This weeks adventures.

Homeschooling has not begun like I expected.  Does it ever?  We spread out Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear for 2 weeks.  Little man didn't mind because he liked the book.  Here are some pictures from our efforts.

This picture shows Isaac working on basic writing skills.  Writing left to right, and following the line.  This wasn't his favorite activity.  His favorite activity was counting.  

Little man wanted Mommy to make snow so he could make a Snowlof (Olaf).  Obviously I can't do that, so I did the next best thing.  I microwaved a bar of soap, and then had him paint it.  

The brown are the arms and legs.  The purple is Anna.  The blue is Elsa.  

This past week was my birthday, and my husband surprised us with a trip up to Canada to visit family.

We went to Marineland.  Little man has taken a particular interest in killer whales, so even though it was expensive we really wanted to do it.

They had a little nursery for beluga whales.  We loved seeing the nursing whale.  It helped little man understand a bit more about how mommy is going to feed baby.  

Marineland gives kids lots of opportunities to feed the animals.  We fed bears, deer, fish, bison, and could have fed the beluga whales.  

 The area surrounding Niagara Falls, in Ontario, is rich with historic teaching opportunities.  We wanted to make sure Little Man got to see the locks.  He got to watch them load cargo onto the boats, and then see the bridge raise to let the boat go by.  Later on he watched the boat travel across Lake Erie.   

 No trip is complete without a visit to Niagara Falls.  His favorite part about the visit was watching the Maid of the Mist.

I am lucky to have such a good little boy.  My hyperemesis is back in full swing.  I have spent most of the past week in bed.  Luckily my son just likes to bring me books to read to him.  I just wish I could do more.  Luckily, he won't remember this part.  I keep reminding myself that he doesn't need to be learning anything in particular right now.  As long as he is playing he can learn.  

A Thomas Jefferson Education

As part of my research phase to find the right fit for my family, I checked A Thomas Jefferson Education out of the library.  This book is behind the TJed movement.  It focuses on using the classics to educate your children, and yourself, just like Thomas Jefferson did.  

I was very pleased with how this book was written.  It was very positive, and easy to read.  It is a book that I will probably read many times.  It is a book that I recommend everyone read because we all can learn from it.  Reading/learning from the classics really resonates with my husband and I.  We will end up implementing a lot of the concepts in our lifestyle.   

There wasn't a lot of guidance in how someone should approach implementing the ideas, but that is where the website and discussion boards become useful.  There are plenty of forums to help you with ideas, and lots of book lists.  I am a little unsure of how the math would be taught, but I guess that will come as we go.  

Here are a few of the quotes that I really liked from the book:

"Teaching, not education, should be our focus because great teaching inspires students to educate themselves." -Oliver DeMille

I believe this quote to be quite powerful.  I have had some great inspiring teachers (oddly enough they were literature teachers) that have left a lasting impression with me.  These teachers are the ones that kindled my love of learning.  

"If the purpose is to train leaders, it's important not to force the young person through their learning experiences.  Force in learning kills the spirit, dampens the passion and destroys the zest and life learning.  Force trains followers, not leaders."  -Oliver DeMille

I believe that everyone has had an experience where they are forced to learn something.  It doesn't foster a love of learning, and it kills it.  There are other avenues to try if something doesn't work.  One should never be forced to learn something.  Granter, there are times when things have to be learned, but it should never be forced.  

"Question, probe, ponder, think, discuss, write, apply."  -Oliver DeMille 

A lot of the TJed philosophy deals with the idea of mentoring.  This is what this last quote refers to.  I like the way the process here is just laid out.  

"To achieve truly excellent education, keep it simple:  Read, Write, do Projects and Discuss."  -Oliver DeMille

I like this quote because it makes me remember that education does not need to be complicated.  I think people think that it needs to be a complicated curriculum in order to educate a child.  Yet that just isn't the case.  There are many different approaches to gaining an education.  This philosophy will help to create leaders and thinkers.  It's also important to remember that learning never ceases.  Just because you are done with school doesn't mean you are done learning.  

Music ideas

I have seen quite a few posts in the past few weeks on the homeschooling boards with questions about what to do for music.  I wanted to share a little of what I have been using.  Granted, my son is 3, so it may be too young for your children. However, it does work for some older children as well.

Most parents know the author Sandra Boynton from her wonderful board books.  What most parents don't know is that she also composes songs.  Some of these songs even go along with her books!  She publishes these songs in a book with great illustrations.  It comes with a CD with the songs sung by different celebrities.   What I like the best is that some of the CD's have a karaoke version after the regular version of the songs. This gives the kids to sing the songs themselves.   There is sheet music in the back of the book for parents, or kids, to play the songs.  Here are the books that I own, but there are more.

My son likes to sit on my lap while we go through the cd/songs page by page.  Sometimes he will get out some pans and spoons to drum along with it.  Other times he will play his harmonica to the music.  Then of coarse there is always lots of singing!

