Field Trip to the Apple Orchard

We took a break from school today and traveled to a nearby apple orchard. The children had a blast! Henrietta Creek Apple Orchard does a wonderful job with educating children (and parents) on all things apple, including different types of insects that hurt and harm the crops, they spent a lot of time discussing the importance of bees. They also talked about how apple jelly and cider is made. And because this orchard had several gardens that grew more than just apples, they talked about cotton and how they used to make clothes. They showed the students how cotton was carded and spun with the spinning wheel. The presentation went a lot longer than my children's attention spans but they did a great job.

Starting the year off right!

And... We're off!

We started school about a month ago and have been going strong ever since. The start of this year has gone so much better than last year. First grade has been fun, and we have been doing some pre-k work as well. I am still trying to balance working with different levels, as well as keeping up with housework and all the other things that encompass my life. I have met a few homeschooling moms that have been doing this for a lot longer than me, so I'm hoping to glean some of their godly wisdom. Here are a few pictures of our first day of school- a month overdue but never- the-less.

Saying goodbye to Kindergarten

We officially finished our Kindergarten year at the end of May. We are going to pick back up with a little school next week for a "summer term" then we will take another couple weeks off before officially starting first grade. I am going to be working on a preschool curriculum for our son this year as well as trying to incorporate more toddler activities, this will keep me pretty busy for the next couple weeks.

I'm sharing pictures of our end of the year party. We didn't participate in any homeschool groups this year so we were not able to benefit from any of the Kindergarten graduations or parties. We let our daughter have a couple friends over for a sleepover. They all had a great time with water games, crafts and a movie.

Homeschool T.V.

My new favorite homeschool resource is the homeschool T.V. channel. If you haven't had a chance to check it out or if you have never heard of it before- you are missing out. It is chock full of great relevant programs that encourage you in your christian walk as well as your homeschool experience. There is a daily schedule of shows that is listed by the week so you can plan ahead what you want to watch. I have become quite addicted to it. It's as good as going to conference.

Wrapping it up

We are finishing up the year here, in fact this Friday we will officially call Kindergarten done!
When we started this journey I wasn't sure what this year would look like for us, I was filled with fear, anticipation, and excitement. I had all these opinions of what our kindergarten year was suppose to be and because of that I placed unneeded expectations and pressures on myself. It wasn't until I got about halfway through the year that I finally relaxed and realized that our homeschooling isn't suppose to be modeled after the public school system, if that is what I wanted to begin with, public school is where I would have put her. When I released myself from those notions I began to really enjoy teaching. Of course we have had our ups and downs but I have a different outlook and purpose for our homeschooling now. I am excited for what the rest of our years will look like.

Keeping her busy

If I let her, this little cutie will monopolize all of my time. She is very strong willed and very persistent. She is in a book phase, which is wonderful as long as you have time to read her 80 books a day! Honestly we sometimes run and hide when we see her walking toward her book basket. This simple activity however has given me a much needed break, I am able to get housework, schoolwork, dinner and anything else done when she is sitting in her highchair with a little bit of rice and some spoons and cups. I try to change it up every now and then with different containers to pour into and out of. The first time I did this, she did try to eat the rice, but she quickly found out it wasn't worth trying.

Unfair stress

Here in the state of Texas we have the TAKS test that our public school children have to take. All year it stays on the minds of students, teachers and parents alike. My BFF is a fifth grade teacher and it is a constant stresser for her throughout the year to make sure she has taught and prepared each of her students to be successful at this test. This week the scores were returned to the students and she was sharing with me what an emotional rollercoaster the day was. She said there was so much crying out of relief and dissapointment. Her fifth grade students were so stressed about this test that several of those that passed cried as hard as those that did not. I hate that our government would place so much undue pressure on these babies to pass a test that may or may not indicate their educational level. It was yet another reminder as to why we do what we do. I believe in the accountability as well as evaluating students work, but there has to be a better way.

