July Report

We had a rather productive July, especially considering the many doctor appointments we had to attend. We also had a lot of fun as a family. Daddy had a rather laid back rotation for a resident.

Waiting for the fireworks on the 4th of July

Playing a board game for the first time without adult supervision

Dress Like a Cow Day!

One Saturday we went to Hanging Rock State Park. The girls really enjoyed hiking and playing in the water at the bottom of the waterfalls. 

Lydia lost her two front teeth this month!

The older two girls have been playing t-ball the last several weeks at our local YMCA. They've both learned a lot and this was really the first time they've participated in team sports. I think they have enjoyed themselves.

Lydia hitting a "swing pitch."

We've definitely stayed busy with extra-curriculars. As for school:

Math:

Lydia is on lesson 132 in CLE Math.  She doesn't love it, but she's doing well and progressing. Right now we're working more on attitude and dawdling than anything else, but even that is getting better.

Eleanor working on her Miquon lab sheet

Eleanor is rocking math lately. She actually cried a few days ago when I wouldn't do math with her. Every day we both pick a page for her to do in Miquon. Then she does a lesson in MEP. She is really starting to make connections and even absorb math facts. I see her making progress everyday. She is 39 pages (of 120) into Miquon Red and on lesson 30 (of 140) in MEP 1.

Reading:

Lydia is reading 20 minutes a day from library books that I pick for her, usually related to our history readings. She also willingly read her first two chapter books on her own this month. Apparently she likes Cam Jensen mysteries.  She also reads a lot on her own in her own time and spends hours a day making her own books.

Eleanor is on Lesson 81 in OPGTR and progressing nicely. She is almost done with silent-e words and keeps trying to read things she sees around her.

Language Arts:

Lydia is on Step 12 in All About Spelling 2. It has been kind of fun because her spelling words are lining up nicely right now with what Eleanor is learning to read. Today, Eleanor sat down while I was giving Lydia her spelling phrases, and started trying to spell them too. She did a pretty good job, too, and only needed minimal hints.

Lydia doing some of her spelling in the iPad

In writing, Lydia is on week 30. For most of the program this year she has struggled with the narration part, where I read her a passage and she answers simple questions. The last few times, though, I've had her read along with me rather than just to her, and she has been much better. Hopefully this keeps working. She's also loving analyzing the sentences from her copywork, so much so that she wants to analyse the extra sentence that I don't even make her do. Thanks to the FLL grammar CD I bought them (and we listen to in the car), she's become a wiz at finding articles, different types of verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, on top of the nouns, pronouns, and verbs she has learned in grammar so far. I think this kid will like diagramming when we get there in grammar next year. She's on lesson 119 in FLL 1/2 (out of 200). 

History/Geography:

Lydia enjoys her geography page that she does on a daily basis and is already almost halfway through the book I bought for the year. In history, we have done through chapter 4 in Story of the World, which has mostly covered nomadic people and the early Egyptians, including mummies and and pyramids. The girls have been enjoying it a lot, especially Eleanor and Adelaide. We usually do a coloring sheet from the Activity Book or the girls draw what I'm reading about.

Lydia writing her name in cuneiform on a "clay tablet"

Eleanor also writing her name in "clay"

First Day of Homeschool 2015

So the girls are really confused about this whole "first day of school" business. To them, we never stopped doing school and the idea of a school year just doesn't really make sense. I explained about the first day of school for other kids and that they don't go to school in the summer. I don't think they got it, but they aren't complaining! Here's a link to last year's first day of school.

I planned on doing the first day of school on July 1st, but that was a Wednesday and Dad had Friday off that week, so we waited until July 3rd this time so he could celebrate with us. Like last year, we had ice cream and brownies for breakfast, which they remembered. Then we took pictures in front of the giant ruler. I had Lydia pose with the first grade sign again because I've decided to officially keep her at that level because that's where I'd put her if I had to send her to school. Eleanor wouldn't legally be a Kindergartner in North Carolina this year, but I'm calling her one because she is so ready for it and can totally handle it.

Lydia

Eleanor

Adelaide

After that, we went to a large indoor bouncy house and play ground area. The girls had a lot of fun, although Adelaide was pretty nervous the whole time. Lydia was even brave enough to go on the zipline. It took her 3 tries to work up the courage, but after she did it, she was fine and did it several more times. It was difficult to get good pictures because of the lighting, constant movement, and mesh walls, but I did get this photo of Lydia on the zipline and Adelaide on a little slide.

We went to Chick-fil-A for lunch, except I saw a Greek place right next to the bouncy house and made the family wait for me while I got a gyro (worth it!).

