Back To School - September 2023

This new school year marks exciting times for our family. 

One of our kids started school in August and is going to public school. Our older girls who live at home, will be working at their first job part time and doing homeschool on days they are not working. And our three youngest kids excited about all that is to come in this new homeschool year.

It is so wonderful to see how learning can take place even when you don't set it up yourself. 

While working around the house I noticed Ellie looking at the clock on the laptop. She was fascinated with the changing of time and decided to practice writing the time. It kept her busy and occupied for over 30 minutes. While it might seem boring or a waste of time, she was actively learning. Not just learning but leading her own learning session. She discovered how long a minute was, she got to see how time continues on even when she stops writing it down. It was a beautiful thing to see. Most of the time, to get her to learn something takes very deliberate planning, but in this moment, it was all her. Something sparked her interest and she ran with it. 

This September we have finished the final things to make the schoolhouse usable. We wired it all up so we can have outlets that we will use with solar and generators, added solar lighting, insulated the walls, put up internal walls, painted the walls, and finished the flooring, I would have loved the ease of vinyl flooring, but we had left over laminate flooring from the house so we used what we had on hand. Mark also found plans online for the child size chairs that will work perfectly in the schoolroom with the desks we have for the kids. 

Mark drilled the holes for the wires and I put in the wires and the insulation. I painted the room and he worked on the flooring. A couple of the kids even came over to help paint. 

The first day of school for the kids was so exciting! The youngest three kids are the only ones who are doing school together so it feels a bit different. It is certainly a lot different than when I had a whole class of 20 kids back in the day. The older two girls are working on their own time as and when they want since they are also working part-time. I still help them with their school work when needed, but it is more for their own enjoyment (they love doing schoolwork) than anything else as they are both adults now. 

The view outside of our classroom window is always fun to look out of. Our turkeys and chickens are free range and love to hang out near the classroom. With the weather really good we like to have the door in the classroom open, however, sometimes we get visitors and have to shoo the chickens and turkeys out. 

We made bookmarks today to keep track of our reading. The kids drew a picture then colored it on one side, and on the other side I will be using it as a sticker chart to keep track of how many books they have read. 

She was very excited to find a frog outside and brought him in to the classroom to show me. 

We are looking forward to a year full of fun and learning. And can hardly wait to share all our adventures. 

Plans for the Future with Homeschooling

There are several changes that we have already made to our curriculum for the fall before we have even started. 

I have a love/hate relationship with Simply Classical. There are so many things I like about it. I love the math, and the science books we read. I love introducing kids to artists and composers. When I was teaching years ago, I always played classical music and we spent time each month doing a minor study of artists then would do artwork in that style. It made things fun. We did not do the full classical approach where we were actually doing a study of the person behind the music and art. It was simplified for kids. Some kids in my class really were interested in the artists and composers and asked more questions and learned more about the artists and composers. Other kids just were able to enjoy  the paintings of the artists work and listening to the composers music. 

One struggle we had this year was the history books. They were all great books, however, some of the books were way over our kids head. To combat that I ended up spending more money buying books that were easy reader books. It was during this time that I started looking back on our Abeka history books. They were easier to read, they gave more detailed information in bite sizes about different people and events in history (several pages rather than bigger chapter books)

I looked more into the Simply Classical curriculum and realized that while SC3 had the history chapter books, it was an option for SC5/6, the same history books! Had I known this I would have waited on the history books and I am sure I would have been more successful. 

There are so many things I do love about Simply Classical but I struggle with the the classical method since I did not grow up with that. I wonder about the practicality or even the necessity of it in our children's lives. Will it enrich their lives to see works of art and hear classical music? I am sure it will! Will it enrich their lives to learn when the composer or artist was born and in what country and how many works of arts they made in their lifetime? Probably not. While they are able to tell me the days of the week, months of the year, and tell time, they do not relate to time like we do. If we are talking about going to the Grand Canyon they can not recall things like it being done last year around this time. They might remember going, but the time line would not be something they are able to fully comprehend. 

So what do they need to know? What WOULD be the best ways to enrich their lives? Learning how to do basic math so they can learn how to double or triple a recipe. Learn fractions well enough so if they can't find the right measuring cup they know how to adapt. Learn how to read well enough that they can enjoy the Bible and books. They should learn how to do some basic sewing, learn how to follow a recipe. Learn healthy habits and hygiene. Learn how to use tools properly, learn life skills. Learn how to tend a garden, gather eggs, care for animals. 

We will be doing a good part of what we had already planned but with a few changes. 

The kids are doing very well in Spanish and they enjoy it so we will be sticking to Spanish and ASL as our two languages we are working on. We have decided to drop Latin. 

Another change we are adding is adding in a review of the Abeka Science and Social Studies book since Simply Classical does not cover science and history in level 4, instead it covers mythology and folk tales. 

Another thing we will be doing is adding a craft day once per week. We were doing that with Abeka and the kids have really missed it. I actually do not enjoy art, but some dear friends of ours do and have offered to come over a couple times per month to do art with the kids. 

We will also go back to doing a puzzle every day. We had been doing this before we moved and had see great strides in our kids focus but have gotten out of the habit and those skills need brushing up on again. 

Goals for the future in homeschooling. 

Home Economics - Sewing, grocery shopping, cooking (goals - to learn to sew on buttons, make a meal plan and grocery list, and to be able to cook simple meals with the use of Raddish Kids cooking club)

P.E. -Special Olympics, hikes

We also want to make trips to places part of their education. And be more active in our local homeschool group. 

We will be starting school in a couple of weeks and while we homeschool year round, we do take a short break for summer (about 1-2 weeks once the kids are done with all their books from the previous year). 

Homeschool in May

 This month we have been reading Stone Soup, Wagon Wheels, Johnny Appleseed, How do Apples Grow, There's a Map in my Lap, What is the World Made Of, The Boy Who Drew Birds, How to Draw Birds, How We Crossed the West, and much much more. We are learning States and Capitals in the order that they joined the USA. 
Our Composer of the month is: Frédéric François Chopin

Our Artist of the month is: Salvador Dali

Our poem of the month is My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson 

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Our Bible verse of the month is,

 Proverbs 3:5-7 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.  Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.

Alina has been loving taking pictures as part of art for homeschooling. She is given our old cell phone that is now just used as a camera and go exploring through the woods on our property and take pictures. These are the pictures she has taken. 

Grandpa came to visit and Gavyn loved helping Grandpa plant the blueberry bushes. 

For Mother's Day we all went down to a local creek that is bigger than ours here at home. We were happy to discover they have BBQ grills as well as bathrooms and picnic tables. 

There are new chicks and even some turkeys on the homestead! The kids are loving seeing the chicks and turkeys and how fast they are growing. 

We got season passes for Silver Dollar City for Christmas for the kids. One of the things we love about it is how they are not afraid to celebrate God! Inside the theme park is a Wilderness Church! They have a service on Sundays but for the rest of the week they have it where you can go in during certain times and sing along with the hymns and even request your favorite ones are played. 

2023-2024 School Year

I sat down a few days ago to start planning out our 2023-2024 school year. After a few days of working on it, I finally have everything planned, organized, and ready to go for fall. (never mind that it just turned spring, ordering books early usually gives a discount which is always welcome and once they come in we are always excited to look at the books and it just helps get everyone excited to finish their school work so we can start on the new books!) 

It is a bit of a mix because some books work better for some kids than the others. 

Some things will be the same for all the kids like our read alouds for history, science, and enrichment. All the kids will be working on learning more ASL (American Sign Language) as well continuing our  Latin studies that we stared last year. 

These are our books for this year with Simply Classical 4 Memoria Press. You might notice a lot of books that look the same, that is for each child who will be using those books. 

For kids who are using other materials in addition to Simply Classical, these are their books (a couple of books are missing from the picture but are currently being shipped and should arrive soon). 

One way I help keep the kids' books organized is by putting color coded stickers on the books. Each child has their own color so they can easily spot which books are theirs. This way the kids can make sure when they put their books away they are not putting them in the wrong spot. Books with a spiral on the side have their stickers on top of the cover page. 

Last school year we started working on learning states and capitals. This year we will learn more about the states and review all their capitals. We are also going to be learning about Mythology, reading animal Folk Tales, continuing our studies of famous composers and artists, as well as learning more poetry and Bible verses. 

When we started learning bible verses, poems, and hymns back in October 2022, I wondered it if would be too much. We have discovered that they are more than able to and have actually shown improvement in other areas of their school work because of it. This year we are stepping it up a little bit because part of our homeschool curriculum with Simply Classical 4 has the kids learning two longer poems, Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 

I had already preselected all the poems that we were going to be doing prior to us getting the curriculum guide and was happy to discover that one of the poems I had selected, Who had Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti, was the third poem that the kids would be learning in Simply Classical 4. I  had not originally planned on doing Paul Revere's Ride or The Charge of the Light Brigade, so I ended up having to take down some poems we were going to do in the place of those, but we can always learn that in the 2024-2025 school year. I already have a large list of poems, bible verses, and hymns for future years. 

