Day 2 under our belts and I am loving the routine of it! Today took her a while to do the journal. I am not sure yet if I will keep going at it the way I have and see if she just gets quicker at it the more practice she gets or maybe change it. I will reevaluate after this week is over. I think I need to give her a lesson on how a piece of paper works LOL Sounds strange, but so she knows about margins and things like that and where her letters are expected to be on the line. Her handwriting needs help... BAD! If I am not seeing this improving with the daily practice of her school work I may look into adding handwriting into our daily lessons.
Sam joined us again for part of it and that is working out surprisingly well! I was worried how he would do down there and if Lucy would be able to focus with him around. It was a bit of a distraction, but after a bit she was fine. He is happy too because there are toys down there that he doesn't have up here so it is great fun for him!
Tomorrow we are having a party at my friends house because she has decided to homeschool her kids too and it would have been their first day at public school tomorrow so in turn we celebrate that they are not :) This is so early into our routine I am not sure how I want to do it with Lucy if I want her to do some school before we go or after or just call the party school since we have a bunch of activities planned for them all of which can be considered educational. I am fine with calling it school, I just worry about giving myself too much leeway because my motivation is one of my big concerns with this working for us. Since that will only be day 3 I feel like I am setting myself up for slacking if we "skip" although maybe this will not be an issue at all because honestly I might be sad if we "skip" because I am loving this!
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Day one!
Today was Lucy first official day of school! It is so bitter-sweet that my baby girl is doing school! It feels like that should be not even a thought at this point! Things went very good! I had no clue how long what I had planned would take and it turned out to be about an hour and a half of work. I feel happy with that as a starting point. I only planned reading writing and math stuff so once we start to add more I think we will be at a great point! So here is what we did today...
Journal- I gave her a journal topic (this will be daily) written on the board she copied the question and wrote her answer in sentence form and then drew a little picture. I figure when she is older making her copy the question will not be necessary but for now it is giving her extra writing practice. Today's question... How do you feel about starting school today?
Letter practice- we worked on writing lowercase letters. She can recognize them enough to read them, but usually chooses to write in uppercase. I explained when you capitalize a letter and we went through writing them all on her dry erase board. We will keep practicing these until she masters it.
Word practice- I made her a worksheet with blanks within words I made it so there was more then one right option to make a word and let her choose what sound she wanted to use to finish a word. example: H_T She felt a little confused in the beginning but understood it quickly.
Numbers- I made a worksheet with numbers 1-30 with blank spots she had to fill in. She is figuring out how you write numbers like 23 that it is a 2 and a 3. this needs a bit more practice and she also needs help to know that 30 comes after 29 not 20 10 lol
Story time- This will also happen daily, I plan on keeping an on going chapter book. Today we started the boxcar children series. I loved those as a child! Part of story time will be her telling me when there is a word she doesn't understand. The world will be put on the board as a vocab word to use through out the week or however long it takes to have a good grasp on. The word she needed help with today... cross. She is excited to use it!
Sam decided he was not ready for a nap and ended up joining us too he did alright played with the little people I have down there, but it did become hard to keep him out of the rest of the basement while I was reading to her. I am super excited for tomorrow to see how it goes!
Journal- I gave her a journal topic (this will be daily) written on the board she copied the question and wrote her answer in sentence form and then drew a little picture. I figure when she is older making her copy the question will not be necessary but for now it is giving her extra writing practice. Today's question... How do you feel about starting school today?
Letter practice- we worked on writing lowercase letters. She can recognize them enough to read them, but usually chooses to write in uppercase. I explained when you capitalize a letter and we went through writing them all on her dry erase board. We will keep practicing these until she masters it.
Word practice- I made her a worksheet with blanks within words I made it so there was more then one right option to make a word and let her choose what sound she wanted to use to finish a word. example: H_T She felt a little confused in the beginning but understood it quickly.
Numbers- I made a worksheet with numbers 1-30 with blank spots she had to fill in. She is figuring out how you write numbers like 23 that it is a 2 and a 3. this needs a bit more practice and she also needs help to know that 30 comes after 29 not 20 10 lol
Story time- This will also happen daily, I plan on keeping an on going chapter book. Today we started the boxcar children series. I loved those as a child! Part of story time will be her telling me when there is a word she doesn't understand. The world will be put on the board as a vocab word to use through out the week or however long it takes to have a good grasp on. The word she needed help with today... cross. She is excited to use it!