 There is also this book by Ben Kingsley.  The book goes through different instruments, some music history, and brief overview of a variety of composers.  It comes with a CD as well, but we haven't listened to it yet.  It is above where my son is at, so we are holding off on this.

I know it's not much, but I thought I would put this out there for those of you who are searching for where to start with your kids.  This is easy, and non threatening.  I also encourage you to look into community centers to see what is offered.  I know that there is a lot offered here in Columbus, Ohio.  Music doesn't have to be too involved at first.

The First Week

I had originally planned to begin preschool with my son last Wednesday since that was the day that all of his friends were starting school.  We sort of started on Tuesday because he kept begging for school to start.  I have learned a lot in this first week.

The first that I learned is that Isaac knows a lot more than I could even fathom!  That first day I made a concentrated effort to read to him.  He didn't want the reading to stop!  In any case, through this reading binge I found out how much he knows about dinosaurs.  We had a discussion about why dinosaurs are not lizards, and he listed off all the different kinds of dinosaurs (correctly) shown in the book.

What surprised me the most was when he stopped me mid-sentence to say, "That's a triceratops.  It's a triceratops because it has three horns."  I am assuming that I can thank Dinosaur Train for that one.  This is the book that he loves.  There isn't a picture of the book, so here is a picture for you.  It is an older book, but it is a good one.

Feel free to check out my Goodreads profile for more books here.  

I will admit that this week has consisted of a lot of TV watching.  The last few days have been difficult in my pregnancy, so it's what I have to resort to.  However, my son has decided that he loves the Leap Frog movies on Netflix.  He has been watching that or Magic School Bus this week.  He seems to be learning from it.  He has always been good at differentiating what letter is which, but didn't know the sounds very well.  

Up until this morning I didn't know he knew the corresponding sounds at all.  Last night I had finally got around to laminating the worksheets for this week.  These are two examples.  Isaac was able to get a majority of them correctly.  Didn't expect him to do that well at all!  

These worksheets go to Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear and can be found here.

Before Five in a Row has been interesting.  This week was Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear.  It is a cute book.  I think the most important thing my son has learned from the book was how important it is to have a clean room (I stressed that while looking at the pictures).  The first day that we read the book, we lasted 20 minutes.  I didn't have any worksheets for him yet, so that was all that we did.  Now that we have our worksheets we can last a few hours.

Today I got the water color paints out.  My son is a bit different.  He HATES getting his hands dirty (unless it is mud).  Regular paints he has always detested, and refused to do anything with them.  However, he loved his water color paints!  He painted for about an hour, and still wants to paint more this afternoon.

 This weekend we went to the Ohio Historical Society.  We had never been there, but they were having a food truck festival there.  With the festival (which only cost $6 for parking) came free admission to both the museum, and the historical village.  I wasn't doing well pregnancy wise, so we didn't explore the village much.  My son seemed to enjoy the museum.  He found a trolley to play on, and he loved the skeleton of the Mastodon.

I have learned that my son is capable of learning from me.  Up until this point, if I asked him a question he wouldn't answer me.  Now I know that he is willing to answer me in the right conditions.  He much prefers reading while sitting on my lap, and activities while sitting at the table.

I have also learned that I need to find a way to fill our days better.  I don't want television to be the filler, but that's what it is.  If anyone has any ideas for easy, unsupervised activities for a 3 year old please let me know!  I just can't handle much with this pregnancy.

Something I want to work on is our eating.  I need to find a way to eat healthy.  That is the difficult part.  I would just stick something in the crockpot, but the smell would just make me sick all day.  Lately, Isaac's lunch is fruit, crackers, cheese, and lots of snacks.  No smell ;).  I really want to start doing little cooking lessons with him, but it just isn't possible at this point.  Perhaps in another 4 months.  

The Brainy Bunch

                In June, The Brainy Bunch was released.  It is about a large homeschooling family that was able to get their kids in college by age 12.  I expected the book to be similar to the Tiger Mother, but it wasn't. They seemed fairly laid back. 

                There are parts that I could do without.  For instance, the family seems extremely religious.  I understand that most homeschooling families are, but that isn't the perspective I am interested in for my family.  One part really irritated me because there was a few pages of talking about how they couldn't understand how people can have small families.  How if you have a small family you could be preventing the next Mozart or Einstein from being born.  I took this hard because they didn't acknowledge health reasons as being OK for small families.  They just were down on people deciding not to have more children.  Since I am one of the women that cannot have more children because it would be dangerous, I took this hard. 

                There were a lot of parts that would be great for families that send their children to public school as well.  Reading the book got my wheels turning.  It was able to give me a new perspective on how to teach my child.  They give a lot of examples on how you can “after-school” your children.  I think this book will help any parent become more motivated when it comes to being personally involved in their child’s education.

                Another aspect that I really liked was that every few chapters there were a few pages written by one of the children.  These were written at different ages, so the quality of the writing varies.  It was nice to see how each child views their education, and how it impacted their life.

