'Homeschooling' Category
Coming out of hibernation
I don't really even read blogs anymore let along write on my own...I've started back to school (as in, college for myself) on top of homeschooling 5, so I don't really have any time for anything these days. But I wanted to alert my whole 3 readers that are left LOL about a very frustrating situation. Check out Are you being treated like a child? Who controls what you get to hear? and then A change of interpretation on CHEC .
If this disturbs any of you as much as it does me, and you live in Colorado, I recommend that you check out www.HomeInstructionMinistries.com. I do believe I have decided to attend THAT conference rather than the "Christian Family Conference" put on by Colorado Home Educators of Colorado. Hmmmm I think maybe I blogged about that before....
A shameless plug
I have mentioned my love for Homeschool Tracker Plus before. Oh, let's see...here (although the price has increased since I wrote that post), here, and here.
Recently my hard drive crashed, and I lost my HST database from April 5 on. I had to call off school for a week because I didn't really know what to do. I am that dependent on HST. Sure, I COULD homeschool without it, but it wouldn't be very smooth. I can print off one list and see what pages G needs for his math, what books he needs to read for history, and that he needs a balance scale for science. I don't have to look in a gazillion different TEs or try to remember who is on what lesson. I don't have to handwrite anything except very specific instructions for the day like, "Correct math p. 85."
I now live in a state that requires a certain number of days and hours of attendance. I can record all of that with just a few clicks.
I can print off a week's worth of assignments (for 4 children...next year 5) and make all the copies I need to BEFORE the week starts.
I can scan the assignments for the next 2 weeks and request any books I need to from the library.
I absolutely, POSITIVELY, love this program.
And now I love it even more. LOL. They have started a referral program! So, if you happen to buy Homeschool Tracker Plus, would you please enter my referral code, 2RNSD?
(I'm just bummed they didn't start this program sooner LOL!)Yes, I’m griping
When I go to a homeschooling conference, I want to learn about homeschooling. Only. I do NOT want to learn about faith/family issues. If I did I would go to a faith/family conference.
Thank you.
A Week in Tapestry of Grace
I thought I'd share what a week looks like for us for history.
Tapestry of Grace recommends a Monday-Friday week. I've also heard of some families doing Friday-Thursday so that the children can read over the weekend. At this point in our school, we have found it best to just be flexible, so we don't have a set length of how long we spend on a TOG Week. Sometimes it only takes us 3 days to get through the material, and other times it takes us 7 days. It varies. It's a bonus when I can plan a week Monday-Friday, but sometimes we'll finish things up the next Monday or Tuesday and then go ahead and start the next Week in TOG.
I try to read the Teacher's Notes over the weekend prior to starting a new Week. This past week we did Week 15 in Year 1, which is The Promised Land: Conquest and Settlement.
Day 1:
I literally copied this from the Student Threads from the yellow Overview section. I do not include the people/vocabulary words because I learned early on this year that our reading assignments may or may not cover those people/vocabulary words, and I got tired of dealing with that. So I gave up LOL.
I read this aloud off the board.
Then we moved on to geography. I used the geography assignment from the Student Assignment Pages. I try to do the geography assignments earlier in the week so that as we read, my children already have a vague familiarity with the locations. This also allows us to refer back to any maps that we have worked on.
I broke down and bought this earlier in the year:
It is a rhetoric level resource, but IMO it's a necessary one for even LG. I wish they would list it as such. My UG child filled out his map according to the assignment:
while I helped my LG students fill out theirs. Usually I print out the teacher's map from the MapAids CD, but this week's teacher's map is wrong (I have been told they have corrected CDs available, but I don't have one), so this week I printed out maps for them and then filled it out for them as we all did it together. (Too much writing.)
Then we did a color-coded map for the tribes of Israel:
There is an example map in the Teacher's Notes, but no black-line map, so I had to make my own. I have Uncle Josh's outline map book, so I copied an Ancient Israel map and drew in the tribal boundaries with Sharpie and then copied them all for my dc. We did all of this together, using the map from the Teacher's Notes as a guide.
(Come to find out there is a tribal map on the MapAids CD for week *16*. I will have to mark that in my IG for week 15 so I know to look there next time around!)
Day 2:
Read from
TOG recommends another child's Bible, but I hated it and started using this one instead.
Day 3:
Read from
and put together a salt map of Israel (instructions are in Old Testment Days):
They will paint it next week after it dries (this is included in the TOG assignments).
There were a few other hands-on activities we could have done, but I'm not a very "hands-on" mom, so my kids thought I was awesome for letting them do this.
Day 4:
We filled out the booklets for our Unit 2 lapbooks:
and then we went over the threads, people, and vocabulary for the week, as a review:
This was a lightish week, so that is why we only did it for 4 days.
