those fun bulletin board things teachers use. In case you didn't want an alphabet poster with associated letter pictures. Thus the student still has to identify the right letter to use.

[BusyMom5]

We have a poster with letters and numbers to refer to.  I use Saxon math, and it has a number strip at the top of each worksheet for tracing and writing numbers.  We also used MwC K last year and it had tracing numbers at the top of each page.  I have laminated pages she can trace with dry erase, too.  For letters, I'm trying to keep it fun!  We used shaving cream on a cookie sheet last week.  I use HWT style to divide letters according to how they are formed.  We've done HWT and some Kumon workbooks last year and this year I'm trying to use McRuffy.  The Moffatt Girls Spelling has tracing pages and those have been very helpful.  I'm trying to focus on a group of letters at a time.   Last week was m, n, r - they all start at the same place, follow a similar path, it's just the ending point that's different.   

This is my 6th child, 3rd left-hander.  I know it's going to take a LONG time.  Slow and steady!  

[BusyMom5]

I'm not big on technology for little kids, but I love The Good and the Beautiful Booster games!  I also love that the program is totally free!  I won't be letting mine play on her own, but she likes getting some computer time like the big kids (they use some videos,  typing, etc).  If you haven't checked them out yet, I'd encourage you to.  We are just using the computer version, but you can put them on a Kindle or other device. 

[Green Bean]

We started September with me getting sick. This only happens once every few years and takes me forever to recover.

I finally broke down and made Little Man a weekly lesson plan like I do for the older kids. This is keeping us on track and helping him se what needs to be done each day. Remember all that new stuff I bought? Yeah- that went in the trash again. I sucked it up and went BJU vids for math, spelling, and heritage studies. He is happy as a clam now. Mrs. Lawson is awesome! I procured another copy of MCT Poodle Knows What? to work through slowly again. Not sure what we will do when he finishes it. I'll worry about that later.

We have settled into a bit of a routine, but still need to work on getting up and moving at reasonable time. It is still roasting here so y'all enjoy the start of fall!

Edited October 4, 2023 by Green Bean

[alysee]

We took about 2 weeks off since our start at the end of August. 

Since my 5yo is in a cast we haven't done any writing but we've done her Math orally and I started using 100 Easy Lessons and she's surprisingly loving it. The past few weeks I have pounced on her obsession of Moana and we've read books about Hawaii, oceans, volcanoes. 

 

 

[Nm.]

I got sick as well and have not done much at all… I have zero motivation.  I am doing WeeFolkArt with both younger kids and that’s going well.  Haven’t kept up on anything else.

[countrymum]

We started the 2nd week of September....then changed alot about 2 days in....I needed stuff with some independent components for all my kids with 3 in school a preschooler and 2 littles. So for 2nd grade (and preK) we are back to the original plan of Math With Confidence 2 and K (4yr old always has liked math...I am ready to slow down whenever though).

2nd grade ds was finding AAR 2 really hard. We worked part of the summer and we're on like lesson 9 or so.  He could sound it all out but no fluency. We are re-read the level 1 readers and some other short vowel readers I have-2 sessions a day of about 10-15 min each. So far these are fluent. Once they get hard well read fluency sheets and play with the cards....till we build fluency up to where we were. This isn't the 1st time I've done this;) Older brother had to work hard to read then dd was doing level 4 in 2nd grade and flying;)

Also I picked up First Language lessons for a well trained mind level 1 and love it! Not sure why I hadn't looked at it before;)

Handwriting is Getty Dubay and science is Berean Builders creation book. History is mostly just the books from HOD Beyond little hearts.

It's going well.

[Nm.]

I’m seriously considering TGTB LA2 for my young 2nd grader.  She just doesn’t want to sit still and is seriously struggling with that.  She is young for second grade.  Tgtb moves faster in reading than AAR which is good since she picks up things easily now.  I just want to feel like we are doing something this year that’s also a little fun and colorful.  Still doing math with confidence, but trying to condense lessons and have days where she only does the workbook to catch up to the lesson we are on.  I also love FLL, but an All in one sounds really nice for her this year.

