Second Week of Homeschooling

Is it Friday already? Where did this week go? I meant to blog more. Really I did. I’ve got some good stuff to write. *Sigh* maybe next week. I’m due to post some kind of belly pic on here soon, aren’t I?

I apologize if I ramble a bit in this post. You all are probably used to it. I sort through my thoughts a lot during writing! I promise these Friday homeschool updates will get shorter.

Our week went well, although not without it’s bumps along the way. For David already, things are getting old. There are only so many puzzles that we have, and while I have quite a variety of worksheet books and coloring books, he’s really still not into coloring and arts and craft types of things. His days have gotten shorter, but as I expected, he likes to play on the floor while I read Silje some of her books, and he pretends not to listen, although I’m pretty sure he’s listening quite closely.

I called on my online homeschooling mommy friends for ideas, and one that has really helped was to have him play with board games during our work time. He doesn’t know the rules to many of them, but just shaking the dice and counting, and hopping along whatever path the game is is fun for him. I pulled out the Tinkertoys that were put away for awhile when Elias first started crawling, and it’s like they’re brand new and the boys just love fiddling away with them!

(Here’s a picture of him I snapped when I caught him reading instead of playing outside where I had told him to go. Is this really my David?)

However, once he started gaining some traction with his reading, he started adding new books to his collection of readers he can read nearly daily now, and spends a lot of his school time doing so. He’s accumulated quite a stack of easy easy reading books that he can read by himself. He loves to read them any chance he can. He spends so much time practicing his letters and sounds and words that when we do a lesson in the morning, he’s 10 times better than he was the morning before. I truly am shocked how fast he’s picking this up. I knew he was eager to learn to read, but my goodness! He’s one of those stubborn, passionate people who once they set their minds to something–watch out. He’s decided he wants to read and nothing will keep him from that.

Silje is loving school! I make her read her history “readers” slowly as we work on her comprehension. She’s been an amazing reader for years now, but I want to be sure she’s understanding all those books she reads. Once she’s done with the book, it’s all hers to consume at whatever pace she likes. The readers she has finished get read through several times a day now. She really enjoys geography too, as we learn about people all around the world: how they dress, what they eat, what they believe. Her eyes get so big and she is so full of questions.

It’s sometimes exhausting to deal with her non-stop questions. It never ends. During lunch, in the car, doing chores, while we’re tucking her in at night. She always has a question for me in regard to her lessons. Next week we’ll start a weekly library run where she’ll be able to check out books in areas that she wants to learn more about.

I’ve also come up with an “extra credit” book list of classics (that she may not ordinarily pick out) that are not included in her curriculum. If she finishes a book and gives an oral book report to the librarian (who loved Silje’s oral book reports she gave over the summer…part of the summer reading program at our library) she gets to pick a prize out of a prize bucket I’ve been accumulating for her. Little things like sparkly lip balm or stickers. She already has 1 book off of the list completed, and has already started on her second.

As far as Silje’s schedule, we’ve added in math and “home economics” to her schedule to make her day full now. When people have asked what math program we’re using and I say “Saxon math” I find that people either really love it or really hate it. Part of my problem right now is I’m not sure which level Silje should be at. I picked level 1 for first grade, and while I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know the information for the second part of the year, this first part is all pretty basic for her.

So I’m going ahead with it, knowing that she knows most of this already. This week we worked on how to write the date and read a calendar, as well as count to ten using blocks. The calendar things were somewhat new to her. Counting to ten wasn’t exactly. However, she got to use some of the manipulatives and that made it fun for her. I’m quickly learning to skip over things that are redundant, but keep the things that are good review. For instance, she needs to practice writing out the date every day. She doesn’t need to show me how close high she can count everyday when the goal for the year is 100 and she did that on the first day.

I feel like I found that fine line between the extremes of boredom and overly challenging for her English program (which Silje and I both LOVE by the way), but I don’t feel as settled yet with her math program. So far she’s not too bored, but it is only the first week. I know she knows these things, and maybe it’ll be just fun for her to know the all the answers the first part of the year. Maybe she won’t get bored. We do have tougher subjects. Maybe this will just be her easier one. I’m still thinking this subject over, and wondering what the right thing to do is. Until then, I’m just doing the lesson it has laid out for me each day.

Her coloring is sloppier with math, though. So is her writing. All of her other subjects she puts her best out there. That’s what I would do when I was bored in school. I’d slack off in the easy classes because who really cares?

I don’t want to skip lessons, because I see the learning approach this program is trying to do and don’t want to mess with that. I may soon start combining lessons, though, to make it a bit more interesting for her. I want to use this program a full year and see how it all plays out, but I may switch to “Math U See” in the future so I can compare the two better. Those were the 2 programs I was debating between. Basically, I’m totally sold on all of our choices for curriculums we chose for this year except for math. I’m not convinced we made the wrong choice, though either. There are some things I really do like about it.

Her home economic lessons are a bit trickier than I had anticipated, but I’ll admit I can be rather impatient when it comes to teaching things I can do in my sleep. I thought I’d start with crocheting, since I consider it much easier to master than knitting. I was hoping she could make herself a simple scarf for herself.

Granted, learning brand new things like how to hold the yarn with the correct tension, etc is very, very difficult. However, for generations, this has been an appropriate age to teach these hand skills, and I do not feel it is too advanced for her. We’ve been keeping the lessons super short, and try to stop just short of her feeling overly frustrated. Just like David with learning to read, Silje needs lots of praise to keep having the motivation to continue on with this lesson.

I have a big plastic tub of my old yarn, otherwise known as the “cheapy red heart stuff” that you can get at Walmart. It’s one of my favorite yarns to use for big projects like blankets, but when it comes to clothing and such, I like to go for the good stuff. I’ll admit, the more I’ve gotten into yarn, the more expensive my taste has gotten. To work with this red heart stuff again feels like sandpaper on my fingers compared to the wool, cotton, bamboo, etc., yarn I’ve grown accustomed to from the specialty yarn shop. I’ve turned into a yuppie yarn lady.

I was considering just donating my cheap stuff since I don’t use it anymore, but then I thought that there’s so many colors, and although it’s not as fancy, it’s amazing to learn on, and very, very simple to work with. It doesn’t split or slip easily like some specialty yarns do. So I gave the whole tub to Silje and told her that this would be her yarn to learn how to crochet and knit with, as well as use for any other fun craft projects that we do.

You better believe that the first color she went for was pink! There’s so much pink and purple left over from the ice cream cones I knitted her for her birthday a year ago last summer. We started working on a chain stitch, but then I decided get the scarf started for her, with one row of single crochet done, and have her learn to single crochet another row. I think it’s an easier concept to master, and she can learn how to start a project down the road.

She’s still excited about it, though, and that’s the ultimate point. I don’t want this to be drudgery. I want her to feel inspired. However, before you can do art, you need to master the craft. That will take patience…for both of us.

Elias has turned into my teacher’s helper. He likes to clean the boards of our little IKEA easel after class is done.

With his brother and sister both having some sort of book with them all the time now, he’s starting to follow suit as well. He loves to “read” me books, and has taken a sudden interest in being read to that he really hasn’t been into in the past. Competitive much?

And yes, sometimes he does wear his jammies all day. After all…why not?