September Review

We have had a very lively month.  We have spent time at Mystic Seaport, and the kids have taken a cool class there.  We have been to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, We have been to the Florence Griswold Musuem, and the kids took an art class there too.  We have studied geography, dinosaurs, oceans, multiplication, division, reading comprehension, have written reports and poems, done some fun playdates and great group get togethers with the Southeastern CT homeschoolers, and gone to great classes including sports classes, and lately CJ has been taking piano.  We are reading The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and doing a fun unit on it.  We have been learning about art and music, including murals, still lifes, Mozart, Bach, and impressionist landscapes.  We have learned life cycles of plants and certain animals.  We have been to the library often.  We have finished a great unit on insects, including a fun craft on the life cycle of a butterfly.  We have completed a unit on money.  We have done crafts, and playdough, and made moon dough and goo.  We have been playing chess, and had a great time at Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center doing a whole series of activities on birds.  The kids participated in a Bluff Point Shore Program through Project Oceanology, and attended a Kidsploration concert.  We have visited Clyde's Cider Mill, and been watching Liberty's Kids.  We have visited the planetarium several times and studied the solar system in our school room.  We went to the Big E and the kids learned all about agriculture and New England.  We have been baking and cooking together, and doing lots of chores together.  We have done weaving, attended fall festivals, and started ccd.  We have done some great computer and kindle activities too.  The kids have learned about fractions and made fossils, extracted honey and studied bees, worked in the garden and taken nature walks, preserved food for the winter, and worked in our Human Body science kit.  We also have learned all about Florence Nightingale and famous scientists.  We have had a lot of fun and completed a lot of work, and completed some assessments to keep in my bin of stuff that I keep.  Tomorrow if the kids aren't sick, as they are today, we will finish our paper making kit we began this past week.  We will continue to study oceans and dinosaurs, and learn about artists and composers.  We are going to keep practicing multiplication and we will read The Wind in the Willows next.  Looking forward to another great month.

Goals and Planning

As much as I love unschooling, and understand how wonderful it is for my kids learning, I am a little crazy about planning.  I am an unorganized person by nature, and a little lazy to boot, so without a plan of some basic sort it is easy for me to get sidetracked, lose focus, and to fail in many areas of my life.  I have tackled this in my homemaking life with my homemaking binder, chronicled here: Peace, Love, Laundry and Food  Having had success with that I have a homeschooling binder.

On the cover is a poem I wrote in 2006 for my resume.  It helps remind me why I do what I do.

The beauty in the face of a child
       Who finally understands.
The ah has and the I get its
        And the ever present demands.
The wonder in a student's eyes
         When they see who you are.
A counselor, and mentor, and the
          World's best teacher by far.
You show them how to conquer math
          And teach them how to read.
You scaffold them, and love them
           Trying to fill every need.
You lift them up so they can grow
           Proud, and smart, and strong.
You teach them to be themselves
            Though you don't have them long.
For all these reasons and many more
             Do all the teachers teach.
For our lives are full and our goals are met
             If even one small life is reached.

I handwrite my basic plans for each day of the week in pencil in the daily section.

The front has my spreadsheet of basic goals and subjects I want to cover in 2014.  Then the daily section where I keep my lesson plans.  Tomorrow looks like this:  

Monday 15     Dixit

Binder                 Phys ed               Science lesson and games with Rich

Geography          Time Machine

Chess                   Library visit

I put the day of the week, day of the month, followed by the game we will play together in the evening.  Then just a basic list of what I want to cover that day.  Our time machine is just reading the Time Machine and doing the literature unit we have to go along with it.  We will continue in a geography book we are doing and play chess.  Their binders have a math activity, a literacy activity, a calendar to fill in, weather to graph, time to write in analog and digital, multiplication fact families, and they have to write and illustrate a sentence in their journal.

The other portions of my binder are: Art and Music, Health and Phys Ed, Language arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Technology and other.  In art I have the printouts for the art video curriculum we use.  In phys ed I have a printout of the phys ed curriculum I purchased.  Other sections have ideas, curriculum, lists of helpful websites, or anything I think will help me in that area of learning.  This bit of organization really helps me not feel overwhelmed.

Just in case the state or town ever requires any type of data from me I have assessment data for each goal I wrote in each spreadsheet.  Sometimes it is a worksheet that shows mastery of a skill, like addition.  Sometimes a project that shows we covered and understood a concept.  An example is a pasta project that showed the life cycle of a butterfly with labels.  Sometimes it is just a copy of the curriculum we used or pictures of an activity.  I am a little paranoid :)

Again, all of this planning and organizing has little to do with helping the kids learn more, and more to do with keeping me sane and feel like I have a little control.  It helps me plan ahead a little, using their interests as a guide.  If they hate a topic we generally skip it, or skim it.  So far there are few things they don't enjoy learning.  If they are not liking a particular type of activity we adapt.  We try to keep learning an enjoyable experience, while still teaching them that if Mommy asks you to do it, you try to do it.  Obviously I want them to learn to write well, but sometimes it is a fight, at which point we put it aside.  I want them to be proficient in adding and subtracting three digit numbers, but sometimes they act like it is a brand new concept, at which point we try again another time.  But with my organization and planning I at least feel like I am prepared to provide educational opportunities on a fairly consistent basis.  And watching them love to learn is worth any work I have to put in.

Read Aloud Goals

I have always read aloud to the kids.  I love to read, they love to read, they love to listen, and they love good books.  This year though, I wanted to be more intentional about reading quality literature and to do some work with it, learning vocabulary, focusing on reading/listening comprehension, and to show deeper understanding of the books.  I keep telling myself that this is a lofty goal, and it is, but the kids are so great with books and understanding so I made it a goal this year to do this with four books.  Luckily I found Confessions of a Homeschooler.  

She has already done the work for several great books we already own.  I bought and printed out these cool things with questions to get us started and it gave me a great list to start with.  Next year I will feel more comfortable doing more of the work on my own, but I am thrilled with this.  So we are now onto chapter 7 of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, a personal favorite.  In the first chapter it talks about how the Time Traveler figured out that there is the fourth dimension, time.  CJ stopped me and said, "Well Mommy, of course time is the fourth dimension, Albert Einstein taught us that."  Love my kids :)  I think Wind in the Willows next, then Little Women, then Sherlock Holmes.  Can't wait!

Group Classes

I love homeschooling.  I love connecting with other homeschool families.  I really love being a part of a community of people who love teaching their children.  We have been very fortunate  lately that we are a part of a great program run by some lovely people I am lucky enough to call friends.  Their website is here: McWeeds

I have been able to teach some fun classes to prek and kindergarten age kiddos, while CJ and Eliza have been taking some wonderful and enriching group classes.  I think it is important for them to learn from many people, and in many situations.  In some cases there are classes on things I just can't teach.  Today they had the first in a series of physical education/sports classes, and they LOVED it!  While they were doing that, I taught two classes to different age levels on cooking, we made homemade strawberry shortcake.

We spend the whole day there on Thursday.  In the morning the kids have a science based class, and I teach prek/kindergarten science.  Then we do some binder and literature work together, have lunch, and then they have geography while I teach cooking.  They are adding in drama and other art classes in the future.  There will even be times in the week where we can meet for book clubs, chess clubs, and craft clubs.

I am so excited to be a part of such a great  program, and I know the kids are learning a ton.  Not only are they learning the subject matter, but they are seeing how other children learn, and that other teachers may go about things differently than I do, and that is critical to a child like CJ, who has a tendency to be very set in his ways, and always wants things to be done the same way.  Both kids are responding so well, and enjoying every minute we spend there.  In addition I love sending them to a class where I really trust the teachers, and where I know the teachers and other children appreciate and value the unique traits of my children.  They respect my kids, and work with their strengths and weaknesses in a way I have never seen in other classes they have taken.

I am enjoying teaching, and I know the kids are thoroughly enjoying taking classes at McWeeds.  I can't wait to see what cool classes come up over the next few months!