For the love of writing

One of my goals when I took on homeschooling was to make Avery a proficient writer and hopefully instill a love of this form of expression, avoiding pressure to "do it right". I think I found the perfect writing curriculum to help me with my goal. Here are just a few of the Writing Principles they list at the beginning of the book by Dave Marks- I just about fell in love!

• "Every person needs to learn to express ideas and feelings in writing."
  
• "There is no right way to write anything!"
  
• "The ability to write is not an expression of a body of knowledge that can be learned like a list of vocabulary words."
  
• "Writing teachers and their students both learn in any effective writing situation."

How liberating is that!? I am so excited to start writing with Avery. He is such a bright boy with so many wild ideas floating around in his head, and writing is such a huge endeavor. To be able to put your thoughts on paper has got to be one of the hardest things to learn, and teaching it even harder. With this book I feel a little more at ease guiding him through the process.

Happy Writing!!

Science observations

Today we accomplished so much and willingly I might add!

This is our tentative schedule we aim for each day- let's see how it evolves throughout the year (especially after the baby is born).

1. Spelling


2. Grammar or Creative Writing-alternating each day


3. Phonics lesson


4. History or Science-again alternating each day


5. Math


6. Reading- 30 minutes I read aloud, 30 minutes he reads independently


7. Piano practice

(See sidebar for books used in our curriculum)

Today Avery was most excited about the science lab. He had to make an observation plot, where he was to look and study a square yard that he measured and roped off and documented his findings. The purpose was to identify living and non living things and describe on our lab sheet how we came to know if they are living or not- answering questions like does it have respiration, does it excrete waste, does it move independently, does it grow and reproduce. He gets all of that, he thinks it is kind of silly to ask such questions, but the process of acquiring the info is exciting! So all day he planned, he plotted, and at the end of the day we took our dinner outside and sat by our plot and inspected inch by inch, discovering all kinds of life! It didn't stop there...oh no! He had Adam go and fetch some large garden stakes and staked out an official more permanent plot for future use. I love his enthusiasm and sense of wonder!

Toddler time!

Keeping little hands busy while trying to cater to the needs of my first grader is challenging to say the least. There is not an end to the kinds of activities I could potentially provide, just a limit to how many arms I have. It seems like he is always needing something that he doesn't have right in front of him, mostly because he purposefully drops it on the floor. I think he gets a kick out of watching his big pregnant mama bend over and reach under our table every five seconds, which sounds simple but if you've ever been pregnant you know how far the floor really is!

So far the favorite activities for Emile (2 1/2 yrs old) are taking magnetic letters and matching them to the letters on a place mat we got from http://www.crocodilecreek.com/home.html. This activity helps with letter recognition, something I am so not pushy with, but he has genuine interest already.

Another favorite that holds his attention is matching pom poms with plastic cups that have colored dots. For now he just matches the colors, the next step will be to match the number of pom poms with the cup with that same number of sticky dots. Good times!

Avery is trucking along. Today as we were transitioning to math he actually said "Yea! Fun math time!" ...and was serious. I nearly fell over!

First day

Our first day was pretty good. Of course it is always hard starting a new routine, but they did great!

We started after breakfast with our language lessons which consist of Spelling , grammer, creative writing and phonics- spending about 10 minutes on each subject. After that we moved to History where he is studying Ancient China, truly a favorite around here.

We saved math for last, mostly reviewing what we covered last year. Basic addition and subtration, counting by 10's and writing numbers to 20.

So while I spent this time with Avery (which took only about 2 1/2 hours) Emile played with play dough and colored with his new Dr. Seuss markers. He did pretty good giving Avery his space (I was a bit nervous), but his volume seems to increase when he doesn't have all of the attention. We shall see how this evolves. I kept it simple to begin with. No hands on activities today or messy projects yet. I just want to get our routine down then we can have a bit more fun.

A little introduction

Hello to Anyone who happens to read this first entry! I'm very excited to start off this year of homeschooling for some reason. Maybe it's the nesting instinct kicking in, or maybe it is the thrill of an eager first grader ready to dive in!



My goal for having this blog is to keep an honest and oh so informal record of our homeschooling journey. I hope to document my curriculum, books we read, organization ideas, and tricks on keeping your sanity while your toddler eats the science experiments. And please...anyone with ideas and there own tricks and treats on homeschooling I welcome you to leave comments and feedback and tell me just how you do it!

First day of "School" - August 24, 2009

May the Adventures Begin!!