I finally completed our circle time board. I have been meaning to do this for months. We have done most of these things on a regular basis, but I wanted to set a side a formal time to sit down right after our bible time to work on these skills. I used various websites to pull some of the sheets from. I will try and locate them all for you. The clock and hundreds chart was something I already had on hand. This is one of those Tri-fold science boards, that we pull out for school and tuck away when we are done.

On our board:

Days of the week
Months of the Year
Number of the Week
Letter of the Week
Sight words
Clock
Money
Books of the New Testament
Bible verse for the week
Weather
Hundreds Chart
Skip Counting
Address and phone number

1+1=1 Calendar time

Homeschool Creations Calendar Time

I have lost where I found the skip counting and address sheet, but when I find it I will add their links as well.

Wizard of Oz lapbook

We just finished reading the book Wizard of Oz. It is a fantastic book, filled with great imagery, and wonderful story telling. I have never read it until now, and It was soooo much better than the movie. In fact as we were watching the movie my daughter kept asking if particular parts of the book were going to happen and I turned to my husband and said- wow, she is going to be very disappointed in this movie. She wasn't but she thought they should have added a few more of the different lands, especially the china land. It was her favorite. It allowed for some great discussion though. We completed the lapbook as we went through the story, placing in different pieces as they happened. It was our first lapbook to complete this year, and I'm excited to be adding more of these into our schooling.

Here's a quick look at the finished Product

We found this lapbook off of Homeschool Share

Stay tuned

I had bigger hopes for this blog in the beginning. I had planned on making it some what of a journal of our homeschooling years, specifically our first, as well as a resource for all my homeschooling friends and I wanted it to be an encouragement to those just starting out like me. I completely underestimated how much homeschooling and life in general would consume any blogging time that I might have. I mostly use my time on the computer to glean great ideas from other wonderful homeschooling bloggers. I'm hoping now that our school year is coming to a close, I will have time to catch up and make this blog what I had originally envisioned. Although we are not actually ending school, I just plan on using the summer to do all those fun activities I didn't get a chance to get to, but certainly I should have more time... right?

Becoming Aware

Today as I was browsing through some blog posts from some of my favorite bloggers I came across this post. If you have some time, check it out. It really gave me something to think about. I am quite confident in our decision to homeschool, but after reading what Elizabeth had to say about her decision and especially after reading through the comments others made- I want to be cognisant of how I handle being a homeschooling mom. I homeschool out of my conviction that it is the right thing to do for our family. I want us to be the primary influence in our children's lives but on the same note I don't want our children to live a sheltered life- it's a fine line we walk. Something I have especially struggled with through this first year homeschooling is how to handle the relationships I have with other moms that have decided not to homeschool. Something one of the commenter's said has really made me question how well I have handled this.
"As a homeschooling mother, I must admit that homeschoolers-as a group come across as self-righteous snobs"
Another person posted how homeschoolers sometimes think of themselves as being elitist. These are just a few of the words that I never want to accompany my name. Although sadly I can see how easy it would be to fall into one of these categories. It's something I definitely need to give more prayer to. Relationships are important to me and I would hate for any of my convictions to become a stumbling block to someone else.

We are a little more than half way through our reading series with Sonlight for the year. I feel content with where Zoe is at in her reading. I am working on fluency but I think she has a good understanding of basic letter sounds, and for the most part can sound out unfamiliar words quite well. I'm looking forward to when she can just grab any book of the book shelf and read it to us.

Snow Day!

Another reason to love homeschooling. While most of our surrounding school districts were

in school today, we made snowmen, had a great snow ball fight, then followed it up with hot chocolate and a valentine craft!

Free Art

Art is not something we do too often, but I'm trying really hard to incorporate it more into our school time. It was always one of my favorite things to do in school, and I don't want our children to miss out. They asked to paint one afternoon after school time, and although I was hesitant do to my dislike of messes :) I decided why not? So we got it all out and let them go at it.

