How the First Week of Spring Went Down in our Home

First Day of Spring School

We truly had a beautiful week. We did school out doors on the first day of Spring! I'd planned to have the children write about what they saw, heard, smelled, on the first day of Spring. However, we never got to it and still haven't and it is the end of the week! Madison keeps asking when will we do our Spring project and I keep saying, we will get to it, and we will. But I would be lying if I didn't say that, I'm in no hurry to do it since we missed the appointed day (which was only MY appointed day...I am working on becoming more flexible). There are officially what, 90 days in a season? We have about 85 more days left of this wonderful season of the year...I'm SURE we will get it done! -bad mommy-

I was kind of wacky this week. Just a little irritable and moody...no fun for me. I'm usually too tired to get on to the kids and to me, it seems they kick the misbehaving up a notch when I'm my tiredest. If that is true, it's a good thing that it happens that way. While, yeah, I want to pull my hair out at their noise and running in the store aisles and picking up almost everything they see...I'm too tired to, so that saves them from some yelling and corner standing and romp popping! :) I love my little daisies...they are so much fun and both are truly very sweet but in different ways.

Chelsea read her first book this week. That was fun. I do feel like that maybe I'm pushing her too fast but that is based on the fact that her sister didn't read her first book til she was four and I have Chelsea doing it at three. Couple that with the fact that my "Everest" is my ever trying to accomplish ABSOLUTE fairness toward the girls...you get where my questioning whether or not I'm pushing her too fast comes from.

Madison's favorite subject this week was still cursive writing!!!! I love that she loves that. I am also looking forward to supplementing our traditional curriculum with some great Unit Study curriculum concepts. Madison is absolutely a hands on learner. She loves doing projects and says that she is really good at inventions. She really gets bored fast with lecture type instruction so I am ready to spark and feed her learning style with a couple of unit Study concepts. Right now I am looking at Moving Beyond the Page. It looks perfect for us. They have one concept for Madison's age range that has an entire lesson on inventors and inventions and instructs on how the child can look around the home to come up with an idea to invent. I am truly giddy over getting and starting this program. From the start, we will only supplement one concept for Madison and one for Chelsea. Chelsea is my numbers girl and is really great with recognizing patterns and loves working with them. Moving Beyond the Page has an entire concept on patterns within her age range. I say again, I Am Giddy!

I'm about as giddy as I was when using my new griddle today! Saturday morning pancakes are always a hit at my house and now that I can make more than one or two at a time...it is AWESOME!! 


I received a magazine in the mail yesterday from Practical Homeschooling. It is filled with wonderfully encouraging articles. I cant say enough right now about some of the articles so I'm going to gather my thoughts on the magazine articles that I've read and put a post together solely on some of the topics from this magazine. I am looking forward to subscribing to it in the very near future. I already recommend it if you are new to homeschooling, like me!

Well our time must come to an end at this point...until next time...hugs!

Stephy!

A Little Bit of This and A Whole Lot of That

On the previous post I said that Madison LOVES cursive writing...after I published the post I found this statement, that she obviously wrote some weeks earlier, in her tablet (lines 9 & 10) We hadn't even practiced half of those letters!!!

A lot has been happening in the Rich family lately. A lot of little things I suppose. So let's start with Friday. School time was pretty basic, Friday is review day for us. It's where Mommy the Teacher pulls it altogether and tries to make sense out of everything that we've covered during the week. I usually try to have it in a different room of the house than where we've done school work all week and I try to incorporate some sort of game into it to make it fun rather than boring and laborious. So we went over our spelling list. That called for a little movement because I had her to give a thumbs up if I spelled the word correctly and to give me a thumbs down if I spelled it incorrectly (with my kid a simple thumbs up turns into a spin around followed by a jump in the air that ends with a thumb shot way up in the air, so...you see). We also went over next week's spelling list in the same manner in order for me to gauge where she is. The problem I have with Madison is that I taught her how to read before she went to preschool. And I didn't not use phonics to teach her. My friend informed me that I use the "whole language" approach. This has produced a problem for us because now that we are using a traditional curriculum, there are things that she has mastered and then there are some very basic things that we haven't covered because we didn't need to. For instance, I tend not to think about spelling because she is such a wonderful reader. I figure if you read enough, you will know how to spell kind of out of habit. However, it concerns me that she may end up with "holes" in her knowledge or that she will end up being a terrible speller later in life. So in the past three weeks we've put more and more focus on spelling and trying to incorporate it into our weekly schedule. The weekly review seems to be a great place for going over spelling words. I've learned that she really does have a solid understanding of how to use phonics correctly when spelling. So we will continue on with our fitting it into our weekly schedule.