                Towards the end of the book they would give examples of their homeschooling approach (unschooling for the most part).  I have had a hard time wrapping my head around how this approach could possibly work.  They gave a fantastic idea for a science experiment that could have come up in an everyday conversation.  They suggested asking your child to find out what the city adds to our water.  Then you can take a bottle of water, and put a few drops onto a slide.  You also add a few drops of tap water onto another slide.  Then you examine the two slides, and go from there.  I would never have thought of doing something like this, but it seems so fun!  I guess you just get better at finding ideas as you go. 

                Overall, this was a good book to read.  It kept my attention fairly well.  It offered a plethora of ideas for families to try.  In the back there is a helpful section where they list their different curriculum and gave examples of their transcripts.  All very handy for new homeschooling families like mine. 

               

                

Finding Learning Opportunities

Lately I have felt pretty deflated.  This pregnancy has been extremely rough, and it has resulted in my son watching entirely too much television.  Before I started getting sick I was working with him on his letters, colors, and numbers.  Once the sickness began, that all ended.  I have felt that everything he learned has slowly slipped away, and I will have to start all over again.

I am not sure if planning out how I am going to implement Before Five In A Row has changed my way of thinking, but this week was a bit different.  The week started with a trip to the library because I had a book I needed to pick up.  I let my son pick a bunch of books out (even though the ones he picked I wasn't thrilled with).  Two of the books he picked were Elmer and the Whales and Whoosh and Chug.

Elmer and the Whales may have been one I picked out, but I can't remember.  My son is convinced that I am having a baby whale, so we are trying to convince him otherwise.  This book didn't have a particularly exciting story, but it did allow us to work on his counting.  The art work has multiples of animals on each page.  We would spend the time counting all the different animals (which also involved finding them).  He really enjoyed it.

Whoosh and Chug was not a book that I wanted to read.  It was one of many train books that have entered this house.  It ended up being quite fun to read, and it has a lot of sight words in it.  Some of the words I know my son has memorized from the story, but this evening he surprised me.  He recognized the word stop! without any prompting from me!  It's fun having him participate in the story for once.

This week we also went to a local splash pad.  On Wednesdays during the summer they do special things for the kids.  This week was everything creepy crawly.  We went because we expected snakes, but there weren't any.  However, there were lots of other fun things to learn about.

There was a bee keeper there with his bees.  He had honey samples, dried honey comb, and beeswax.  It was fun explaining to my son how honey and beeswax are made.  This ultimately was his favorite part of the excursion.

A lady was there with lots of bugs in plastic for the kids to examine.  My son spent about an hour in this tent.  She was awesome with him!  She answered all of his questions, and told him lots of additional facts.  I expected this to be his favorite part of the day because he has been asking for weeks to see a bug in amber (thank you dinosaur train!), but it wasn't.

 Lowes was there as well.  They had brought a bunch of soil, pans, and flower seeds.  Kids were able to plant there own seeds, and now we are waiting for them to grow.

As you can see, I am finding lots of different learning opportunities for my son.  Even though I am still unable to do much (even our Wednesday outing was too much for me) I can still adequately teach him.  It is exciting to watch his little brain work, and it's nice to know that he will learn in spite of me.

Preschool Curriculum Part 3

The main piece of curriculum that I decided on was Before Five In A Row.  I purchased my book from Rainbow Resource for $35.00, but I know that you can find it for much cheaper elsewhere.  You can check homeschooling resale pages to find some deals.  I have also heard that you can sometimes find it at the library.

I really like this curriculum because it focuses on good books.  For those that choose, it gives you a passage of scripture to start the day/week off with that matches the theme of the book.  It also offers a lot of ideas on how to incorporate different subjects from the chosen book that week.  I plan on taking 1-2 weeks on each book (depending on how fast my son wants to go through it).  Some of the books are older and out of print.  I know I will probably have to use inter-library loan in order to find a few, but that is fine with me.

There are lots of outside sites that offer ideas on how to supplement each book.  I have found that I really like Homeschool Creations for their supplements.  They have different pages for sequencing, math, writing, letter recognition, colors, and much more.  I plan to laminate the pages that I like, and then I can have Isaac use a dry erase marker to work on it each day.  I am creating a folder for each book.  That way each week I can just grab it and go.  Laminated pages will work great for other kids in the future.

We also use ABC Mouse.  We have had a subscription for over a year now.  My son loves it!  We have a laptop set up so that he can do his homework while Daddy does his.  ABC Mouse is the reason Isaac has known his upper and lower case letters for about a year.  It's great!

This week I have started looking into coops.  I think I found one that I like, but I can't participate fully until after the baby due to an attendance clause.  However, they have public field trips every other week, family activities, and mom's night out that I can go to without being a full member.  We will have our first field trip on August 20th.  I am excited, so I hope that I am feeling well enough for an outing that day!

For the first time in about 4 years I ordered a new insert for my planner.  I cannot express how excited I was to open it!  I use Google calendar, but there is just something about being able to see everything on paper.  I have already started planning out the next month of activities.  This way I know when I need to request the books I need.  I plan on getting additional books to go along with the main book for the week.  This will help me expand on different aspects.