Blog Failure

Obviously I am not capable of maintaining more than one blog and the goal is for education to be just a part of who we are and what we do, not a totally separate boxed off part of our lives. As you can tell this idea of "unschooling" is growing on me. I love the ideas and I think I agree with the philosophy, but.... We'll see where we go after we get the reading and basics down pat.
But I digress, but to the lack of blogging issue.

I'm going to leave this blog up, because I think it might just have a word or two of useful information on it. I will also try to occasionally post any change in curriculum or lack there of, but as a whole I don't expect that I will be posting very often on this blog.

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I have just signed up my oldest up for time4learning. She loves computer games and this seems like a good fit.
I do not think it is a full curriculum as it boast, but it seems to be pretty good. I do like that you can print reports, etc. In the event that we need to show any proof of our schooling, it would prove a useful resource, and I don't have to do the record keeping.

This is how it works.
You pay a monthly service fee and then you log in to have access to the site.
You can log in in the lower level or the upper level. The upper level stretches her abilities now and it is helpful for me to guide her through those lessons. The lower level is exactly where she is currently and she is able to do those lessons on her own. I like that we have a choice so we can mix it up. I want to keep it fun and not discouraging.

After completing 15min of "lesson" games, then the "playground" unlocks and she can play there for 15 minutes. The playground is full of educational games she can play. It also links to kid friendly web pages such as PBSkids, which my kids love.

I have not signed up my youngest yet, but he likes to watch and "help" his big sister.

As I said, I am not using this our sole educational experience. We are finishing up the kindergarten book for Heart of Dakota. It's such a sweet, simple program that we usually enjoy it. Though not this time of year. It happened the same way last year. Just before the holidays we, no I, I get bored with the curriculum. The kids still enjoy it, I'm the one who needs a change. The plan this year is to finish off a few more weeks of lessons and then take Thanksgiving through New Years off to study Christmas related items and just enjoy the holidays.

Thanks for you patience with my lack of posting.
Hope you enjoy our family blog and find these few posts to be helpful.

New post

I just spent 30 minutes writing a new posting detailing our latest home schooling endeavors, only to hit publish and the post is then deleted. Swell.

Since it's 11pm and we are starting our day at 5:30a tomorrow, I'll have to fill you in on the convention, reading, and My Father's World on another night.

I know the suspense is just killing you.....

Week off

We have completed Unit 1 of our new curriculum. We plan to continue school through out the summer with a week off here or there.

Last week we had a death in the family, so we took a week off of school to help out.
I am looking forward to starting Unit two tomorrow. Here it is 9:00 on Sunday night and I have not even look at the material for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to look at it tonight before going to bed. If not I'll have to do it in the morning before I wake up the kiddos.
Another reason I love the Heart of Dakota material......very little prep work is required. Nice for the busy mama.

After next week we will be taking yet another week off for VBS.
I just love that we can be so flexible with our schooling, but I am looking forward getting into a "normal" schedule.

Kindengarten Unit 1 Day 1

Started new kindergarten program today.
I do love Heart of Dakota.

While looking over everything last night, I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of things we were going to cover in one day. In Hands to Heaven, the material was for 30 minutes. This time around there is material for 90 minutes. It really seemed like a lot. But my sweet husband reminded me that we can't do preschool forever. "Hi I'm 10 and I know my ABCs..."
Yeah, that just isn't going to cut it.

It is now 3:00pm and we have completed all tasks except our Children's devotion, and we'll do that tonight before bed. So we did it with out a problem.
Today was even dance class day (9-1) plus I spent two hours at the gym.I am feeling very accomplished today.

Home schooling different ages....
My son is two, so I will be using parts of the Little Hands to Heaven while I cover Little Heart for his Glory with my 5 year old. My son, participated in all of the activities today except for the written/workbook portions which my oldest child completed during his nap.

The material from the two books seem to go easily together with very little effort.