@countrymum what are you doing for history?  Just skipping the manual and reading the books?  I have beyond set, but it looks like so much, especially since we have other manuals going.  I also have Berean science in the beginning which she’d love.

@Green Bean almost fell down Tgtb hole again 😂 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Nm.

[countrymum]

3 hours ago, Nm. said:

I’m seriously considering TGTB LA2 for my young 2nd grader.  She just doesn’t want to sit still and is seriously struggling with that.  She is young for second grade.  Tgtb moves faster in reading than AAR which is good since she picks up things easily now.  I just want to feel like we are doing something this year that’s also a little fun and colorful.  Still doing math with confidence, but trying to condense lessons and have days where she only does the workbook to catch up to the lesson we are on.  I also love FLL, but an All in one sounds really nice for her this year.

@countrymum what are you doing for history?  Just skipping the manual and reading the books?  I have beyond set, but it looks like so much, especially since we have other manuals going.  I also have Berean science in the beginning which she’d love.

Yes we're just reading the history books as scheduled. Then I'm asking for oral narration or we discuss the reading. We do the "storytime" part to again mostly just reading. I often read a book outloud at night but this D's usually falls asleep and does not listen. Sometimes we do the geography or poetry but FLL has poetry so that often gets skipped. 

[Nm.]

So you skip the history projects, science and all that?  I might have to try this… 

[countrymum]

Yep we do the reading about history box only. We also skip the days that history is a Bible verse. I want to finish by mid May...

Mostly I'm using it to correlate the books. Like I said we so geography some weeks.

[Nm.]

Thank you countrymum.  I brought beyond out with fresh eyes and really do like it.  I was trying to do too many other things at once.

[countrymum]

@Nm.

I love using a resource I already had;) I am really enjoying the history and geography. Like I said we do poetry if we have time....I do Berean Builders science because this is my science guy who asked for more experiments when I asked him what he wanted this year,;) Otherwise I'd just do the science in Beyond...it's easier... This child was not ready to copy poetry or we'd do that too. So I have other handwriting and FLL 1 to fill those boxes.....now repeat with me "I will not unnecessarily double up😁" It can save a day or year....

Edited October 4, 2023 by countrymum

[Brittany1116]

My second grader is signed up for a co-op project where they read a book, make a display board like for a science project, and dress up as a character to "show and tell". He is loving making all the parts for the board, and we checked out dozens of stories about animals until he found the perfect story about a cat.

We have moved on to LOF Dogs, and a new CLE math book. We are finishing the Abeka social studies, and then starting RS Patterns of Nature. English and spelling are coming very naturally to him, and he still loves reading. 

[Green Bean]

10 hours ago, Nm. said:

I’m seriously considering TGTB LA2 for my young 2nd grader.  She just doesn’t want to sit still and is seriously struggling with that.  She is young for second grade.  Tgtb moves faster in reading than AAR which is good since she picks up things easily now.  I just want to feel like we are doing something this year that’s also a little fun and colorful.  Still doing math with confidence, but trying to condense lessons and have days where she only does the workbook to catch up to the lesson we are on.  I also love FLL, but an All in one sounds really nice for her this year.

@countrymum what are you doing for history?  Just skipping the manual and reading the books?  I have beyond set, but it looks like so much, especially since we have other manuals going.  I also have Berean science in the beginning which she’d love.

@Green Bean almost fell down Tgtb hole again 😂 

Back away, back away! Come towards the cookies....come towards the cookies...

Edited October 4, 2023 by Green Bean

[Green Bean]

1 hour ago, countrymum said:

@Nm.

I love using a resource I already had;) I am really enjoying the history and geography. Like I said we do poetry if we have time....I do Berean Builders science because this is my science guy who asked for more experiments when I asked him what he wanted this year,;) Otherwise I'd just do the science in Beyond...it's easier... This child was not ready to copy poetry or we'd do that too. So I have other handwriting and FLL 1 to fill those boxes.....now repeat with me "I will not unnecessarily double up😁" It can save a day or year....

so this!

Off to post on the new thread.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Green Bean