The more I try...

Things have been sooo stressful around here.  Lil Man is doing FANTASTIC with his school work so far.  He is loving Easy Peasy's curriculum, which we are using the Getting Ready 2.  He has a lesson from the McGuffey's First Reader a day, learns a capital letter to write from a hooked on phonics video a day, and then we do SOTW.  He is really enjoying it.  Sophie on the other hand... ugh.  The Easy Peasy 5th grade curriculum was proving too hard.  The language arts is focused on poetry that year, which was just too much for her.  She has a very literal mind, and doesn't understand how poetry compares things (i.e. My love is like rose blah blah blah).  She was getting more and more frustrated with it and herself, which is not our style at all.  So, we went back and started over at Day One with Easy Peasy 4th grade.  It uses McGuffey's Third Reader, which I do like.  It is building vocabulary and helping her with writing skills.  So I refuse to complain.

Math remains ambiguous for us.  I do NOT like Easy Peasy's math curriculum ideas.  Sophie doesn't respond well to the "Watch a video, answer questions" at all.  And Lil Man has me stumped as to what to teach.  He needs to learn how to write numbers and recognize larger numbers in their written form.  But he is well beyond Kindergarten arithmetic.  He can add, subtract, and even understands multiplication and division MENTALLY.  As soon as you write an equation down, he's lost.  I may just grab them some workbooks from the Parent-Teacher Store and call it a day haha.

Every time I turn around, I'm drawn more and more towards unschooling.  Obviously its a win-win for the kids, as they're just living life like always.  The only problem is ME.  I feel like they need to be doing some sort of traditional stuff for it to be school, even though I've read over and over that it isn't necessary.  Unschooling does work.  And I've proved it to myself that it works for my kids.  Why can't I just let it be a that?  Ugh.

School's Back IN!!!

Its August, and in West Virginia, that means SCHOOL TIME.  I'm mad at myself for not blogging during the summer, but we were B-U-S-Y.  Between going out on the boat, walks, mini-vacas, and the like, I just didn't have time.  But this school year I am making blogging a "Monday Activity".

I have everything we will be doing this year all ready.  I'm using Easy Peasy for math and language arts for both the kids, at least in the beginning.  I was going to buy Life of Fred for math, but its a HUGE investment, so I'm torn.  I like Easy Peasy for K language arts because it uses McGuffey readers, which is much better than phonics in my opinion.  We will be using Story of the World Vol 1 for S.S, for both, and I am getting a Human Body book and activity books off Amazon for Sophie.  We will adapting those lessons for Gary.  I'm pretty excited :)

We were using Netflix a lot as a supplemental resource, but we aren't getting it anymore (booooo) so I'm looking for new ways to integrate that kind of learning.  I'm thinking that we will be using YouTube a LOT this year.  Gary especially learns so much better when its visual like that.

So that's our game plan, folks.  I'm going to slowly start the kids back into "School mode" if you will, since its still so nice out.  I don't see us doing anything super big until after Labor Day at least.  Not that we are a "nose to the grindstone" type of group anyway haha.

Have fun everyone!!!!

I'm a horrible blogger!!!!

       Its official, I suck at blogging.  I honestly think I just have sooo much other stuff going on that I forget to blog.  So from here on out, I'm going to make this a weekly thing, and will write every Wednesday, rain or shine lol.  I think its important to have the blog, and to document our life, so I need to make the effort.

      In other news, we received Sophie's portfolio assessment and..... (drum roll please)......  She is a fifth grader now!!!  Woo hoo!!!  I'm so proud of her!  I really feel like we've made great strides in the last couple months together.  She is really retaining the things we learn about, and that's what is important.  So, we'll stick to what we've been doing, and go from there.


      A little info on what we've been up to:  We have been doing typical summer type activities.  We have been out on the boat once now.  Lil Man went into the water for real this year, the first time everrrr, so that was a big deal.  He finally realized that life jackets actually do their job and keep you up lol.  We also did a little real life math at Chuck E. Cheese over the weekend.  We bought 180 tokens that had to be split up, and then they had to split the tickets 3 ways as well.  We visited Cabelas for the first time and I love that place.  They have  a TON of stuffed animals (the real taxidermy type) that the kids were totally in to.  And not just the animals in our area either... there was even a polar bear!  It was too rainy and nasty to do much else, but we had fun with our indoor activities just the same.  Sophie has been reading like crazy lately.  We purchased the 50 books for $50 from scholastic and she is thrilled!  There were two scary stories books that she read the first couple days, and then you read two A-to-Z Mysteries books, and now she's reading "Super Fudge" by Judy Blume.  I love that she's reading so much!