I am looking forward to this "school year." Soon my little Cora will be reading and my little man will know his ABCs.I purchased a sketch book for Cora to use to journal about the things she learns and does each day. I did not get one for my son, but now I wish I had. nEven though now, all he does is eat and break the crayons, I'm sure that soon enough he'll be able to control himself a little more. Guess I'll be making another trip to the store.

Unit One Day One, complete.
A good day, and a nice start.

New Material

On Thursday, we finished up our review week (unit 30).

It worked out that this unit covered the events leading up to the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Rather fitting for the week leading up to Easter Sunday, don't you think?
I didn't plan it, but it worked out perfectly!
We combined two days of material on Thursday and took Good Friday off.

(Here our reenactment of the Last Supper, plus some cheese)

This week we are learning about the letter "Y" and reading about more events surrounding the Resurrection.

Tonight, I finally managed to order my next set of material from Heart of Dakota.
This new material will take some more planning on my part. The daily lesson plans are designed to take about 90 minutes, in contrast to the 30 min lessons we are using right now.

I honestly don't see us bust'n it all out in 90 minutes. We'll most likely spread it out through the day. This has seemed to work well for us so far.

In the next book, will cover the following areas:

- Bible Memory Work
-Devotional Topics
-Science Discovery
-Art Projects
-Dramatic Play
-Thinking Games
-Rhymes
-Gross Motor Skills
-Music
-Handwriting Choice
-Fine Motor Skills
-Phonics Choice
-Story time
-Language Activities
-Math Exploration

I am uncertain if I will be able to use the same material for both my children. I'd like to be able to include my youngest in the same activities with changes as necessary.

We'll just have to wait and see on that one....

Here's the link to the book, Little Hearts for His Glory:
http://www.heartofdakota.com/little-hearts.php

Spring Break

My sweet little Cora is enrolled in a dance class here in Austin and they are on Spring break this week.
This would be a great week to get in some good school time....
but instead we are taking the week off to enjoy some of the many activities Austin has to offer.

Plus, we are getting close to the end of Little Hands to Heaven material and I have yet to place an order for the next book. Yikes. I really need to get on that.

As we are wrapping up Little Hands to Heaven, I can't decide if Cora is getting bored with the material or if it's just me. A little of both maybe, but more on my end than on hers.

Never thought teachers would be the ones with the boredom issues.

I believe this may be due to the "off weeks." I get out of our groove and don't want to get back into it. Maybe when I "plan" out our next book from Heart of Dakota, I will schedule it differently.

Not so many little breaks? We'll see.

I think Mama just needs to put on her big girl pants and get back to work.

Less time with Facebook and blogging and more time planning out our day.

I am very glad to have started this home school adventure with my young children.

Preschool, is, well it's preschool.

It has been a nice look into my teaching style/weaknesses and into Cora's learning style.

I am looking forward to beginning our next book, perhaps too much, since we haven't even finished this one yet (we are on letter X). I am curious to see if I will reuse Little Hands to Heaven with my youngest, or just use the second book with both of the kids. Guess we'll see after I actually order and receive the material.

All in all still enjoying our home school time together. We are finding ways to add learning into our daily life and spend less time "doing school."

Fun stuff.

Review Week

This week we are on Unit 25.
Reviewing letters Q, R, S, T.

For our bible study, we are learning some of the parables. The children are enjoying these stories. Plus, many of these stories can be found in their various bible story books. So, we have been able to find some really nice illustrations.

Every week there is a color activity where the kids glue colored items onto the color page. Instead of coping the page from the Heart of Dakota book, I have been using colored construction paper.

I collect adds and junk mail (reduce, reuse, recycle) which the kids then use to find the color of the week.

This week's color just happened to be red. Which worked out perfectly for the week leading up to St. Valentine's day.

