Homeschool Update

This week is our seventh week of home school. Yes, we are still going strong! The first five weeks were spent learning the first five letters of the alphabet. During our sixth week we reviewed. Thanks to resources I've found on 1+1+1=1, Confessions of a Homeschooler, Pinterest, and other sites we've come up with a pretty simple plan for our 90 minutes or so of morning school:

• Learn about our verse of the week (found in the book My ABC Bible Verses) and memorize the verse
• Color (either a picture depicting the verse (1+1+1=1 Raising Rockstars Preschool), a fun animal letter or a hidden picture with upper and lower case letters (Education.com).
• Writing practice (for Sarah this mostly involves tracing, Abigail writes the letters out)
• Making the letter of the week (either with Tangrams or our Geoboards)
• Letter hunt (this is mainly for Sarah's benefit to help her identify the letter of the week among the other letters in the alphabet)
• Craft (this mostly relates to some main item/animal I choose that begins with the letter of the week)

For our review week we spent one day on each letter. I thought that our first four verses would make perfect family rules. So, we created "posters" to remind us of our rules. Here are pictures of Sarah helping out, as well as our finished product.

And here are certificates I made up to show that the girls know their first five verses and the first five letters of the alphabet. Way to go girls! 

First Day of School

Yesterday was Abigail and Sarah's first day of homeschool. The plan is to do basic ABC's during Lily's morning nap and then do more phonics and beginning math for Abigail during Lily and Sarah's afternoon naps.

We had a good solid 90 minutes of school this morning. Toward the end I could see it was getting to be a bit much for Sarah, who became very antsy. Overall though I think she did very well.

This afternoon Abigail played with counting bears her Daddy used when he was a kid. Then we tried doing basic addition. Followed by quiet reading time. The afternoon was a bit more challenging because Lily fought her nap. I'll need to give Abigail quiet activities to do when this happens in the future.

Like last year I'm really hoping to use this year to get a better idea of what we'll do once Abigail starts kindergarten. Really we only have two options (1) public school or (2) homeschool (private school is out of the question). I think (1) and (2) both have their pros and cons. We just need to figure out what is best for us, and I will rely on our experience, advice from other homeschoolers I know, and God's leading.

3:1

Today was Jonathan's first day back at work. I was sort of dreading this day, because having Jonathan around was such a huge help! He didn't think he was that big of a help, but he couldn't be more wrong. Most of his help involved watching Lily so I could tend to chores, etc (which is something I really wanted to take care of).

The night before Jonathan's day back was a bit stressful. Lily decided to stay wide awake from 11:15 or so until about 1:00. Once she was settled in bed I figured I was good until 4:00 or so. I was wrong-she got up at 3:00 (and this was after I had to get up to calm Sarah down when she woke up sometime between 1:00 and 4:00). After I fed Lily what I thought was a pretty substantial meal I struggled to help her get back to sleep. I was desperate and had Jonathan help me out around 4:00. He was able to get her back to sleep around 5:00.

Our restless sleep made for an easier day with Daddy away though, because Lily had a lot of sleep to make up for. Most of the day I dealt with an actual 2:1 and even 1:1 Little One to Mommy ratio because of naps. I was able to do a little cleaning and Abigail and I even fit in a preschool lesson. The only thing I didn't manage to do was take a shower (I'll have to figure that one out).

We made it! We survived in one piece! With God's help I think we'll be able to do this.

The Aquarium!

We went to the aquarium for a special family outing today. The last time we went was two years ago. Sarah tagged along, but this time she actually got to see the fish (since the last time she was a month shy of her due date ;-)

I tried to make our experience sort of like a field trip, so I made each of the girls an "Aquarium Scavenger Hunt" book. I picked 10 animals I knew the girls would see, jotted a few basic facts about them, and then had a check box for them to mark when we saw each one.

The girls had a blast. It was so fun to see them point and get excited with each new fish they saw. It was also cool because we happened to be there during feeding time for the giant main tank. The girls got to see a diver swim with the fish to feed them. They also got to see the giant sea turtle eat at the tank's surface.