Revamping

I made today my "teacher work day." We woke up and right from the start everything started going wrong, the children seemed out of control, I was cranky, I couldn't find several things I was looking for and at that point- I felt beat and made the executive decision to take the day off and revamp our set up. I would like to believe that those who have been homeschooling a little longer than me have struggled a little with some of my issues. Although I have loved homeschooling thus far, I have struggled much with the balance of life and getting school done and I needed a moment to just breath and think through what wasn't working. We have been having schooltime in our playroom which has been working well, but because of the set up, I was keeping all my teacher materials and manipulatives in various places throughout the house. I was fed up with trying to keep track of where things were so I spent the morning moving things around, sorting and cleaning. It was a good feeling when all was done. I feel ready to have some really good productive days that will begin and end with organization that I didn't have before. I really believe that my lack of organization in most areas of my life are why I can't seem to really get control of things around here and why I get easily frustrated. I am going to work on putting a few things in place in the next couple days/weeks that will help me in this area.

Our Bear Unit

Bears, Bears Bears

We spent this whole week learning about Bears, habitats, and hibernating. I plan on continuing this unit into next week because there is so much I wanted to get to but we ran out of time. I am working on including our 4 year old into most of our schooling and this also includes the 3 year old I babysit a few days a week. So in addition to the Bear study I'm doing with Zoe I planned all kinds of fun learning activities to do with all of them.

After our usual Bible Time, we started the first morning out with a song. I had each of my children find a teddy bear for us to keep in our school room all week to play and work with. They enjoyed telling their bears to wake up at the end of the song

Bears are sleeping (Tune: Brother John)

Bears are sleeping.

Bears are Sleeping.

In their Lairs.

In their Lairs.

Soon it will be springtime,

Soon it will be springtime,

Wake up Bears!

Wake up Bears!

We then measured our bears with unifix cubes and discussed whose bears was the longest.

We played a quick game of hide and seek with our Teddy Bears. The loved doing this!

We read the story Corduroy and did a button sorting activity

Our art project for the day was them gluing overalls and buttons on their own Corduroy.

We had a story sequencing activity.

The next day we did a Gummy Bear sorting activity. They each had to sort a handful of gummy bears on a sorting map. Then we each counted how much of each color we had, we made a chart on the wipe board. Zoe had her own chart that she counted them up on.



We did a teddy bear weighing activity. I had several objects that they weighed using teddy bears. Zoe then colored how many teddy bears it took each object to equal out on the scale.


She then cut out the colored bears and placed them in order from lightest to heaviest (in case your wondering this is an AIMS activity)


One of the days we sorted teddy grahams and charted those as well. I don't know if you knew this but you can sort teddy grahams by- arms up, arms down, round tummy, flat tummy, feet together and feet apart.

We finished up bears for the week by reading through the We're going on a Bear Hunt story. After reading through it once and doing the actions, they wanted to hide their bears and pretend like we were going to hunt them. You can find one of the adaptations for this story here

I am going to post on some of the other things we are doing for Bears more specifically with Zoe our kindergartner on another day.

If you are looking for some other great Tot learning ideas check out 1+1 =1

Trying to get the hang of it

Well, we are now through one semester of homeschooling. As a whole I think it's gone well. I feel like we could have done more and been more productive but I'm not beating myself up for it, I know that we are still further ahead then where she would be if she was at an away from home school. But still I had hoped for more. We are using Sonlight as our curriculum but to be honest thus far I'm not loving it. I think I'm willing to give it another year before I completely ditch it, but I am leaning more toward a unit study approach. I love the Five in a Row curriculum, but I also feel like I need just a little more than what it offers. So I'm playing around with a few ideas. I have always wanted to write curriculum, planning was always my favorite thing to do as a public school teacher, so I might even put together my own curriculum for next year- who knows? Right now my focus is on trying to make school more fun while still maintaining a learning atmosphere. We won't officially start this next semester until This coming Monday- I need to get to work!