The "BOOGY MONSTER"!!

YIKES! I haven't blogged in awhile and things have changed on blogger. It's going to take me a bit to get used to it. I have a bunch more pictures and topics to blog about, but my time is really limited having 3 little ones at home (one of them being an infant who is still nursing). One of the topics I'd love to blog more about is the "schooling" we're doing at home. It's not officially homeschooling at this point, but it's been fun to do some structured things with the boys. This week the book we were reading was "Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelmans. It just so happened that on Thursday we were scheduled to talk about health (in the story Madeline gets her appendix taken out) and Micah also came down with a bad cold. It was a great opportunity to talk about hygiene as cold and flu season is just around the corner. Here is the visual lesson we did on spreading germs. The original lesson plan used cooking spray and glitter, but I didn't have glitter and I wasn't able to get out to buy it seeing as I had a crabby and sick child at home. So, I borrowed some green washable finger paint from my neighbor and I think it worked just the same. I put some clean objects on a tray.

Then I put GERMS (green finger paint) all over Jackson's hands. I figured Micah already had germs on his that he could keep for himself.

I had Micah leave the room and had Jackson touch several of the items. Micah then came back in and had to tell me which items had germs on them. I then asked Micah to pick up one of the objects with "germs" on it. He refused. (Perhaps that means he grasped the lesson a little). I picked up one of the objects to show how the germs then got on my hands.

We read a couple of books: "Germs Are Not For Sharing" by Elizabeth Verdick. There were a couple of other books on health that I found at our local library as well. We've also checked out this great book in the past: "Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo" by E.S. Redmond We colored signs to hang in the bathroom. The first one tells when to wash your hands and the other one tells you how to wash them.

Then later this week I found a project on Pinterst that we like to call "Boogy Monster Boxes" basically it's a discard box for used tissues with "boogies" in them. The boys had a blast, but ended up just wanting to play with the box instead of using it for it's intended purpose. Oh well.

Micah demonstrated how to use it once and then just played with it. :)

If only you could hear him saying "I LOVE BOOGIES!!!" in his monster voice.

Well ... gotta go feed the kiddos lunch and attend to my sick little baby. I'm hoping when they're all healthy again I'll have a few minutes to post some of the other fun things we've been up to lately.

Review: "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"

When I mentioned several months ago that I was looking into homeschooling and at least going to start some educational curriculum with Jackson at home this year a friend of mine suggested doing "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Seigfried Englemann, Phyllis Haddox and Elaine Bruner.

I was able to get a copy to try out at my local library, but eventually bought my own copy when we decided we found it beneficial to us as a family.

Here's how the book generally works. Each lesson is broken down into several short "tasks." You can do all the tasks in one sitting or you can do a few at a time. Each lesson contains an average of 11 tasks. The tasks range from "sounds instructions" where new sounds are introduced, "say the sounds", etc. and the entire lesson takes only about 15 minutes. By the end of the 100 lessons the child is reading entire paragraphs without pictures.

Here are a few things I really like about the book:

1. The book even goes as far as writing the instructional narrative in red to aid me in my teaching and eliminating almost any need for lesson planning.

2. The authors have clearly thought through all of the skills a child needs in order to learn to read like; how to use their finger as a guide for reading from left to right, rhyming, memorization, etc.

3. As we are getting into more reading of words and away from just letter sounds (we're on lesson 27 by the way) the book incorporates reading comprehension through the use of pictures. It encourages the child to think of what the picture will look like before they actually see it. Then when they get to see the picture the lessons ask comprehensive questions about it as well as open ended questions to encourage them to be creative on their own.

4. It's SUPER redundant ... almost to a fault in the first dozen or so lessons, but there is definitely a rhyme and a reason for it. I found it built confidence right away and what Jackson has learned has REALLY stuck with him. The more confident he gets the more he's willing to try new sounds and write new letters and read new words not only during the lessons, but also in his everyday play time too.

Overall, I feel that this book was really well thought out (perhaps the benefit of having 3 authors). It's been simple enough that it's not too overwhelming, but at the same time it's been challenging enough that it doesn't feel as though we are not learning anything or wasting our time.

Of all of the tasks that the book does I think that Jackson struggled with the printing the most. It took him quite awhile to actually want to write. He's kind of a perfectionist and would get really down on himself when he couldn't write a letter correctly the first time.