Sam decided he was not ready for a nap and ended up joining us too he did alright played with the little people I have down there, but it did become hard to keep him out of the rest of the basement while I was reading to her. I am super excited for tomorrow to see how it goes!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
:)
Yup! Tomorrow!!! There is still a little to be done in the school room and I hope that me starting now will not hinder my progress. Tonight hopefully Nick will get the new light put in. I made my lesson for tomorrow and figured out our journal topics for the week and I am super excited to go go go!!!
Friday, August 27, 2010
We are getting so close!!!
I feel like the rest of the world has already started the school year homeschooling or not, I am feeling a bit behind but we are planning on schooling year round so I am sure it really wont be an issue. Not to mention we technically don't have to be doing anything this year so we will be going above and beyond as it is! But both Lucy and I are super excited and I want to run with her love for learning!
The school room is all we are waiting on and I dont have any before pictures, but trust me you dont want to see it! Last week we started really getting down to business in there cleaning and organizing things! Some of our original plans are probably not going to happen for this year, but we did get some new carpet for down there.
and nick is going to install some more lighting too. I am also hoping to put up some sort of curtain to hide the furnace and water heater but it is already feeling much more homey and inviting down there! I cannot wait to see it all done! I am sure I will post more pics soon! Hopefully we will be off to our start of school real soon!
The school room is all we are waiting on and I dont have any before pictures, but trust me you dont want to see it! Last week we started really getting down to business in there cleaning and organizing things! Some of our original plans are probably not going to happen for this year, but we did get some new carpet for down there.
and nick is going to install some more lighting too. I am also hoping to put up some sort of curtain to hide the furnace and water heater but it is already feeling much more homey and inviting down there! I cannot wait to see it all done! I am sure I will post more pics soon! Hopefully we will be off to our start of school real soon!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Chugging along
We have made great progress on the school room this past week! It is really starting to take shape and adding to my excitement! I am working on a list of stuff from Rainbow Resource to order, and would love to pick up some basic little computer for down there just for school stuff! But we are defiantly just at the point of finish the room and go! I love it!
Lucy is still chugging along with her Scholastic ready readers picking them up and reading them on her own several times a day! I also got my "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons" book yesterday and I am looking through that. It appears a bit strange to me but we are going to give it a whirl. I am just worried it may confuse her a bit since she has quite a grasp already, but I figure she still doesn't have any clue when a letter make a long or silent sound so this may help! Even I dont know a start date I think I want to make a list lesson plan type thing started for the beginning just so when day one starts I feel like I have a starting point.
There is tons more homeschool stuff running through my head at the moment but I guess that will be topic for another day :)
Lucy is still chugging along with her Scholastic ready readers picking them up and reading them on her own several times a day! I also got my "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons" book yesterday and I am looking through that. It appears a bit strange to me but we are going to give it a whirl. I am just worried it may confuse her a bit since she has quite a grasp already, but I figure she still doesn't have any clue when a letter make a long or silent sound so this may help! Even I dont know a start date I think I want to make a list lesson plan type thing started for the beginning just so when day one starts I feel like I have a starting point.
There is tons more homeschool stuff running through my head at the moment but I guess that will be topic for another day :)
Monday, August 9, 2010
While we are busy planning other things... Learning happens!
This weekend Lucy completely assured me that homeschooling is by far the best decision for her! So far we don't have a date set to start school the space which we have decided to do it in is still in shambles and far from ready by I do have a delusional idea that it will only take a weekend to get set. Anyways Lucy hasn't really been taking the wait until we start school thing well she insists on learning she wants it so bad! So to keep her happy we bought a summer get ready for Kindergarten work book we have been doing tons of activities at the library and talking a little bit about the concept of putting the letter sounds together to make words.
