Teacher Notes

I’m glad we started school early this year.  We’re on week 2, and I would say for the first time, this year I have some realistic expectations.  We haven’t been doing our bought curriculum daily because we’re still busy with summer activities, but we get in a good 3 days a week.  For instance, right now Silje and David are with Knut on a field trip to the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center where they will participate in duck banding with some other kids.

Next week Silje gets to spend 4 days at a “Prairie Girl Camp” put on by a teacher at the Christian school for local kids in the summer.  It’s just over at her house during the day, but she’s going to have a blast.  They have to dress in traditional prairie dresses like Laura Ingalls Wilder, sunbonnet and all.  On day 1, the girls will make homemade laundry soap and learn to wash clothes by hand.  On day 2, they will make biscuits, butter, and jam all from scratch.  On day 3 they will make a small quilt and rag doll.  On day 4 they will participate in a mock 1 room schoolhouse with pioneer style lessons, and then finish up at the library.  We’re studying this portion of history right now, and so it’s so timely that she will be able to participate in this.

The other big news this week is Elias joined our school day much more.  He’s only still preschool age, and next year he’ll be kindergarten age.  I’m a big believer in letting kids start when they’re ready.  David didn’t really do much with our school day until he was over 6.  Elias is only 4, so it wasn’t in my plan to start him doing lots of school, but he’s just been aching to be included with the big kids.

For the last year or so, Elias has taken it upon himself to learn his letters.  We have these magnet letters and he would bring them to me and say “what sound does this one make?” while I was busy doing something else.  I kept thinking that he was ready to learn to read, but I wasn’t quite ready to sit and teach him.  So he had to wait until he was 4.  I know.  Poor guy.

I’ve carved out part of the school day every day to just sit on the couch with Elias and work on reading.  I’m just using the introductory “Hooked on Phonics” that I used with the other kids.  We don’t use the cd much anymore since I’ve basically memorized it going through it a couple of times before.  I gave him the flashcards, and told him these were just for him.  It was his school.  He just beamed.

So in the last week, Elias has proven he knows what sound every letter makes, and has mastered the “at words.”  (cat, sat, rat, fat, mat…)  We started learning the “an words.”  (can, fan, man…) although when the book mixes together the “at” words and the “an” words he gets all mixed up.  That’s okay.  That happened to the other kids too.  It takes awhile to realize you have to pay attention to each of the letters in the word, not just the front or just the end of the word.

So he’s pretty proud of himself.  He just loves reading.  He reminds me more of Silje as a reader than David as a reader.

Anyway, I have been asked what curriculum we’re using this year, so I’ll try to get that out as simply as I can.

My Father’s World
This is our core curriculum this year.  As an experiment Silje and I decided to switch from Sonlight to My Father’s World.  I’ve been debating about these 2 since we started, so this year I asked Silje what she thought.  She liked all of the activities that MFW had, so we went for that.  I’m not disappointed with that decision, and it is laid out very nicely for me.  The one thing that Silje is missing, though, is all the books, books, books that she gets from Sonlight.  She keeps asking for more books.  The ones we get from the library just aren’t enough for her appetite.  I may place a Sonlight order for some age appropriate readers sometime this year just to keep her going, but right now I’m weighing the cost of doing that additional purchase.

I really love all the music in this program.  I also like that it follows the “Story of the World” books because we have been preferring those, and have been using it WITH Sonlight, and it was too much to do both.  So doing a program that has our favorite history book already programed in was nice and easy.

This core covers history, science, geography, reading, music and art.

Math
We’re staying the course with Saxon math this year.  Silje is finishing the second half of 5/4 and David is finishing the second half of level 2.

Language Arts
Sigh.  This is the part where it gets embarrassing.  I have a few programs and I use parts of each.  Some are used in their entirety, and some are not.  I’m piecing it together because that’s what I like to do.

Shurley English- I’m doing this with both kids this year.  I’m squishing together years 2 and 4 so both students can get the concepts down at the same time.  We do songs together, etc.  I’ve been through this program a few years now, so I feel comfortable leaving the script and just making it work for my 2 kids.  I use this more or less as a loose guide for grammar.

The Works People- I love their flashcards for both handwriting and phonics/spelling rules, which Shurley lacks.  I have their whole program, and am pretty sure I’m not using it to the fullest because I prefer using Shurley still because that’s what I know.

Institute for Excellence in Writing- I’ve noticed a trend with Silje the last few years.  She used to like to write stories.  Her spelling and handwriting were terrible, so I really tried focusing on that.  What ended up happening is now she hates writing with a passion.  I worried I pushed too hard, and squashed the joy for her.  I was talking to another homeschool mom about this problem.  How do you set the bar high without squashing their spirit?  Also, if you have squashed their spirit, how do you un-squash it?

She told me about the Institute for Excellence in Writing videos and writing program.  It’s not super cheap, so I just got a bit for Silje, since it starts around her age.  So she’s watching these videos everyday, and I have to say, just after one video her love of writing returned.  The teacher in the video is SO funny, and really gets inside kids’ brains.  I was blown away impressed listening in on it.

Latina Christiana- We’ve been dabbling in Latin in the past, but now we’re to the age where it can be studied a bit deeper.  The benefits of studying Latin are endless, so I won’t get into them here.  Silje especially wants to get into a science/biology related field, and knowing Latin in that field would be a benefit.  I’m trying to go through it with her more this year so I can learn it too.

Rosetta Stone Chinese- We’re continuing on with this, as soon as I purchase our 3rd set of headphones this year.  The kids break them so easily, it’s driving me bonkers.  Other than that, I love the program for them.  I wanted them to learn a modern foreign language, and a few years ago, this is what Knut and Silje picked.  We may branch into Spanish next year too if I can fit it in.

We don’t do every subject every day.  I have tried different ways to organize our day from workboxes to assignment books.  It’s hard to find a system that both inspires the kids but isn’t a ton of busy work for me.  I’ve turned this corner in our homeschooling journey to step back from forcing learning to happen, but starting to just let learning happening.  It’s hard to explain.  Anyway, next week I’ll try to go over this year’s way of keeping track of what needs to get done.  Organizing isn’t my strong suit, so finding someway to organize our school has also been a journey.  I really like what we’re doing so I’ll have to share.