With Binky (Chelsea), we continue to cover phonics as well. She has learned how to read very simple books and very big sight words. I'm using the whole language approach with her as well but realizing how frustrating things have been for me with Madison, I am learning from that experience and teaching Chelsea some phonics along with her learning to read and sound out whole words. So far...so good.

Chelsea writing words at the board during Friday Review

We also did a couple of fun art projects. We sat outside and painted still life photos of two trees in our neighborhood. We also painted some wind chime/birdhouses that the girls loved. I bought this little kit at Big Lots for 10.00. It included two complete wind chimes, paint and a paintbrush. I'm sure a more experience home schooling mom could have told me how to do this type of project for free. :) One day I will learn all of the tricks of the trade!! For now though, I'm glad Big Lots had a simple little art project that we could do. I am in need of a good elementary grade level art curriculum because the girls love it and from Mommy's perspective are really good little artists and I want to continue to feed that part of them.

 

Left is the Tulip Tree in our neighbor's yard and right is Madison's artistic interpretation of the Tulip Tree.

Left is the actual Weeping Cherry Blossom Tree and right is Chelsea's artistic interpretation of the Weeping Cherry Blossom Tree.

Wind Chime art project

Now Madison has kind of roped the whole family into a Friday Family Fun Night. She will not let up about it at all. It all started a couple of weeks ago when she took it upon herself to plan a family party and called it "the party to bring the whole family altogether." I was perplexed by the title and finally got around to asking her why she thought we needed to bring the whole family together. I mean really, there's only four of us and Mommy stays home with the kids all day and I cook dinner 5-6 nights a week of which we all eat at the dinner table. Daddy is home every night at the same time for the most part. I mean, come on kid, what more could we do? She didn't really give me an answer so I chocked it up to a six year imagination or something. Well, after we had the party, a week later, in front of my sister-in-law, she says that "we needed to have the party because Mommy was talking a little mean to Daddy and we were all a little mad at each other." Of course I want to dig a little deeper so later we talk more about it and it turns out that we had the party because I talk a little mean to everybody!!! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry! It was so funny that I didn't want to cry at all, it is just funny to hear a six year old tell you her honest feelings. It was one of those priceless moments in life with your kid. Would it have been great to hear that I was just so super nice to everybody that she felt like Mommy needed to have a party...yes! But I'll take this as a learning experience...maybe. I think I am just stern. I did say to her that I could probably do a little better and she said "yeah, you can always do a little better." LOL This kid was hilarious.

We also celebrated my Dad's birthday this week. He turned 53, so down to the country we went! My kids love going to our family house down in the country, the street that the house is own is actually named after my family, my maiden name and they just love that. They also love to run and climb the trees, climb on my granddaddy's old tractors and heavy equipment in the back yard...some of the same stuff that I used to do as a kid.

 I didn't get any pictures from Friday family fun night, but what I do have from the week, I gladly share with you! Until next time...

Stephy

The Park...Our Classroom.

The park is our classroom!