      I don't know what we have in store for the week coming up yet.  I'd like to get outside with the kids and do some exploring, if the weather will hold up.  We've been trying to be quiet for Gary, since he is back on night shift.  That's hard when you're only 5 and 3!  Sophie on the other hand has no problem as long as she can stick her nose in a book or computer lol.  I guess we'll continue to play it as we go ;)

Notebooking!!!

        I have been turned on to a whole new way of keeping track of progress when homeschooling... NOTEBOOKING!!!  I think its the coolest lol.  It's a lot like lapbooking, but in my opinion, a lot easier.  You can find a bazillion free templates and tutorials online, and I found a couple tutorials that show you how to make your own using PowerPoint or in my case LibreOffice Impress (I'm cheap!).  I have been experimenting for the last couple days and thinking of what I could make now, without the books I'm going to be using next year, to make some for the kids.  I finally decided to make either an alphabet book or a number book for Lil Man.  He's been wanting to learn how to write the letters and names etc lately, so I don't feel like I'm pushing to awful much by making him a little book up to learn them.  I was having some problems, creatively speaking, on the alphabet one, and ended up finding a template I like better than my own attempts online.  The number one, though, was a lot easier.  He already knows his numbers to see them and can count pretty high, so really, all he needs to learn is how to write the number, and recognize it's word form (i.e FIVE versus 5).   Using the tutorial I found by Notebooking Nook on YouTube I created a title page and number pages up to Ten/10.  It would be helpful to know that you can download and install all kinds of fonts online any more.  I found one called Print Dashed on 1001freefonts that looks just like the dashed letters you see in "Learning to Write" type workbooks.  I'm pretty darn proud of myself!  I'm going to use Notebooking to keep record of our learning next year with both kids.  It seems like a heck of a lot more fun than regular old worksheets and essays etc.  And it helps to make things more adaptable between the two of them, which means less money spent on my end.  I'm going to attempt to add the pdf file for the number notebook I created on here, in case anyone should come across this blog post and want it.

Number Notebook

        On the "unschooling" front, the kids are mad about Netflix here lately.  We've watched LeapFrog videos, National Geographic documentaries, and who even knows what else.  We have it on our Wii, Sophie has it on her iPod, and the kids LOVE it!  I know for a fact, one of the documentaries was about sharks because Sophie was asking to look things up on the computer about them.  She has always liked sharks (from a distance! lol) and I'm glad that she is still learning new things about them :)  We have also been learning a lot about baby animals, raccoon's in particular.  My mother in law found an orphaned raccoon the other day and is keeping it for a pet.  It's barely a month old and still nursing from a baby bottle, with a homemade animal formula.  The kids all love the little critter, and I think his/her name is going to be Smokey, a play on Smokey and the Bandit.  It's very friendly and cuddly.  I do believe we are attached already!

Outside Fun

        Well, I mailed out Sophie's portfolio this morning.  I spent half the night going back and forth on what to include and what to leave out, and what to say in the summaries I submitted for each of the 4 subjects.  I knew some of the things I definitely wanted to include, such as the dino trading cards she made and a sample of her recipes.  The rest didn't feel like it showed much.  I kept telling myself that I only had 2 and a half months of work to choose from, but still.... I had 2 writing examples.  Period.  And they were only a paragraph each.  UGH.  So hopefully, her extensive reading/resource list makes up for it!

