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Friday, September 19, 2008

Week 1 Report

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A B C, when you sing you begin with Do Re Mi....

I have a song in my heart over this week's events. On one hand it has been a wonderful week homeschooling and on the other hand, I have learned a few things that have changed my mind about previous ideas I've had.

First, our daily routine. By Wednesday, I realized the daily routine was too rigid and unrealistic. So on Thursday (yesterday) I changed it and it worked beautifully! Here's our new Daily Routine.

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Secondly, I realized my mistake in thinking that doing preschool at home would keep Danny busy for a longer period than what it did. He is just not interested in sitting alongside Camille and doing his own school. I've had my FIL's offer of paying for preschool hanging over my head for awhile now and I believe this would be best for both Camille and Danny this year. As a family we toured a Montessori preschool this morning and Danny will start Monday. It is everything I cannot provide for him at home at this time and I cannot say how much this saddens me in one way but on the other hand I'm grateful to be able to provide Danny an environment where he can blossom.

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My dh joked last night at Danny's soccer game that we're turned into suburb parents, Danny's in soccer and will start Montessori preschool and Camille takes piano.

Now to recap each subject for the week.

Explorer's Bible Study, Discovery level- Genesis
Camille has graduated from Bible stories to Bible study and I'm very satisfied with Explorer's approach and content. This week was an introductory week to the chapter of Genesis as a whole, here is one day's work from this week.

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Horizons Math 3
So far the lessons have been a review for Camille. Page pictured, I lifted the scanner lid while it was scanning, oops.

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Prima Latina
We love Mrs. Leigh as our video teacher and so far we've done Lessons 1 and 2 with only the student book and DVD. I cannot believe how much fun we're having with this!

Primary Language Lessons
This week Camille has done her first dictation exercises and learned about commas. We read the comma book from our Grammar Tales set. This has gone very well.

Explode the Code, Book 7
Camille started this week on Book 7 and is doing very well. I have the Teacher's Guide and we go through the instructions before she starts her work.

Poetry Memorization
Camille is working on Bird Talk by Aileen Fisher. I have yet to discuss metaphor with her but will next week.

Tapestry of Grace, Year 3 Redesigned - Unit 1, Week 1
So much fun! This week has been wonderful in history, we started off by reviewing geography terms and Camille labeled the continents and oceans on a world map, then located the thirteen colonies on an United States Map. She read Geography A to Z to me aloud to review geography terms and we reviewed what latitude and longitude means as well as what the Prime Meridian is.

This week Camille read on her own for history- William Carey: Bearer of Good News and My Napoleon by C. Brighton.

We read Napoleon, Little Corporal, Of Courage Undaunted Part I and did two president cards- one for George Washington and one for John Adams. Camille loved using the Yo! Millard Fillmore book for the biography information but we did have to use Our Country's Presidents get the rest of the information we needed.

Since our literature read this week was Rapunzel, I used it for our afternoon tea party. The kids loved it! The next day, Camille and discussed what the characteristics of a fairy tale are. Here's a link that was very helpful with this and we printed out the chart at this link.

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For history our project this week was to make and use a quill pen, here are pictures of the kids...


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Building Critical Thinking Skills aka Informal Logic
Camille loves this and I wish I had gotten this for her in 2nd grade! I've given her 30 minutes on Monday to be able to focus on this but she has asked to do 2 more times this week- she has done a few pages on her own time. *Smile*

Life Science - Head to Toe by Jim Wiese, our own lessons
Another HIT! We've had so much fun this week, it doesn't even feel like 'school'. We made outlines of the kids' bodies and learned about the brain (images are from My Body by Teacher Created Resources). Camille read The Brain What It Is, What It Does independently and we did the experiments in Head to Toe. Here are pictures of the kids' outlines with their brains plus Camille's Brain Hat. Camille's outline is on the left, Danny's on the right.

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and now Camille's Brain Hat (from Easy Make & Learn Projects, Human Body by Donald Silver and Patricia Wynne)

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And this is where our day would fall apart, I kept forgetting to put the composer cd on while we ate lunch. Camille did her piano practice every day without fail and she's doing very well with her new piano teacher. What a blessing! I felt that Camille did so much independent reading in her subjects that we didn't need an independent reading time designated this week, and we haven't started our needlepoint (crafts), art or exercise time yet. We only had afternoon tea once this week.

I think all in all, it was a FABULOUS first week back but I really contribute that to the fact we've been doing light lessons for a while so we were ready for a full day again. Next week, Danny will be starting at the Montessori preschool so we will have an adjustment - it's never been quiet in our home, unless the kids are sleeping, lol!

Last but not least, a friend's daughter drew a picture of Danny and I just wanted to say Thank you Dylan, this is a WONDERFUL picture of Danny and he looks just like it! It looks like he's playing soccer!

 

9 comments:

the striped rose said...

That looks great! I love the brain cap!

Michele

Rick Harper said...

Looks like you all enjoyed a delightful first week of school! Isn't it just a thrilling calling as well as humbling to be the teacher of your children, I love it!!

The brain cap is awesome, I can just imagine my little ones walking around with those on... hilarious!

JOYfully in Him,
Kelli

Anonymous said...

What a wonderful week! A hard decision to be sure for little Danny, but you are meeting his needs as they are right now, not what they will be in a year. That's to be commended :)

I too keep forgetting to pop in the composer CD. It's so good to know I'm not the only one!!!

Kathy D.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you had a good week that saw lots of change. I love how you posted your daily schedule, I hadn't thought about taking a screen shot of ours and posting it.

I'm glad that you have found a way to give both your kids what they need and that your FIL is willing to help by paying for the preschool.

Anonymous said...

I am just now learning about your blog from TWTM forums. I am very impressed by your site. How did you get all the graphics, etc. And what program did you use to make your schedule? I would love to make an outline of our school days like that...all at a glance.

You are a littly homeschooling dynamo!

**Marita**

Jessica said...

All the forms that I display on our blog are created in Appleworks with a spreadsheet form, this is the same as using Excel. I'm not sure if Microsoft Works has a spreadsheet feature but I'm sure on the PC there is a standard program (provided free) that will build a spreadsheet.

We have a Mac, an older one by today's standards. iMac G4 although I do run OSX 10 but I haven't upgraded to iLife or iWork.

Once you create a spreadsheet, save it as a .pdf file then open the .pdf file and save it as a .jpg picture. The .jpg picture can be uploaded to your blog. If you don't wish to upload it to your blog, you don't need to save it as a .pdf at all.

Hope this helps!
Jessica

Sharon said...

Thanks for the links to the fairy tale pages, these resources are very helpful. (I've just reposted them on my own blog so I can remember them.)

~ Sharon from Equip Academy

CookieMonster said...

It looks at though you had a great week! I see happy kids and a happy mom - and lots of learning too!

I just have to say that it totally cracks me up when Bible Curriculums try to teach where the Garden of Eden was. It is a completely illogical thing to do. The Flood Narrative - however you take it theologically - logically decimates any remains of the previous Garden. (There's reason no one sees the angels guarding the entrance anymore. And there's a reason why the named rivers don't actually line up with anything geographically feasible - they're gone!)

I remember when I first realized this and what an eye-opener it was, so I thought I'd throw it out there for you too.

It's not a terrible thing, either, I guess, because it is a very commonly taught impossibility. I was introduced to the concept of the location of the Garden of Eden by secular sources during High School. So, Camille will have the advantange of knowing what it is other people think on the subject.

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say I think it is great that you found a good program for your son. My son is in Montessori also. We love it.