Alphabet Resource

Pondered in My Heart is developing a great resource—Alphabet Coloring Pages!

Check it out!

A Homeschooler's Daybook: September 13, 2010

Saint of the Week: Saint Innocent

Letter of the week: Ii (with reviews of Aa and Ee)

Number of the week: 3

Color this week: Yellow

From the Learning Basket: Have You Seen Trees? by Joanne Oppenheim

Circle Time rhyme:

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

Continue here...

Main Lessons: Elevation of the Cross; Beginning our Book of Days

Paint: Wet-on-wet with yellow and red

Music: 1812 Overture (containing troparion for the Cross)

WWWN

Nearly done with two weeks' worth of homeschooling.  Here is a sample of What's Working and What's Not.

What's working:

• Morning Prayers:  I detest having to do things like dress or attend to the house when I am still waking up.  I know that admitting this is probably being a very bad "FlyBaby."  I know that the most efficient way to do things is to jump out of bed, throw on my clothes, take a load of laundry down to the machines, and milk the cows all before my coffee.   

That is not me.

In setting up my schedule for this Fall, something persuaded me to schedule our Morning Prayer time followed by some read-aloud time to fall right after breakfast, while still in my pajamas.  

The ideal morning runs thus: I stagger out of bed and fix breakfast and drink as much coffee as possible (if I am awake early enough, I unload the dishwasher first—that really makes the day go smoothly).  When I am awake enough to clear the dishes off the table, that is done quickly and the table is wiped off.  Then we do a quick set of prayers (many are sung, and to my delight, my eldest has been singing along and knows the words!) complete with lighting candles and changing the day's commemoration picture sheet.  Then we settle on the couch (me with more coffee) and read the life of the saint we are studying that week and then the girls get to pick some titles.  Please do not be misled: This does not happen every day, nor does it always happen closer to breakfast than it does to lunch, but I did say "the ideal morning."

I love it!  And by the time we finish all of that, I am awake enough to carry on with my day.

What's not:

• Letters and Numbers:  While I like the idea of our curriculum's suggestion to let Maggie "experience" various letters and numbers, I really think she is past being interested in that approach.  She knows I never sit there and paint a giant A on a page.  She wants to use letters the way I do.  She wants to make lists and write notes.  She reads a lot of words—I think by sight and context, rather than sounding-out, but then, she does some of that too.  I've found a website with an amazing number of printables, most especially letter formation tracing pages, that I think I will try with her.  According to my curriculum's Alphabet Writing Chart, some of the arrows are going the wrong direction, but that is easily corrected.

Miscellaneous Notes:

One thing I think I have decided over the last two weeks (and I know that is not much experience) is that I don't want to do a bunch of unnecessary crafts, art projects, and invented "school projects."  If we are going to have a Kitchen Day, it is going to be something that we need to make anyway.  If we put a lot of time, money, and skill into a craft or art project, I want it to be something that is in some way worth having or using.  We collected leaves and made window decorations out of them, and I love them because they are very seasonal and remind us of our experience in "the forest" as my girls call the nature preserve we walked through.

I won't hold painting quite to that standard, though.  There are some great suggestions in our curriculum for learning some painting techniques that I can't wait to try once we get some real paints, paper, and brushes.  This would fall under learning a skill.  I'd like to have them able to create some art (if they are so inclined) to put in future learning notebooks of various subjects.

More reflections to come, I'm sure.

Kindergarten Begins Tomorrow!

Well, friends, the big day is here.  Maggie will officially be beginning Kindergarten tomorrow morning.  Of course, Susannah and John will be participating a lot too (well, Susannah more than John for the time being).  I've even changed my blog background to reflect the colorful, artistic, and whimsical education I'm hoping to give them this year.

I have a lot I want to share with you here as we get into our schooling.  We have a children's icon corner, a Seasonal Wall, relocated (and reorganized!) shelving, fun manipulatives, and I hope what will prove to be a doable (or at least reworkable!) loose schedule.  We are going to get good at it this week and then have a school day with Daddy on Labor Day Monday.  That's mainly because Mommy scheduled a Main Lesson that day that she doesn't want to reschedule, but I think it will also motivate us (me) to really try to stick to our plans for the week so we have something to showup  for it by next week.  (Now, I KNOW we won't be perfect or anything in one week, but I'd like to persevere enough to get some of our plans in.)

In preparation for "for real" homeschooling, I've been eating up those "veteran homeschooler" articles that seem to abound this time of year.  Here are a few favorites:

• Se7ev Things I Would Do if I Had to Start Homeschooling Over...
• Waldorf Learning: Learning to Let Go
• Encountering Mercy Through Burnout and Mary's follow-up Reactions and Decisions

Hmmm... do you see a pattern?  I am apparently concerned about not overdoing and expecting too much.  While I know I need a plan and concrete activities planned for a given day, I want to be able to flow with my kids as I see them exploring and learning through play, especially with guided by the themes and manipulatives we will have available in our schoolroom (which is just the perimeter of the dining room doing double duty).

I still have some planning and supply-gathering to do for tomorrow, though, so I need to put these kids to bed to prepare.  Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers!