Planning and Evaluating

I spent the afternoon evaluating our progress this year, and then planning out the next quarter.  To my surprise, we are about 1 month away from completing all our work for the Kinder and 1st grade year of my boys!

I am slowly getting better at lesson planning - or really, my patience level and ability to not become overwhelmed at planning my children's education is getting better.  I was able to wade through the TEKS (Texas' education standards) and see how our studies were lining up with the public school Kinder and 1st grades.  In Texas we are not obligated to follow their guidelines as homeschoolers, but I like to benchmark our studies with what others are doing in school.  I think it's also good to have them ready to seamlessly slide back into school if something happened where I could not continue homeschooling.  Those things do happen, and it's good to be prepared!

Our studies covered all of their standards and more, so I feel confident ending our first year of homeschooling!  In some areas, they are even above grade level - which always makes you feel good, haha.  Our History studies are different since we chose to start with early civilizations through middle ages, but this coming year (starting in May!) we are doing American History in tandem with Texas History, so they should catch up nicely as the next grade just reviews and builds on the same things.

I was very happy with Saxon Math - it put both boys above grade level for Texas standards - so we will be using it again next year for both boys.

Corbin's reading is coming along well - he is right at grade level.  Hayden, of course, is zooming along he's at a 3rd grade level and getting better every day.  Next year will have lots of "free reading" time built in.

I would like to spend more time in science and nature study next year.  We covered plenty, but it wasn't as much of a focus as I'd like it to be, and I know the boys would love to learn more.

Corbin has requested more crafts - so I will have to work on building more of that into our studies - he loves coloring, painting, gluing and the like.

We ended up spending all year on our artist - Joseph Turner.  I'd like to increase that and work through at least 2, if not 3 artists this year.  However, I haven't decided which ones yet.

We are also adding in Spanish to our year, so I'm dusting off my old college Spanish for now and giving them some basics (numbers, colors, questions, expressions, household vocabulary, songs, etc).  I may check out some of the local Spanish homeschool class offerings when we get past my limits there - probably in a couple years.

There's much more we did and are planning to do, but it's getting late and this post is long enough already!  Needless to say, I'm exploding with ideas and I am having a blast planning the next year. :)

Remembering It's OK to Stop

There is one lesson I am constantly forgetting, and relearning, in our homeschool adventure - and that is this:

It's OK to stop.

Just because I had planned to cover X lesson, or Y number of pages - doesn't mean that's best for Hayden and/or Corbin that day.  We all have our good days and bad days even as adults.  Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I just can't concentrate.  Other days, I can spend a whole afternoon researching a subject and absorbing every detail.

And guess what?

Our kids aren't any different.

Today was a perfect example of that.  Hayden was hitting a wall with his attention span while working on his Language Arts book.  He was fidgety, fussy, spacey, and his mind was just not in it.  Immediately, I could feel my temper shortening and frustration setting in.  I wanted him to get his work done in a timely fashion and I was tired of redirecting him.

Luckily, I took a deep breath, stepped outside of the situation (and my frustration) and thought about it for a minute.  It wouldn't be the end of the world if he stopped today.  In fact, he's 1 lesson away from completely the entire year's work of LA program.  It's not like he hasn't put in the work!  And I don't want our homeschool to be me nagging (or yelling!) and sucking the joy out of our learning.

Instead, I told him to close up the book - we're done with this for the day.  Next thing I knew, he was sitting on the couch, immersed in a math iPad game for the next hour (he's still going).  Obviously, his brain had other ideas on how it wanted to be used today.

One more thing I am learning to love about homeschooling.  Learning doesn't happen just because you plan it, it happens when they're ready. 

You Can't Schedule Wonder

During our weekly Picture Study we enjoyed another one of Joseph Turner's paintings - this time of a wind mill. 

Of course, this then led to discussion on windmills and watching a video on a working grain mill - fascinating stuff!

Which then led to a discussion on gears - which I am now researching more to find some good manipulatives to play with and make our own "inventions".  Tip: The Thinkery currently has a wonderful gear exhibit that I think we may spend a bit of time in this month, now that we've introduced the concept.

The next hop was on to a discussion of flour - and what you can make with it.  So this afternoon we are baking bread.

You never know what's going to happen when you homeschool and I just love that!

A Moment In Time

Still traveling in the Middle Ages, we talked about what life was like without so many of our modern devices.  Since we are also starting our Solar System unit during this time - starting with the Sun - I introduced the kids to the concept of the hour glass as a method of measuring time.  Later we will be making a Sun Dial to continue their understanding of time.

I found a great craft to make your own hour glass and the boys had fun watching their sand and measuring our "hour glass".  It turns out, ours is actually around a  3 minute timer!

This is an easy craft that anyone could do with just a couple simple items you probably have around the house.

Materials:

2 bottles of similar size, one must have a squeeze top to slow the sand pouring in/out.
Tape
Sand

We used two salad dressing bottles that I cleaned out and scrubbed the labels off.  Hint: Use an SOS pad to scrub the sticky label residue off.  So much faster than just a sponge.

Pour the sand into one of the bottles.  Tape the other upside down to it and enjoy!

It took all of 5 minutes to create (besides cleaning the bottles!  That was the difficult part) and was lots of fun for the kids as they "timed" their activities the rest of the day.

Entering the Middle Ages

We have moved on to the Middle Ages - a time period I think my boys will really enjoy if I do a good job of presenting it to them.

I have dumped the Winter Promise snorefest Hideaways in History and instead decided to move forward in a more Charlotte Mason way - with great living books.  Books of knights and dragons, kings and battles - all things two little boys love to hear about and have read to them.  Also, keeping in mind their age, I am trying to pick books that they can understand.  It's a fine line between "twaddle" and completely losing them in old English literature where even I have to concentrate to understand the story.

We've only just begun, but Saint George and the Dragon has started us off well with a wonderful story and beautiful illustrations.

 

I am checking another book out from the library today - we will see if that one is a keeper too!  If so, I'll post on it later.  We bought Saint George and the Dragon at Half Price Books for $1!!  I am keeping my eye out for other gems of this quality every time I go so we can build up our library.  The joy of not purchasing twaddle, is that the books will last for years and years, not just a short age range like so many of the ones I've purchased in the past.