When we got home, we had a rest time for a while until everyone, including Dad, said they were bored and wanted to have more fun. So we looked it up and discovered that the Children's Museum in Greensboro had $2/person night that night. We had never been there before, so thought this sounded like a great opportunity to check it out.

By the time we were done, it was already past bedtime but we hadn't even had dinner yet!  So we went to CiCi's Pizza (much to Mom's chagrin and everyone else's delight.)

It was a fun day full of unhealthy food and lots of time out of the house. I think everyone enjoyed themselves and they are already starting to ask if we can have another first day of school. It may take me a whole year to recover from this year's celebration.

School Year 2015/2016 Plans

Our first day of school is on July 1st. We school year round and that is when the government requires me to report for Lydia, so it works out nicely for us. I have mostly finalized our upcoming plans for the year. Lydia will be a 1st/2nd grader (I haven't decided which), Eleanor is legally a preschooler because of her birthday cutoff but for our purposes she is more a kindergartner, and Adelaide won't be doing much school this year, at least not until the Spring, when I will maybe start reading and math with her.

All three girls will be taking classes at a local homeschool co-op for two hours a week this fall. Our main goal is to get them out to meet people and enjoy themselves, but also experience a classroom environment and another teacher besides me. We did not choose these classes based on their academic needs. Adelaide and Eleanor will both be in a preschool class together, which will be below Eleanor's level academically but that I'm sure she'll enjoy anyways. She missed the birthday cutoff for the more advanced classes. Lydia will be taking 2 classes. The first is called Stories and Art and the second will be working from the curriculum Five in a Row. They are both classes where there will be a book and a project related to the book, which I think she will really enjoy. Crafts are not my strong point, so outsourcing them is a bonus for me too!

We do lots of little extras just through our daily lives. We have passes to a science museum with a zoo and aquarium and regularly take advantage of it. The girls also listen to tons of audio books at bedtime. So this is by no means a comprehensive list of everything we'll do, but it is the most formal.

Plans for Lydia:
Math: Last year we started math with Saxon. In theory it worked well for her, but the program itself was taking us almost 2 hours a day, which was just too much. After a few months, I switched over to Christian Light Education math which had all the benefits of Saxon without the downsides for us. As a result of her late start with it, though, she hasn't quite finished Grade 1 math. So she'll finish that up and then start Grade 2.

Language Arts: Lydia finished Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading last year, so for reading I assign her reading for 20 minutes. A few times a week I have her read out loud to me from a leveled old fashioned reader like the Treadwell Readers to catch any mistakes she might be making. She reads a lot on her own as well, so at this point, I'm not too worried about her reading and her writing program covers comprehension. She didn't finish Writing With Ease Level 1, so she'll finish that up and then we'll likely start Writing With Ease Level 2. She finished First Language Lessons Level 1 and will doing Level 2. Her grammar at this point is learning basic grammar terms and memorizing lists of things like pronouns. I bought the First Language Lessons Audio Companion to help with that memorization that we'll be listening to in the car. We also analyze her sentences for WWE, which she really seems to enjoy and we'll keep up. For spelling, she'll continue with All About Spelling Level 2 and then move on to Level 3 when she finishes it.

History: This will be our first year doing deliberate history. She and Eleanor will both be doing Story of the World, Volume 1: Ancients. They've listened to the audio book many times at bedtime, but we'll be going through it together coupled with books from the library and some suggestions from the accompanying activity book. She is also working through Evan Moor Beginning Geography, which she seems to really enjoy.

Science: This last year was the year of human anatomy. We finished the girls' MyBodys, but we really never did Beginning Foundations of Scientific Understanding like I planned. They got a lot out of it, so I don't regret this last year, but I think we'll try more formality this year. We'll go through the first 12 lessons in BFSU as a family with Eleanor (and Adelaide if she wants) participating.


Plans for Eleanor:
Math: Eleanor did an awesome job last year. She finished Essential Math A&B and also Miquon Orange. She seems to have a good grasp on math so far and is thriving in the more experimental, puzzle-type of math that I'm introducing her to. She just started Miquon Red and Mathematics Enhancement Programme Year 1. Miquon Orange and Red together make up a first grade math and MEP Year 1 is also a first grade math, so she is solidly working at that level. If she finishes Miquon Red, we'll start on Miquon Blue. The jury is still out on whether we will continue MEP, but so far it has been a success for her, so I don't foresee changing soon. For some reason, Math Mammoth just didn't seem quite right for her. At some point, I might add in a word problem book, but we'll see.