Today was sooo much fun! We went to one of the many playgrounds/parks in our area of the world and had class. Above, Chelsea practices writing the capital letter M as Madison works on her math. The weather was beautiful! One of the best days yet. I suppose Mother Nature wanted to share an inside scoop on what she has in store for us this coming Spring. The pollen fell from the trees like snow from the sky, covering everything beneath it. The bees were buzzing and wasps flying as 6 year olds (only mine) ran screaming in tears. LOL! Madison is truly working through her distrust of bumble bees and wasps. We've researched them online to help her realize that if she doesn't bother them, the chances of her being stung is nil. She calmed down quite a bit from last Spring but is still on alert at every turn. A couple of times I heard her coaching the children in what not to do as it relates to Mother Nature's little helpers. She my little leader in training. They both are.

Mr. Lizard...where are you???

We woke up today around 10am after getting in from church a little late last night. Come to think of it my kids always wake up after 9:30 what a blessing for me! I usually need a couple of extra hours of sleep after my husband goes to work. We ate breakfast, brushed our teeth, got dressed and headed to the park. I packed a lunch and our entire curriculum and off we fled the indoors on our way to the best classroom of all times.

The girls played with three different sets of children today because we were there so long. We picked out our table and Madison continued to work on a "chapter book" that she began writing early this morning entitled The Prince and Princess go to the Ball so I started working with Chelsea with her sight words. It is so amazing to watch her go through her words so effortlessly these days. I'm very happy that I started with them really early with reading, it has made all the difference in their confidence level when it comes to reading anything in print. And although Chelsea is reading the simplest of books right now, at three years old she is poised and on track to be a fluent reader within the year. What more could a Mommy/Teacher ask for from her right now.

Discovering science and nature - a vacated bird's nest found on the ground!

After Madison finished the first chapter of her story, and Chelsea read about 30 or so sight words, I let them take a 10 minute break to run around the park just craving the attention of two little girls. We started back up with Math and writing, then we had to move to another table because the sun started to shine its glory right above us. Around 1pm, we ate lunch and the kids headed back out to play some more. I gave them 30 minutes of play time but to my surprise, Madison came back after 10 minutes wanting to move on to her next subject. I should have seen this coming. Her next subject was cursive writing and she LOVES "fancy writing" she's doing quite well. She's very artistic and I think that this is why cursive writing appeals to her so much, it's a lot like art, in fact I feel that it is an art. It's no longer being taught in public schools but since it is part of her curriculum, and since she is always trying to write fancy like Mommy does sometimes and partly because they are no longer teaching it in schools, I wanted to make sure she learns it and thankfully, it is not a struggle, she looks forward to doing it each day.

After going back to play, I planned on calling them back to the table for more schooling. However, they'd gotten into such a zone with James and Lilly, a brother and sister who came to the park with their Grandfather, that I found it hard to call them away. So I gave them a 10 minute warning. Ten minutes later, I just couldn't do it. They were having such fun. James and Lilly were the kind of kids that I wish I could have on some sort of retainer fee to call on to play with my kids ANYTIME! Well behaved, kind, considerate, able to work well within a group (sounds like a resume' right)? I am just saying, finding good kids who are disciplined along the same lines as your kids is like a breath of fresh air these days. Not like when my husband and I were kids, most parents were teaching their children the same things...not these days...kids are allowed to say and do a lot more than we were at their age and frankly I can't handle it. I still believe in a well behaved kid. Yes, one who is allowed to make choices and who speaks up for themselves and who has an opinion; but selfish, disrespectful  and mean, I just find almost unbearable and prefer my kids hang out with the opposite. So, in no uncertain terms, thank God for James and Lilly and kids like them.

Whoa!!! What a rabbit trail. Anyhow, I decided not to call them back to the table for work. I decided that today...they were learning leadership skills and how to work well within a group and how to make new friends and discovery and getting plenty of exercise while at it. Now I am the kind of mommy/teacher who can be very rigid and I tend to push my kids because I feel I know when they are giving it their all so for me to relinquish my plans and abandon my lesson plans for a life skills day was HUGE and our first! But I am so glad that I did. I can honestly say that I believe my kids learned just as valuable a lesson today as reading, writing and arithmetic. They learned how to make new friends. Everyday comes with its own set of opportunities and built in lessons, I have to be flexible enough to recognize it and submit to it from time to time. :)

Stephy.