If a poem is somewhat short such as the Rain by Robert Louis Stevenson or Singing by Robert Louis Stevenson, I have it so we will be learning both poems for that month. Most poems that we have learned the kids have been able to learn in one month, however this year we will be learning a couple of longer poems and while we will still add a poem each month, if a poem is really long we will continue to work on that one as well. The poem we are learning in January and April are very long poems. We will work on the one in January all the way until April and the one in April all the way till the end of school or until they are both learned as those two are part of our homeschool curriculum with Simply Classical 4. 

 

One thing I have started doing for some poems is making a slide show with some picture clues to help our kids visualize the poems. 

This is the one I made for The Months poem by Sara Coleridge. The picture below shows January and that part of the poem goes, January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow. 

By having the pictures while the kids are learning the poem, they are later able to visualize the pictures when they are reciting it without seeing it. At the end of the month, they are asked to say it without any help from the slideshow or with me helping to remind them. They have been doing so well! 

 These are the books that our kids will be using this school year. 

The majority of our work is from the Simply Classical program by Memoria Press. It is a wonderful program and works very well for many of our kids. However, for some of our kids who are able to work at a faster pace then their program but not fast enough for their typical program we have a few other things we use. 

With spelling, some of our kids are able to move at a pretty fast pace if they do not have too many words to memorize. This is the struggle with typical programs because there are so many spelling words to remember per week. With Simply Classical there are fewer words per week to memorize, this works very well for some of our kids, however, for one of our kids that can move a lot faster we will be using Abeka while another one of our kids need to move a lot slower and need more activities to help them learn so in that case we have turned to Super Teacher Worksheets for Spelling. We do let the kids go at their own pace for spelling. Each of our kids are at various skill levels. Some kids are able to memorize their spelling words in one week, while others can memorize them in a few days, and others still will take a few weeks to learn them. Super Teacher Worksheets has been an amazing discovery. They have a large collection of worksheets that is perfect for preschool- 5th grade with everything from math, reading comprehension, spelling, phonics, phonies, and much more. Their spelling includes things from the spelling words plus activities like cutting and gluing to make sentences with the spelling words, word searches using the spelling words, and much more, which is perfect for our child who need that extra practice.

In addition to our learning Bible verses, poems, and hymns, the kids will continue learning about famous composers, listening to music they wrote, and learning about famous artists and seeing pictures of their artwork. 

Another part of our homeschooling this year will be to take advantage of all the recipes we have collected over the last couple years from a subscription to Radish Kids. Radish Kids is a kids cooking subscription where kids receive a recipe each month, as well as a grocery list, some table talk cards, and easy to follow directions to make each recipe. 

Homesteading brings science to life. We have an orchard that was planted in the spring and the kids have been watching it come to life. We also set up our garden in the spring and the kids have been getting their hands dirty and learning about gardening. The kids received a baby bunny in the spring from one of our dear friends from church along with a rabbit hutch. They love their little bunny! We also have chickens. We got our first baby chicks in April, some more in May, and then even more in July. They have gotten to see how they grow and develop and we are excited over the coming year to be able to watch our chickens hatch some of their own eggs. 

Something new this school year will be that our older girls will be working two days per week for a place that employees people with disabilities. We took a tour and the girls loved it there and are looking forward to being able to spread their wings a bit and be able to earn some spare cash. This will give me extra time to work with the youngest three kids and allow the older girls to learn new skills on the job. 

Another fun thing we will be doing now that we are more settled in from our move in 2022 is we will be exploring our state with field trips! We will be exploring places such as the Laura Ingles Wilder Home and Museum, caves, seasonal events and festivals, zoos, as well as tours of places like a fire station. 

Our church hosts a Talent Show night in September and the kids are so excited!  We will start working on learning something they can do to preform for the talent show around June. We are blessed to live in a state with so many things to do!

In Feb 2024 our older girls will once again be able to attend Night to Shine and are so looking forward to it. Our younger kids are looking forward to when they will be able to attend but you need to be at least 16 so they have a few more years to go. 

Life is Good!