Here are a few things that I think have helped him work through his hesitation in printing:

1. Prayer. We pray before every lesson that he would do his best and be proud of the work that he does whether or not it's perfect.

2. Talk. We've had A LOT ... and I mean A LOT of conversations about how mistakes are not "bad." That mistakes are a part of the learning process and everyone makes them. "Mommy and Daddy won't be disappointed if you make a mistake as long as you are doing your best. We will be disappointed if you don't try though." Boy have we said that A LOT!

3. Grace. If Jackson is particularly discouraged one day we just skip the printing. We don't make a big deal out of it, we just don't do it.

4. Praise. We encourage and praise him whenever he attempts to write ANYTHING! Once he began to show more confidence in his writing we allow him to pick which letters he feels he printed the best and put a smiley face next to them. Then I pick the ones I think he did the best on and put a star next to those. Jackson really thrives on words of affirmation.

5. We used the EXTRA wide ruled lined printing paper. Jackson does especially well with the "Smart Start Writing Paper" from Frog Street Press, which has the picture of a sun on the top line and the flower on the bottom line because it gives him really good points of reference for his printing.

6. Interestingly, he does better writing each letter in a column rather than a row. I know it's not ideal since it's not teaching him to print from left to right, but at this point I figure just getting him to print anything repeatedly is a good step.

"School" Part 2

A while back I wrote a blog entitled "School" laying out the fact that Colin and I haven't decided what we are going to do in regards to schooling for Jackson yet.

We still don't know.

Partly because we still don't know where we'll be living, but partly because we just haven't made up our minds.

Since my first post I was able to go to a homeschooling conference here in town. Here are a few things that I got out of the event:

1. We've got time! Jackson is FOUR! Most states don't require you to declare your intent for education until age 6. I think I was just feeling a little peer pressure watching friends and family send their kids (who are actually older than Jackson) off to school this fall.

2. We can make our educational decision one year at a time. If we choose to do homeschooling for the first year that doesn't mean we have to commit to it for the rest of Jackson's academic life. However, I've heard from several parents that it's much easier logistically to start homeschooling first and then move to public or private schooling because of the hoops the government requires you to jump through when you change (each state is different though).

3. Homeschooling is a lifestyle. It will affect our family as a whole ... perhaps not more than public or private school, but differently. It will be a lot of work on my part.

4. Homeschool communities are essential. Parent's swap tips, curriculum, set up co-teaching arrangements, group field trips, events, sports, etc. You name it, they do it. I'm not sure I'd even consider homeschooling if there is not a homeschool community where we will eventually live.

5. Every body's reasons for homeschooling are different and not all of them are because they want to "shelter" their kids from the world. I wanted to walk away from the conference with "my reason to homeschool" or even "my reason not to homeschool", but I didn't want to walk away on the fence or with someone else's reason for homeschooling. After a looooooong talk with my husband, I think we both concluded that our reason for homeschooling and what excites us most about homeschooling is being able to tailor our children's education to their strengths and weaknesses.

Like I said before and contrary to what it sounds like from the list above, we STILL have not decided officially what we'll be doing once Jackson turns 6 years old, but we've got a little time.

In the mean time I decided that I needed to do "School" this year with Jackson to see if I could handle having more structure in my days, weeks and months as the "teacher."

So, at the beginning of September we started the "Five In A Row" curriculum that I mentioned in my first blog. Only this time I am much more consistent and structured in what I'm doing for Jackson. It also means that I take weekly trips by myself to the library to load up on books for the week's lessons.

We've also started "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." Jackson has had a grasp on phonetics for a long time now, but has yet to have the confidence to just put the sounds together and start reading. We're only on lesson 8 of 100, but so far I can already see his confidence level growing in reading AND writing.

Anyway, here is what we do for "School" in a typical week. Note: "School" lasts about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how much I want to get accomplished and how quickly we can get Micah down for a nap in the afternoon.

Everyday: Calendar, Prayer, Weekly Bible Verse, Reading and Writing

Mondays: Review the Sunday School lesson from church.
Read the story for the week.
FIAR Christian Character and Bible Supplement

Tuesdays: Read the story for the week.
Social Studies

Wednesdays: Read the story for the week.
Art/Literature
Supplemental worksheets (optional)

Thursdays: Read the story for the week.
Math/Science

Fridays: Review/ Catch Up
Pbskids.org

Friday's are typically my days to clean the entire house, so we don't have "School" on those days. However, Jackson does get some time to play on the PBS Kids website and they have a lot of fun educational games on it that I'm comfortable with.