She has been getting so frustrated when she picks up a book ( a chapter book at that) and cannot read it! She wants to read very bad! So when it came to read her a story I would try to pick one maybe she could help with but she would just look at the pictures and guess that just frustrated me and was not working! So to help with her desire to figure it out we decided to write words on a dry erase board and help her figure them out. And then it clicked! She can do it! She was reading cat hat pat and so on! We were so excited but I guess at that point I still did not feel like she could read just sound out words (ugh duh me!)
So last week I am searching out ways for me to help teach her how to know what sounds the blends make and such. Pretty much while I was in the process of doing that our room mate (my best friend) dug out these easy readers that we picked up (FOR FREE!!) at a rummage sale. They are Scholastic phonics ready readers if anyone wants to know. And now that I went to look at them to see what they are called I realize we have books 13-24 lol not even the easiest ones. Anyways she sat down with Lucy handed her a book she read it! Like no big deal just sat there and read it! So Beck hands her another she read that too! She sat there and read 7 books before she wanted to quit so she could go grill with daddy. When she woke up in the morning the first thing she does is pick up another and reads it! My baby can read!!! My four year old baby can read!!!! I am shocked! This kid should not be waiting another year to start school! She should be up and running as fast as she wants! I am so happy to be able to give her this! My main goal of this "school year" was to get her to this point that she already got her self... while waiting for me to teach her! This kid is amazing! I would hate to be holding her back so she could be at the same point of her classmates! Thanks Lucy for already proving this is the right thing... before we even started!
She has been getting so frustrated when she picks up a book ( a chapter book at that) and cannot read it! She wants to read very bad! So when it came to read her a story I would try to pick one maybe she could help with but she would just look at the pictures and guess that just frustrated me and was not working! So to help with her desire to figure it out we decided to write words on a dry erase board and help her figure them out. And then it clicked! She can do it! She was reading cat hat pat and so on! We were so excited but I guess at that point I still did not feel like she could read just sound out words (ugh duh me!)
So last week I am searching out ways for me to help teach her how to know what sounds the blends make and such. Pretty much while I was in the process of doing that our room mate (my best friend) dug out these easy readers that we picked up (FOR FREE!!) at a rummage sale. They are Scholastic phonics ready readers if anyone wants to know. And now that I went to look at them to see what they are called I realize we have books 13-24 lol not even the easiest ones. Anyways she sat down with Lucy handed her a book she read it! Like no big deal just sat there and read it! So Beck hands her another she read that too! She sat there and read 7 books before she wanted to quit so she could go grill with daddy. When she woke up in the morning the first thing she does is pick up another and reads it! My baby can read!!! My four year old baby can read!!!! I am shocked! This kid should not be waiting another year to start school! She should be up and running as fast as she wants! I am so happy to be able to give her this! My main goal of this "school year" was to get her to this point that she already got her self... while waiting for me to teach her! This kid is amazing! I would hate to be holding her back so she could be at the same point of her classmates! Thanks Lucy for already proving this is the right thing... before we even started!
Sunday, August 1, 2010
My Newest School Find!
I am always on the hunt for a good deal I have no shame in saving things for years if I can buy it now cheap! This may be one of the contributors to the clutter I have! LOL but I cannot pass up a good deal! I have a feeling that this will be a common (as long as I have my way about it) Part of this blog!
This weeks awesome find was ...
At Goodwill for 6.99! Cant beat that as far as I am concerned! This is a foreign language program in German where the learning comes from watching movies in German. There are lessons and then some that are just like a cartoon. They make it really easy to pick up on! We have only watched some of it once and we all learned things! We never really decided to teach German but I guess Goodwill has for us LOL! Lucy likes it so that is good too! Hopefully soon I will do a full review after we use it some more, but so far so good! Hopefully it will accompany the Easy learning German book I picked up there last time!
This weeks awesome find was ...
At Goodwill for 6.99! Cant beat that as far as I am concerned! This is a foreign language program in German where the learning comes from watching movies in German. There are lessons and then some that are just like a cartoon. They make it really easy to pick up on! We have only watched some of it once and we all learned things! We never really decided to teach German but I guess Goodwill has for us LOL! Lucy likes it so that is good too! Hopefully soon I will do a full review after we use it some more, but so far so good! Hopefully it will accompany the Easy learning German book I picked up there last time!
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