My younger son, needed help cutting out the red apples, strawberries, and tomatoes. Yet, he is very good at gluing them to the paper. I also provided him with red crayons to use. He likes to trace his hand, and then either chew on or throws the crayons.
Hummmm...
He's a two year old boy, what do you expect? At least he's stinking adorable.

My daughter had the JCpenny's add today. She cut out red dresses and ruby earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. Instead of just gluing them randomly on the page, as I suggested, she used them to make a "Stylish Lady." Complete with earrings and a bracelet for a crown. Then she used a smaller red dress to make the women's daughter.

When her masterpiece was complete she added a pepperoni pizza for the mom and a plate of spaghetti for the daughter, because "she's allergic to pepperoni."

Her creativity never ceases to amaze me.
Such a clever girl.

Unit 20

Happy New Year.

This week we are back on the Little Hands to Heaven by Heart of Dakota.
This is also Cora's first week in the bilingual art/dance class. She is attending two days a week in the mornings, which still give us more than enough time for our activities. Plus, it gives me some one-on-one time with my little guy.

Speaking of the little guy, I am excited to see Caleb participating in our activities more. In the past few weeks his vocabulary has really grown and he is making wonderful, clear sentences. He is counting and singing he's ABC's. Loves to do the finger plays and listens well to the bible stories. It should be fun to incorporate him more into the lessons and not have to wait for his nap time.

Before Christmas we skipped to unit 21 so that we could save the review week for after Christmas. This has worked out very well. Nice to have a review after so many weeks off of this material.

This week we are studying about Daniel and reviewing the letters A-Q.

We had a lot of fun today playing with sugar!
I covered a paper with sugar and Cora used her finger to draw the letters as I called them out.
She really enjoyed this activity.
After we finished she had free time to draw in the sugar.
Next,we discovered how sugar dissolved in water and finished up with a nice sugar hand scrub.
Very fun!

I should have used the sugar water to make salt crystals, but I forgot about that until my hubby reminded me how we did that project when we were kids.
Oh, well have to save that one for another day.

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Sugar Crystals:
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Boil about 1 ½ cup (400 ml) water.
Add about ¾ cup (200 ml) of sugar to the water, and stir the solution well.
Pour the solution into the jar. Make sure that the jar you selected can withstand the temperature (a glass should work).
Suspend the string from a pencil.
Submerge the string in the solution.
The sugar crystals will grow slowly on the string over a period of several days. If you want the string to hang straight in the jar, tie a weight to the bottom of the string.

http://www.sciencekidsathome.com/science_experiments/sugar_crystals.html

New Year

I spent a few hours this morning making a plan for the coming year.

We are currently in Unit 20 in the Heart of Dakota, Little Hands to Heaven.
I have us scheduled to take a week off before every review week. That's a week's vacation every 4 week.
With that schedule this curriculum will take us through mid April.

I was toying with the idea of switching to Our Father's World -kindergarten. But after reading the reviews, I think we are going to stick with Heart of Dakota for another year.
That said, I have not ordered the next set of books yet so, until I do I can still change my mind.

As far as the rest of the year, I plan to try to stick with the 4 wks on 1 week off pattern, plus any VBS or camps over the summer. Then we'll take a break in December (maybe November, too) and do another fun Christmas study.

Here's to a fun year full of reading, learning, laughing, and lots of playing!
Happy New Year!

Christmas Unit Study: Week 3

10 more days
'till Christmas!

Here is our week so far, and the plan for the rest of it:

Monday:
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Sick day.

Tuesdsay:
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Story: Wise men followed a star
Bible activity: Acted out being a wise man, seeing the star and then following it.
Symbol: Santa: Watched The Santa Clause movie.
Craft: Cut out a stocking, and "sewed" it together with yarn.
Carol: What Child is This? First verse and chorus.
*Write in Christmas Journal each day.

Wednesday:
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Story: Wise Men visit Herod.
Activity: Act out the story.
Symbol: History of Santa
Craft: Cut out a star and cover with glitter. (Can use to play follow the "star")
Sing this weeks carol.