Here are a few pictures from the week we read through "The Rag Coat" by Lauren Mills



Jackson's "Quilt" he made during his art lesson. He LOVES to cut with scissors!



Pretending to be a "coal miner" in my closet during his science lesson on coal was one of his favorite lessons for this book.

Anyway, I know this was a long post and I know it may seem like I've dropped off the blogging planet, but I'm here! I have SO much I want to blog about and so little time ... isn't that just about every blogger's mantra?! ;)

United States Flag

Our next door neighbors (the ones that I've blogged about before) are both in the military. When we moved in the father was deployed and now the mother has been deployed since August. We've become good friends with them and their daughter and Jackson are inseparable. So, we sent a thank you letter and picture to the mother soon after she was deployed and yesterday she sent us this in the mail:



Yes, that is Jackson using the USA flag as a blanket.

The certificate says that the "flag was flown over the skies of Afghanistan on the 9th day of February, 2010... in a Close Air Support mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in finding and destroying all those who threaten our very way of life. With great appreciation we present this certificate to those who support the few that fight for the freedoms of many: Colin, Corinne, Jackson and Micah.

We thought that it was WAY cool to receive that gift and what a wonderful teachable moment for Jackson to learn about our country and what we stand for. As a result we are now beginning to work on memorizing the "Pledge of Allegiance." I'll be sure to post the video.

Video taken on 3/10/10:

School

Why is this such a difficult and confusing decision for me? I guess it's a sign that I'm taking it seriously and wanting to make the right choice for my children ... right?

Anyway, Colin and I have talked about school a lot more this year than we ever have because Jackson has definitely begun to show interest in more structured learning and because we have several friends whose kids are starting school and/or making decisions about home school, public school or private school. We still haven't made an official decision and I realize that the decision might change a million times even after we think we've made it.

I feel like part of my lack of decision making is because we don't REALLY know where we'll be living when Jackson hits school age. Which, by the way, Colin and I do agree that we'd like to start Jackson in Kindergarten when he's six ... at least we've made that a final decision. Where we are will make a difference (in my mind) of how we decide to school.

Colin and I still have a lot to talk about as far as what kind of educational experience we want for our children and how socialization fits into that as well. We need to answer big lofty questions like: what do we want our children to get out of school?

Whatever we decide for our children's future education I'm also trying to live in the present and presently Jackson is HUNGRY for learning. So, we decided to start a curriculum called "Five in a Row."

"Five in A Row" is a literature based curriculum that takes one piece of children's literature per week and extracts different subjects each day.

For example, the first book we read was "The Story About Ping" by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese.

Our "school" time (which lasts about a half hour to an hour) Monday - Friday starts by reading the story of the week (I LOVE the idea of redundancy in teaching)and then we move on to a subject that is brought out in the story.

On Monday we studied Math and counted all the ducks in the book and practiced reading larger numbers.
Tuesday we studied Art and learned about different mediums and mixed primary colors to make secondary colors (I helped him draw the duck by the way, but he colored it).

Wednesday we studied Social Studies and talked about natural consequences and family relationships.
Thursday we studied Science and learned about buoyancy.


Friday we studied Geography and took a trip to China on YouTube.

You get the idea. It's been really fun for me and for Jackson and he begs to do "school" and will only call me "teacher" when we are. We've been doing "school" now since the middle of November.

The break we had with Thanksgiving and Christmas allowed me to see if Jackson was really interested in school or if it was just a phase ... he really does love to learn (surprise, surprise ... Colin and I are BOTH learners).

"Five in A Row" is really flexible and I really feel like it'll grow with Jackson until he's in the upper elementary school ages.

The only qualm I have with the curriculum is that the books can be hard to find in the library (at least our library) and I end up having to do inter-library-loans more often than I want to and our library doesn't have a smooth system for that. I recently went online and found a great website www.betterworldbooks.com and found most of the books on the book list for an average of $7.00, except the rare few that are out of print and are running for about $300.00 (I'll just skip those), but let me note that the proceeds go towards world literacy.

We're going to keep plugging away at "Five In A Row," but I'm going to remain flexible knowing that Jackson is only 3 1/2 years old. I'm excited about his love of learning! All the more reason to continue to keep prayerfully considering our education options for the future.