I earned cool mom/teacher points today
Check out what we did in history today.
What is Mike Huckabee’s REAL record on homeschooling?
I posted about Mike Huckabee and homeschooling a couple days ago. I just found this video. This just solidifies my opinion.
Looking for Henty books?
Make that, GOOD, HIGH-QUALITY Henty books? Look no further:
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New blog
I set up a blog just for our homeschool, so that I can journal what we do so our family can see.
Life as an ancient Egyptian child
G informed me this morning that history this year is "cooler" than history last year. LOLOL. We are currently studying ancient Egypt in Year 1 of Tapestry of Grace. C and L are doing Lower Grammar (3rd and 2nd grades), and one of their projects this past week was to make an Egyptian paddle doll similar to ones that ancient Egyptian children would have made and played with. Here they are with their final products:
These were relatively easy to make. It just took several steps due to paint needing to dry. G is doing Upper Grammar works since he is in 5th grade, and he is planning to make an Egyptian death mask. (Of course, since this thing looks relatively involved and requires paper mache' LOL!) The three of them are in the process of creating a salt dough map of an imaginary place that shows different geography landforms.We have all learned so much just in the few weeks we've been doing this! We used TOG last year, but it was the classic year 2. Still good, but I am REALLY liking the Redesigned!!!
In one of the readings to C and L, the book said something like, "No one really knows why the Egyptians switched from making pyramids to burying their pharoahs in the Valley of the Kings. And I'm thinking, "Duh, Moses led all of Pharoah's slaves out of Egypt, so there wasn't anyone left to build the pyramids!" It's just neat seeing how history all fits together and how God is involved in it ALL. That's the whole point of TOG anyway.
Week 1 of school. Done.
WHEW. You'd think I'm schooling 4 with an almost 3yo and 2.5mo on the side or something. I knew things were going to be busy, but NOT THIS BUSY!!! I'm POOPED!
Here is our schedule for this fall:
Good heavens. Are you as tired as I am just looking at that?
Well, as cram-packed as it is, it has gone reasonably decent this week. The tricky part is making sure I wake the baby at 6:30 to nurse. Otherwise it just sort of throws the rest of the day off since she's not ready to go down for her nap on time.
Some other struggles we've been having are C being used to playing whenever he wants and me getting motivated to do school after naptime LOL. C is NOT crazy about having to do school pretty much all day, and wow are we working on that attitude. Ei yi yi. If he finishes something early he can take a short break, but typically he spends so much time at the beginning balking and complaining that he eats up his free time afterward. So. Working on that.
We are still finishing up stuff from last year, but we should be starting into our "correct" grade level stuff in the next month or two. We use BJU HomeSat for math, reading, spelling, and English. Still love it.
Oh yeah, J uses it for K4 and K5 as well. We are doing Apologia Exploring Creation with Zoology I for science, and I really think it's going to be great. We did astronomy last year, and my kiddos loved it. They have really gotten into bugs and birds lately, which is very handy since that is what Zoology I is about!Last year we did Year 2 in Tapestry of Grace, but I got a glimpse of the Redesigned year plans and decided that is what I want.
So we are doing Year 1 this year. I tell ya. So far I have felt more "together," and I think the kids have learned more in 3 days than in all of last year LOL! The classic version is great, don't get me wrong, but the redesigned is just so much easier to work with. I am SO pleased with it!!! G is doing upper grammar, so I've been having him read his assignments on his own while I read aloud to the lower grammar kids (C and L). Anything we can do together we do, but I'm trying to get him to be more independent, so I'm working with him on how to manage his time with the reading. I'll probably have to remind him this weekend that he has some things to read, but that's OK. He's still learning. All in all, a pretty decent week. Tiring, but OK.
Just call me a conspiracy theorist
My exciting discovery
You know you are a homeschool
nerdmom when the following discovery totally MAKES YOUR DAY:In our local area we have 3 separate library systems. Not 3 separate branches or buildings, but 3 completely separate SYSTEMS. There is a system for the Big City near here. There is a system for the county that that Big City is in. And then there is a system for the county that I live in. (I live about 5 miles from the county line.) If I were to live in the Big City or just in Big City's county (outside of Big City's limits), I could get free library cards at both systems since they have a reciprocal agreement with each other. But I don't. So I have to get a library card at my county system. (For a rural county, it really is quite a decent library system!)
Well I discovered that I can purchase a library card at the Big City's library system (the county system doesn't have a branch near me) for only $42/year. They have a TON of books that we'll need for school next year that my county's system doesn't have. So I would have ended up having to buy all those books. Instead I can pay $42 and borrow them from the library instead! I will end up saving soooooooooooooo much money because the cost of those books is probably triple or quadruple what I'm paying for my library card.
(It's the little things, I tell ya.)