Thursday:
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Story: Wise Men find Jesus!!
Craft/activity: Draw and cut out a heart. Have Cora draw a picture of herself on the heart. Place in a box and have her wrap it up as a gift for baby Jesus.
Options: Add hands, and mouth in the box.
Sing Carol.

Friday:
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Story: Wise men go back home a different way.
Activity: On left side of a sheet of paper draw three men. In the middle draw a crown (Herod). On the right draw a house/home.
Draw a line from the wise men to the house, but go around Herod.
Sing Carol.
Hope to make pumpkin bread.

December: Christmas Unit Study

After taking a week off for Thanksgiving, and with the excitement of the Christmas season, I just couldn't bring myself to force us back into our normal routine.

So we are putting Heart of Dakota on hold...

Just for December.

I am taking this entire month to really celebrate the true meaning of Christmas...the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ.

So I took a little time and put together a Christmas Unit Study.

Here is what week one looked like:

Monday:

• Teacher planning day. :-)

Tuesday:

• Bible: Angle visits Mary (Little Golden Books. The Christmas Story)
• Bible activity: Cora acted out being Mary and I was the angle Gabriel.
• Carol: Learning Away in the Manger with hand motions (repeated daily)
• Symbol: Meaning of the Christmas tree (Science: What is an evergreen?)
• Writing: Copied today's date and the word Mary. Then drew a picture of today's story.
• Craft: Planned activity:Color and cut out a Christmas tree. Actual Activity: Made a Christmas count down, with tear away numbers.
• Christmas Countdown: Drew weather for the day on the calender and pulled off number on the Countdown board. (repeated daily)
• Advent: Verbally count number on the calender 1-25 (repeated daily)

Wednesday:

• Bible: Angle came to Joseph in a dream
• Symbol: Read more about the history of the Christmas tree
• Writing: Copied today's date and the word Joseph. Then drew a picture of today's story.
• Craft: Planned: Cut out different shapes to sort, glue them as ornaments on the tree from yesterday's craft. What really happened: No craft.
• Advent
• Christmas Carol
• Story: The story of the Three Trees

Thursday:

• Bible: Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem
• Bible Activity: Acted out packing and taking a long trip to Bethlehem.
• Opt bible activity: Look up distance from Nazareth to Bethe lam on a map.
• Symbol: discussed the meaning of Christmas lights/ Tree decoration
• Craft: planned: color and cut out light shapes, glue on tree from first day. Actual: none
• Writing: copied Date and Bethlehem, then drew picture of today's story.
• Advent
• Christmas carol

Friday:

• Bible: No room in the Inn, Jesus born in a stable
• Bible Activity: Went around knocking on "doors" asking for a place to stay, and finally going to the stable. Cora played the part of Mary holding baby Jesus, while Caleb and I pretended to be various barn yard animals. Then we switched places.
• Activity: Made and decorated Christmas cookies. Then delivered some to our neighbors.
• Advent
• Christmas Carol

Key bible Verse for this week:

John 3:16

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him, will not perish , but have eternal life."

Unit 20 - Review

I skipped this unit the week before Thanksgiving and we moved on to unit 21 - Letter Q.
The plan was to do the Unit 20's review after our Thanksgiving break.

Unit 19- P

Pending update. Check back soon.

Unit 18- O

Pending update. Check back soon.

Unit 17 Letter N

To be updated. Check back soon.

Week 16

Letter of the week: M
Bible Stories: Elijah and Elisha

Memory Verse: "My Children, don't just talk about love. Put your love into action. then it will truly be love."

Birds Fed Elijah:

For this bible activity we pretended to be birds and picked up "food" flew it over and dropped in in front of Elijah.

We also drew and counted groups of 3 birds for the "Count on Me" section this week.

God's fire to the Altar:

For our craft on this day, we used play dough to make a model of Elijah's altar. Complete with a little bull and fire.

Oil kept flowing:

2 Kings 4:1-7

We had a great time acting out this story. Even little Caleb got into this one, giving his sister "empty jars" when she went door to door asking for them. Then he handed them to her as she filled them up with "oil" until there were no more jars. After that, Cora sold me the jars of oil. It was a fun activity.

Naaman was healed:

This day we used laundry soap and water to make little bars of soap. This was to remind her that Naaman was to go and wash in the river. It was fun to make and shape the soap, but I wasn't too keen on using laundry soap to wash our hands.

Week 15

Letter of the week: Review week Letters A - L

Bible stories: King Solomon

Solomon's Wisdom:

While studying Solomon, Cora learned that God told him to ask for anything and he could have it and that he asked for wisdom. After that, in her prayers at night, she prayed and asked God to give her wisdom!

Building the Temple:
For the bible activity the second day we created a temple out of spaghetti noodles and mini marshmallows. It was so much fun. She did a great job. Then she ate the temple. :-)

Giving Thanks:

After the temple was completed the people gave thanks. We practiced giving thanks by taking out all our musical instruments and marched around making "a joyful noise" while thanking God for all our many blessings. "Thank you God for _____________"

Count on me:

Drew three crosses in each box and then practiced writing our numbers and counting by threes.

Unit 12,13,14

I am sorry to say that I have neglected this school blog the past few weeks.
We have been pretty busy.

So to catch up, I have loaded all the pics from the past few weeks to this Smilebox.

We have taken a two week fall break.
Last week the kids went to visit their Grandparents and this week we are just hanging out at home and enjoying the fall weather.

I'll try to do better at updating this blog when we start up again next week.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Unit 12

This week I discovered how useful You Tube can be for homeschooling!
Who knew?!

This week is letter "J" week.
So we have watched clips and learned about jellyfish and Mexican jumping beans;
enjoyed watching Sesame street letter J songs,
watched blue jays collecting material for a nest,
watched jack rabbits and jumping kittens,
and even watched a Bugs Bunny and the lumber jack cartoon.
Fun stuff!

But we also came across a great set of kid videos with the nice women and her puppet alligator as the host.
She made clips for every letter. In the clip they go over the letter sound and then investigate three foods that start with that letter. Cora really enjoyed them.
Check them out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyLHI3PQ6lk&feature=PlayList&p=E42AD7EC33E98FAC&index=9

Unit 11

This week we learned the letter "I".

On the Count on Me page this week, we increased the number of items she drew from 2 to 3 and are starting to learn to count by 3's.


For our Bible stories this week we learned about:

"A fighter" (Gideon)
"A strong man" (Sampson)
"A kind woman, too," (Ruth)
"Nothings I-I-impossiable for God to do!"

I made a mistake the first on the first day and somehow turned to the wrong page and did the activities for Day 4. Oops

So on day 2 we did day 1, on day 3 we did day 2...and so on. It was a little mixed up but we got it all finished.

Since this week was the letter "I" week, it would have been a great week to make home made ice cream.
We didn't do it, but it would have been a good idea. :-)


Instead, we used their pretend ice cream to cover the masking tape "i."

These are also great for teaching colors, Spanish colors, or counting scoops. I pretend to be the customer and they make the ice cream that I ordered. Fun.


In some of the material for the letter "I," it is drawn without the top and bottom line. Then it looks like a lower case "L."
I am still not sure which way they are teaching the kids now, so we learned it both ways.

For one of the activities, I gave her a sheet of white paper and she followed my verbal instructions to draw a picture of our bible story that day. It was a good activity to reinforce the story and to develop listening skills.
(Gideon's Army: The blue is the water, the hand is for the people who used their hands to drink, and the smile indicates that they are the ones that God choose to be in the army.)









After reading the Sampson story, we used some grocery items to learn about weight.
What items are heavier? What items are lighter?