Language Arts: She will continue working through Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. She seems to really enjoy reading and spends a lot of time reading beginning readers on her own. I expect that she'll be able to move from the sounding out every word stage this year, and if that happens, I'll start her on All About Spelling Level 1. She is also working through Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten (and doing handwriting apps on the iPad) and when she finishes that she'll start on Writing With Ease Level 1. I don't know that I'll do formal grammar with her this year, but she'll be listening to Lydia's grammar and the CD in our car, so I bet she'll pick most of it up on her own anyways.

History/Science: She'll be tagging along with Lydia for these with the exception of geography. We'll probably wait a year for that simply because of the reading skills required.


Plans for Adelaide:
Since Adelaide won't be four until almost the end of the school year, I have no formal plans for her at this point. Mostly I have her working on iPad apps to learn her letter sounds and beginning blending. I assume that I'll start reading with her sometime after Christmas. She has already expressed that she wishes I would teach her, but she just isn't ready yet. I'll probably start her on math around the same time as well.

May Report

I'm not sure what month of school this is, but since I'm trying to be good about blogging again, I thought I'd do a report for the month!

May was an eventful month for us, mostly in the form of news. Tyler took and found out he passed his Step 3 exam. This means that he is now a licensed physician! He still has to finish residency (2 more year) and then hopefully a fellowship (3 more years) and pass the boards for both of those, but it is still a major accomplishment.

We also found out some health news about Lydia that will affect her for the rest of her life and is a big deal, although nothing life-threatening. We will be in and out of doctors offices for the next few months as they do a bunch of tests related to it. This diagnoses has been difficult for all of us to deal with, but we're doing ok. If you are family or friends and want more information, send me a message and I'll tell you about it.

In other news, we bought a small above-ground pool on a whim. A goal I had for the summer was to get my girls more comfortable in the water and hopefully teach the older 2 how to swim. This was a tall order for 3 little girls that spend their pool time sitting on the stairs. When I saw this pool online, I knew it would be perfect for us. In fact, the older two girls are swimming in it right now.

This month was an awesome school month. We got a lot done and the girls worked hard.

Math:
Lydia is almost finished with Light Unit 106 (she finished 101-105 and there are 10 altogether in her level). She has been doing a great job on her tests and quizzes and is learning her math facts very well.

Eleanor started MEP 1 and is doing well with it. It has things that are very easy for her and things that are quite challenging for her. One question that challenged her was a picture of 6 sailboats with a flag, sail, and hull. She was told to color them yellow, red, and blue, but not to make any of them exactly the same.The lessons so far have been very short, so she is still working her way through Miquon Orange. She has been working on simple multiplication and fractions in Miquon and doing a great job.

Reading:
Lydia has been really into Clifford lately and we've checked out almost all of the Clifford books the library has. She reads them during school time but she can often be found reading them throughout the day. On a friend's recommendation, I also got her Princess in Black which is technically a chapter book but has very large print and pictures on every page. She read it in a day. I'm finding that the "leaving books laying around the house" method is working pretty well for her. She is also reading from the Treadwell reader a few times a week so I can check up on her and catch any reading mistakes she might be making.

Eleanor is halfway through lesson 61 in OPGTR. It takes her 2 or 3 days to get through a lesson, mostly because she still has to sound out every word, but she's getting there. She also likes to read the BOB books and Nora Gaydos readers we have in her spare time.

Everything Else:
Everything else is mostly do the next thing and we continue to power through.

Martha Wins a Race

Lately, Lydia has been making lots of little illustrated books and having me staple them together. Most of them are based off characters she knows, although she does have a few original characters that are regulars in her stories as well. After listening to the Brave Writer podcast, I knew the Brave Writer style of teaching writing wasn't for me, but there was one suggestion I liked for Lydia's age. They say it is good to scribe the children's stories for them. It helps make writing seem more fun, and it helps them "write" much more complicated stories than they might be able to with their limited penmanship skills.

I decided to record one of Lydia's stories today and then I typed it up. Lydia was absolutely thrilled about this entire process and wants me to do it for all her other stories (which I'm not sure I can because she makes up like 3 or 4 a day!) This story is based on Martha the dog from Martha speaks. Martha's character in the show ate a bowl of alphabet soup, so now she can talk and go on lots of adventures.

Martha Wins a Race

by Lydia

We have lots of adventures together. I have lots of adventures with my speaking dog Martha. I took Martha for a walk one day, but today Martha said, “Let’s Go!” and I attached her leash. She ate her alphabet soup and we were ready to go. “I’m going to win,” she said, so we came to a contest with dogs.

