Weekly Report~ September 26, 2008

Better late than never! I think this may be a trend with me. I'm finding it difficult to complete and post a weekly report before the week is actually even over (Friday mornings), half the time guessing what will be accomplished that day. Not only that, but it takes awhile to review everything we've done that week and to type it all up.

I created this blog for many reasons, but my main goal was to utilize it as a means of keeping track of our homeschooling, not only for accountability to the state, but also for myself. It is an important aspect of my blog that I insist on keeping up with. One thing I may try in the future (especially once B starts school and I'll have two weekly reports to maintain) is to post bi-weekly or even monthly. This may help keep me consistent enough to stick with it. We shall see.

A Friend From Down Under

We began our unit on Australia last Monday, reading Koala Lou and following up on it by learning more about marsupials and locating Australia on our globe. At the same time, we were also finishing up our animal unit in science, and I thought a "field trip" to the Rochester Fair would be a fun way to round out our studies. There are always plenty of pigs, cattle, sheep, poultry and other farm animals to visit. I was on the lookout for an emu, after seeing one in the poultry barn a few years back. I figured it would give the boys a chance to be up close and personal with Australian wildlife, and get them excited to read about more. To my dismay, there were no emus in the barns this year. But a bigger surprise awaited us next to the circus tent. Not only did we get to see two beautiful giraffes, a zebra, and some monkeys, but of ALL THINGS there was a grey kangaroo and a wallaby family. The boys excitedly stuck their fingers through the wires of the cage trying to pet the kangaroo, laughing as it hopped around on its extremely large feet. At the wallaby cage, a most wonderful little gift awaited our eyes. We were petting the mommy wallaby and watching her jump around the cage when all of a sudden we noticed a little HEAD sticking out of her belly!! She was carrying an adorable baby around in her pouch, then he was out and exploring on his own, and finally he was nudging her to nurse.... and we got to see it all first hand. I could've stayed there for an hour trying to get a good photo, but with two busy boys by my side we eventually had to keep moving on.

Later that night after downloading the pictures onto my computer, I was thrilled to find the above photo of the baby giving his mommy a kiss. Too sweet!

Weekly Report~ September 19, 2008

I've neglected my blog over the past few weeks, but only from your end as a reader. Whenever I had a few moments, I was downloading photos, working on my weekly reports, and thinking about all of the things I want to write about. And that's as far as I would get. I'm not as computer savvy as a lot of bloggers out there, so it takes me a l-o-n-g time to figure out simple things, like adding my weekly report as a document (above). This is the spreadsheet I created to record everything we do each week. Once a week I type it up, print it out, and add it to my Teacher's Notebook. In addition to that, I was trying to come online and re-type everything on my blog as the Weekly Report. It was redundant and time-consuming, which is why it hasn't been done lately. So today I *think* I've finally figured it out!! Double click on the image above to get a closer look at our week. We've been busy, but we've been having a lot of fun.

Weekly Report, Week of August 25th

This week flew by. I have quickly learned that all of the activites, books, crafts and outings I plan each week are not getting done. Don't get me wrong, all of the important areas like math, reading, and writing get done on a daily basis. It's when the 3 R's are combined with breaks, playing outdoors, snacks, lunch, the occasional outing, and "behavior management", there isn't much time left for things like making a Japanese Hinu doll or doing our science experiments. Luckily, with no set school hours, we can squeeze in an extra story before dinner or save our science experiments for when daddy is home on the weekends. I'd love to have time every day to dedicate to hands-on activites, because this is what D thrives on. In the upcoming weeks I will try to tailor our schedule to accomodate this goal by planning ONE crafty thing per day and lessening my overall expectations of what can realistically be accomplished. That being said, when I look at what we've done this week, I see that we are covering quite a bit of material and am really pleased with D's eagerness (albeit unfocused, silly, moody, and non-compliant at times) to learn.

• Math: Singapore EB1 ~ Lessons 8, 9, 12; Power Math Unit 4
• OPG~ Lessons 32-35 (He's having trouble with the short-e sound, continually mixing it up with the short-i sound. We need to practice this more over the weekend); Reading Bob Books
• ETC~ Lesson 5
• Handwriting~ Ww, Xx, Zz
• Religion~ Lesson 3-Adam & Eve; Mirror craft, Made up a thank-you prayer to God, copywork, and drew a self-portrait
• Literature~ Winnie-The-Pooh stories (1) In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Story Begins (2) In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One; Aesop's For Children (selected tales)
• Geography~ Japan- Read: The Crane's Gratitude, How the Sea Became Salty, and Momotaro; Mapped out Japan on our large world map and on the globe; watched the video "Big Bird in Japan"
• Science~ Read more about the weather and seasons; will do experiments this weekend about air pressure and/or the rotation of the sun
• Extracurricular~Spent the day at the Children's Museum of NH followed by a picnic at the park. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to post soon.