Photo Fridays 09.16.11

It has been four solid weeks since Abigail's first day of homeschool. Today was another exciting first, Abigail's first day of co-op. After hearing about our homeschooling Abigail for preschool, a friend of mine invited us to join the homeschooling co-op she is a part of. I am so glad for the invite and for the opportunity to check out this aspect of homeschooling.

Every Friday Abigail will get together with other kids her age to learn her ABC's and 123's. She'll get to do crafts, read books, and spend time with some of her favorite people. She might even go on a field trip or two. I'll be an assistant for her class and also take care of Sarah along with another mom.

Today was a great first day. It was a bit challenging for me to try and keep Sarah entertained and quiet during our sessions. She even tried running off a few times. But, I'm sure with time, she'll get used to the idea of school. I think Abigail really enjoyed being around other people her age (and even some of the big kids). She wasn't too happy when it was time to go.

We're looking forward to what the rest of the school year holds!

First Day of School

Today was Abigail's first day of preschool. We started earlier than usual because (1) once Abigail learned she'd be doing school she hasn't stopped talking about it and (2) I wanted to get a good routine going before Lily comes in November.

To start I decided to do a few simple things in the morning so that Sarah can participate. We did the bulk of our school though during her naptime.

Our morning session consisted mainly of our calendar. I finished it up to include the temperature and what Abigail should wear for the weather. We sang a few songs about the days of the week and months of the year. Then I thought it would be good to focus on our color of the week: yellow. I picked up a simple book on the color yellow at the library. It was a nice way to introduce new words to Sarah and also go over all sorts of things that are yellow. After reading that a few times we went around the apartment pointing out all of the yellow things.

Our afternoon session was pretty simple. I introduced our verse for the week, read a story about it, and then Abigail read cards with the phrase "I see 1 lion" (or "I see 1 lock") with corresponding pictures of items starting with the letter "l" (our letter of the week). The thing I like about this curriculum is that it doesn't start with "Aa" but instead starts with "Ll", which is one of the easier letters to write. We'll see how writing goes in the coming days. After all this we read a book about the letter "L" and then called it a day.

On a quick side note, Monday is our "clean up" day-a day where we stay home and the girls play around while Mom plays catch up on chores. I was still able to do this and fit in our lesson. While I was cleaning the bathroom Abigail got a hold of our camera. I wanted to just take it from her, but then encouraged her to take pictures of things that are yellow. It was fun to see what she came up with:

part of her plastic golf setbutterflies on her backpackSarah's floatie

Getting Ready

I've been thinking a lot about Abigail and school lately. A lot of kids her age will be starting some form of preschool in the fall. I never really considered signing her up. You see, we still haven't decided whether we will home-school or not.

For those of you who may not know, Jonathan and his brothers were all home-schooled through high school. I never really would have considered it as a serious option for our girls if this hadn't been the case. Jonathan is super supportive and doesn't expect our default schooling of choice to be home school, but he does expect me to prayerfully consider and be open to it (which is totally reasonable!).

So, as part of OUR prayerful consideration, we have decided to home-school Abigail for preschool as sort of a trial run. As I get ready for our time together I get really excited! Other times I am overwhelmed.

We'll see how it goes though and hopefully we can share a bit of what we learn with you! A friend of mine pointed me to a homeschooling website called 1+1+1=1. We'll be using her Raising Rock Stars Preschool materials. She offers so many free printables and also makes them available for quick download for a nominal fee. Here are some of the preparations we've been making the past week or so:

I really liked the idea of a calendar, I modeled ours after this one on the 1+1+1 website. We're not quite finished with it. I need to add a few pockets and also some temperature stick-ups and clothing stick-ups (hot hot/cold is it? and what should I wear in this weather?).

I also put together a little binder to hold Abigail's work and a binder for me to hold all my teacher stuff (all of the printouts came from 1+1+1=1).

Abigail keeps talking about school. I think she's looking forward to the next week or so being over so we can get started!