        On the bright side of homeschool paperwork/red tape:  Lil Man has decided he is DEFINITELY staying home with Momma next year.  The thought of getting up before the birdies does not appeal to my little night owl lol.  I'm so happy!!  I already have a good idea what we'll be doing; I'm getting the Life of Fred elementary series, and we'll be working through that as a group, which I'm hoping will help reinforce Sophie's fundamentals.  I'm also  going to get Sophie a 5th grade workbook to fiddle with if she chooses.  We will also be doing our Social Studies side-by-side with Story of the World vol. 1.  I found a free pdf file that has the text, student book, and parent guide :)  It can be adapted for a multi-level instruction, which means less paperwork and fuss for me.  Science will continue to be child-led, with the both of them studying similar subjects at the same time, once again, easier for both of us.  And of course we will be reading, reading, reading.  Sophie is going to start writing more, hopefully, with the incentive of typing instead of "writing" things out.  Lil Man will be using a free phonics program I found online called FunFonix and I'm going to buy him the Kindergarten workbook for Handwriting without Tears.

         Its SOOOOO nice out today!!  The kids have been in and out all day, going between some more educational movies off Netflix (i.e. LeapFrog) and doing noisy, summer activities like playing Rock Band with my pots/pans/metal bowls.  We also used the play castle to dry some blankets, thus creating an even cooler play house lol!  It was all fun and games until Sophie got stung by a bee on the foot :(  She tends to overreact to these types of situations, even if it isn't her its happening to.  So the outside play ended abruptly for her and she seated herself (limping all the way) on the couch to watch Pocahontas and pouted.  Hopefully this doesn't ruin her for the rest of the summer, which is entirely possible unfortunately.  She's my little drama queen lol.

Things you learn the HARD WAY

           Its been a rough couple days for me.  My allergies are killing me, the kids are stir crazy, its raining like its monsoon season outside, and I have been getting a lot of negative feedback from "people" about homeschooling and my methods.  Criticism can be a great thing, really... It helps you to see what you're doing wrong, it shows you where you need improvement, but it also makes you question the things you are doing, even if it is working.

        Look, Sophie is LEARNING the way we do things.  No, she isn't writing essays or memorizing useless facts; maybe we DON'T pour over textbooks for hours at a time.  But she is learning.  She reads about dinosaurs, sea otters, and traveling West in the old days.  We color pictures, play with homemade play dough, and bake cakes.  We look at leaves, and dig up worms.  We take trips, and google facts.  We are having fun and figuring out life.  Get the heck over it!

A new Sensory Bin and making Sophie's Portfolio

          I made the kids a new sensory bin the other day.  They had taken the rice one outside and scattered it all over the yard (planting rainbow seeds!), so I had to go hunt down my container and lid and wash them up first.  I have been seeing tons and tons of "recipes" for Cloud Dough, which is basically home made moon dough.  It was super simple, just a bag of flour and a cup or 2 of oil.  You can use any oil you want.... baby oil, vegetable oils, olive oil etc.  I had almost a whole bottle of baby oil so I used that, and had to add some veg. oil to get to the right consistency.  I also added a couple drops of tea tree oil.  We like the way it smells and it deters insects.  A word of warning with cloud dough is that it is MESSY.  Like every where messy.  And I couldn't figure out how to color it, so we kept it white.  The kids got some measuring tools, but quickly decided it was more fun to use dino figures and cars to make tracks in the fluffy dough.  This started a discussion on fossils and how they are formed.  Sophie was pretty into that, of course.  She's interested in anything from that period in history lol

       We've reached the point in the "school" year where I have to provide the county with some sort of evaluation proving I have taught her something productive.  We have chosen to do a portfolio, which I will send to a certified evaluator.  She will look through Sophie's work, decide whether she thinks she has learned enough to go into the 5th grade, and then I will submit her decision to the Board of Education.  I'm a little nervous, having never done this, but I feel confident in what we've achieved in the last couple months.  We have quite a few worksheet type things, and Sophie's reading/resources list is long.  She has read a ton of books and browsed many websites.  I'm going to have to make a run to walmart or CVS to print out some photos to include, but other than that, we have everything ready to send.  We have to turn in the evaluation by June 30th to the board, or they get all butt hurt, and I'm going to go head and send in my NOI (notice of intent) at the same time, through a certified letter.  We're going to continue to learn through the summer, since everything we do is learning, and we'll be reading A LOT.  I have some really cute ideas set aside for making lapbooks to go along with the Little House books we'll be reading, and to explore the West (think Lewis and Clark).  I think we'll do a lot of Math review over the summer too, because I feel like she's still leery of multiplication and division.  I'm excited!!