Wave to the School Bus!

Today was the first day of school for our public school district, and we watched the bus drive by in the morning to pick up the neighborhood kids and again this afternoon to drop them off. If D were attending school this year, he'd only be in Kindergarten and wouldn't be taking the bus. Even so, I felt a bit of a disconnect as I watched the big yellow bus noisily chug by. Homeschooling the boys is exactly what I want to be doing right now, but that doesn't erase the twelve years of memories of my own education, especially those of my early elementary years which I remember fondly. It's easy to let doubt creep in as the questions start invading my mind... Will the boys be happy? Will they make friends? Will they feel like they missed out on things? Will I be able to teach them? Will... What if.... What about... ???

After taking a (very large) breath, I was able to reflect on our day and how we did an entire days worth of lessons, AND made a trip to a playground (filled with kids to play with), came home and rested, read a few stories together, played outside and cleaned D's bedroom. All before the big yellow bus noisily chugged by this afternoon.

Weekly Report, Aug. 22nd

Our second week of school and we've already learned one very important thing.... homeschooling allows for flexibility. This week was filled with appointments, from dentists to minor day surgery, as well as a few final summer activites like going to the beach and learning how to fish. Somehow we managed to keep up with everything on our schedule, which is amazing considering how little time we were actually home. It's such a nice feeling to be enjoying the sun on a beautiful summer afternoon and not worrying about "being" anywhere in particular.

D still accomplished a decent amount of math lessons (estimation, weight), phonics readings (short i and short o vowels), a lesson on Creation, a few books about weather and a handful of experiments (making thunder; evaporation; condensation), and even the memorization of the poem "Rain" by Robert Louis Stevenson. A nice way to hold onto the last dyas of summer while still making a dent in our lesson plans.

Weekly Report, August 15th

D had a great first week of school. He accomplished more than I had planned for math and language arts, but we didn't spend nearly as much time as I would've liked on science and social studies. He did complain a little about having to do math again, but as long as he knew we'd follow-up with some sort of arts-and-crafts project, he'd focus on what needed to be done.

Language Arts: This week we learned how to read words with the short-a and short-o vowel sounds using OPG (Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading) and books 1&2 of LSLF (Little Stories for Little Folks). D shows a real excitement for wanting to learn how to read, and once he sets his mind to something he typically doesn't back off. In this case, that is a great thing. He completed Lesson 1 in ETC (Explode the Code) which was a reinforcement of the short-a vowel sound.

I decided on using the Getty & Dubay ITALIC handwriting series because I really like the style of the lettering. Advancing to cursive is a smoother transition than with the tradition method with all those time-consuming loops and swirls I was never fond of. We practiced writing the lower and uppercase letters Ii, Jj, and Ll this week.

I have been reading aloud stories from Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Although some of the stories seem a bit advanced at this point, D is being exposed to the sound and flow of language and seems to be enjoying them nonetheless. He did a narration on "How the Whale Got Its Throat". Other than the LSLF booklets, D has been reading the beginning Bob Books aloud and earning a stamp for each book he reads. Once his chart is filled, we will take a trip to the bookstore where he can pick out a book as a reward. I like the idea of giving him incentive to read as much as possible and to make trips to the bookstore a "totally cool" experience.

Math: We covered greater-than and less-than, more and less, size, and patterns this week. D seems to enjoy math but gets easily frustrated when he doesn't immediately understand a concept. Oh how I can relate!!

Religion: We covered the Holy Trinity in lesson 1 of IOG (Images of God). D needs to improve his attitude about learning/talking/thinking about his religion, and IOG does a good job of keeping stories short and interesting while covering the important underlying catechism. He particularly seems to be enjoying the colorful cut-outs and craft projects this series has to offer.

Science: We read about time-zones and the weather this week. He demonstrated with our globe how the children in Asia are sleeping when we're awake and how the sun doesn't move, the earth moves.

Social Studies: We are focusing on learning about maps and directions this week, using the Rand McNally Geography and Map Activites book. He made a compass rose and although he's got North, South, East and West down, he needs more review with NW, NE, SW, SE. We made "People of the World" stick puppets and the boys proceeded to put on a silly puppet show for me.

Fine Arts: We listened to classical music, painted, and did a rainbow cut-and-paste project.