Skits raced against a dog named Martha. The dogs were competing in pairs. The zig-zagging trick was first. The dogs had to zig-zag through the flags during it. Martha was good at that trick. “Go Martha! Go Martha!” I cheered. She was really fast, but for the next trick the dogs had to go over a ramp and through a tunnel. It was Skits’ turn now. Skits was fast too, but he didn’t do that trick right. Martha got ten points. Skits got four.

The next trick was easy for Martha, but not for Skits. The flying saucer trick was next. The dogs had to chase the saucer and jump high to catch it. But Martha was good at that trick, too. “Yay Martha!” I screamed. Skits was not good at that trick. Ten more points for Martha, but Skits had one more chance.

That trick looked the hardest of all. The dogs had to go down that slide and make a big splash, but Skits knew he could do this one. But the contest wasn’t over yet. The end result was that Skits did not win the contest. Martha did. “I won!” she said when she grabbed her award. The award was a trophy with no handles. She was a super dog now. Skits did not win the contest, but he’d always been a dog champion.

~The End~

What We've Been Up To

Well, I sort of stopped bloggging for a bit, but I've been wanting to get back into it, if only for the personal accountability.

A few highlights of the last few months:

Thanksgiving, Daddy had to work so I took the girls last minute to Texas to visit my parents.

Helping Grandpa decorate their Christmas Tree

Christmas was fun, although Daddy had to stay in North Carolina and work again while the rest of us went to visit family in Arkansas.

Cooking with Grandma at Christmas

We also got to see Tyler's sister get married in Las Vegas right after Christmas.

After that trip, we were a bit tired.  Then in February, everyone got sick several times for pretty much the whole month, even Daddy.  And our heat went out downstairs for almost 2 weeks, so we were stuck in our rooms upstairs. Between the two, almost no school got done for the entire month.

March was uneventful and we spent most of the month just enjoying the nice weather and working on our yard.

April was fun. Tyler had a week off and we spent a few days in Washington, DC. We were able to visit a bunch of family and see the sights. I've never really "done" Washington, DC, so I was especially looking forward to the trip. We saw the Natural History and Air and Space Smithsonian Museums and the National Zoo.

Lydia watching the panda playing

They were getting grumpy by the last day. This was the best we could get in front of the Lincoln Memorial

At the end of April, we were able to go to Kansas City and Arkansas to see another one of Tyler's sister's get married.

Our girls don't much like posing for family pictures.

So far in May we were able to go pick strawberries.

Overall, I'd say we've had a good year so far. As for academics, Lydia and Eleanor seem to be progressing nicely...

Math:

In Math, Lydia is doing very well with CLE. It is the perfect fit for her right now and for the foreseeable future. She is on lesson 101, and while I don't think she will finish it before July (which is the beginning of our new year), she won't be too far behind considering we spent the first few months of school doing Saxon and started this one late. 

Eleanor is doing really well with math. She just finished Essential Math B, meaning she is officially done with Kindergarten math and we will be starting 1st grade math in the next few days. I've given it a lot of thought and am going to try Eleanor with the Mathematics Enhancement Programme Year 1. It is a British program that is free online, but I'm using it because it is a really solid, deep program unlike anything I've ever seen. I've never used it before, so I'm going to give it a trial run and see if it is a good fit. If that doesn't work, we'll probably try Math Mammoth, which I have already on hand.  Eleanor is also doing well with Miquon and is almost done with the first level (orange). I plan to continue with it as well and move her to level 2 (red) when she finishes it in the next few weeks.

Reading:

Lydia reads for 20 minutes every day from library books during mandatory reading time, although she reads many other books throughout the day. Even though her reading level and fluency is quite high, she really doesn't like reading chapter books yet and prefers picture books. Too many words on a page overwhelm her still. So for now, she is reading mostly picture books and higher leveled readers. I also have her read to me every day so I can make sure she doesn't forget her phonics. For that I am using the old vintage Treadwell Readers (sort of like the McGuffey readers pioneers used, but I like these better). She has been enjoying the stories and illustrations, and the way they are typed out isn't intimidating to her. This is a fairly recent change in our routine, so we are only about a third of the way through the first reader. At this point, I plan on having her go through all of them until she hits a road block.

Eleanor is doing well with OPGTR. She is on lesson 58 and is learning about her first digraphs like "sh" and "ch". Today she read the sentence, "The dog will catch the stick and bring it back." just to give you an idea of where she is (approximately a mid-first grade level).

Language Arts:

Lydia is still working on the same levels she was in writing, grammar, and spelling. She's powering through.

Eleanor finished her PreK handwriting book and has started HWT Kindergarten. She is very excited to learn how to write and copies lots of what she sees, even if she can't read it. My favorite was a few days ago when she copied "Disney. Made in China." from the back of one of her toys.

Geography:

I recently started Lydia on Evan-Moor Beginning Geography. I thought she would enjoy it and maybe learn a few valuable skills. So far I am correct. It is painless and she has fun doing her one page a day of geography.  Eleanor wants to do it too, but I'm making her wait until she can read a little better.

I'm in the midst of planning for next year since we are only about a month and a half away. It isn't going to be very complicated as we will mostly be continuing what we are already doing, but I will be doing more science and history now. I also plan to make memorization a larger priority this year, so will be working on that. I'll be doing a post on our plans in the next few weeks.

Months 4 & 5 Review

I forgot to do a review of our progress for September, and by the time I got around to it, I was halfway through the month of October and decided to just wait and do two months worth at once.  First, the extracurricular things.

We have been very busy.  In September we visited a butterfly farm.  It was really cute and the girls enjoyed letting the butterflies sit on their fingers.  There was also a little presentation about butterflies which set the girls on a butterfly information binge that we are still working on.

I caught Lydia reading her sisters a family favorite all on their own.  I love to see times like this.

For dress like a pirate day, we went to Krispy Kreme and got 2 dozen free donuts.  Two instead of 3 because Adelaide didn't want to be a pirate, only a bunny and for some reason that didn't count.

A few weeks ago, Tyler had a week vacation and we had a blast exploring our new area.  There are many things to see and do within an hour or two of our new home.  One of our favorite things was exploring Hanging Rock State Park.  There were many beautiful waterfalls and the girls were champs at hiking.  Eleanor, especially, would have gone miles and miles.

Dad with the girls behind a waterfall

Eleanor and Dad seeing a waterfall on their own without the rest of us because we were too tired after a full day of hiking.

Lydia looking at our first waterfall.

We spent a day at a nearby city park that had a carousel and train.  We got passes and rode them many times.  We also rented a canoe and Dad took the girls out on a really pretty lake for their first rides on a canoe.  

Eleanor on the carousel.

Dad and Adelaide on the train.

We also explored the traditional English gardens at Reynolda Gardens.  It was a fun morning and really pretty place.  The girls enjoyed frolicking in the garden.  They literally frolicked, but it was good to see.  We'll go back sometime, I think.

Our last family activity was to visit Old Salem.  This was probably the biggest bust, simply because the girls are a little small to enjoy the history aspect, although they did enjoy a lot of the more hands-on elements.  They enjoyed a puppet show, running the cider press, and the water pump.

Adelaide liked pumping water.

We had a fun Halloween.  Daddy had to leave to go to work at 7, so he took the girls out for a little early trick-or-treating and then we handed candy out to the kids who came by.

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Now for our school report:

Math:

Lydia had started fighting me on math and I was getting sick of how much time it took and decided that although it worked fairly well, we needed something more streamlined.  I switched Lydia over to Christian Light Education Math.  By all accounts, it was supposed to have all the pros of Saxon but be more streamlined, and this is exactly what I have found it to be.  It is a Mennonite math program and I am LOVING it.  We doubled up on the first several lessons in an effort to catch up since she was starting late and now our lessons are taking about a half hour a day.  She has completed through Lesson 32.  There are many more lessons in CLE than there were in Saxon in a given year, so we will be doing math most days, even when we don't do other school in an effort to get it done before next year.

Eleanor finished Essential Math A a while ago and is now well into B.  She is on page 64 (out of 158).  She is doing an amazing job and I'm already looking towards what she will do once she finishes.  She is also doing a great job with Miquon.  She is almost halfway through Miquon Orange.  I think I will try to introduce more math games rather than just worksheets in an effort to slow her down and help her have a deeper understanding of math.

Reading:

Lydia finished OPGTR!  This was a major milestone.  We've been working on OPGTR since Lydia turned 4 years old and she went from not being able to blend two-letter words to now being able read fluently on about a 4th grade level.  She also finished her first chapter book, The Boxcar Children, and is halfway through Sarah, Plain, and Tall.  I found this reading list by Mensa and have decided to have Lydia work through it.  She has also started Book-It again and I'm struggling to figure out goals for her.  I'll just have to think on it.

Eleanor is on Lesson 46 in OPGTR.  She has moved from CVC words to simple blends.  She is doing a great job with it too.  She enjoys reading Bob books and has finished the first 8.

Language Arts: