Weekly Review #3

This week was a light week.  Emmanuel woke up with a stomach virus last Friday and was very ill throughout the weekend.  Monday I took him to the doctor and he was prescribed medicine.  He began feeling better Tuesday but Wednesday we started preparing for our mini vacation. 

I enjoyed- Watching Christopher's eyes light up as we began our journey through American History.  Also Emmanuel has not stopped talking about Cardinals since with studied them a few weeks ago.  

Subject Updates
Reading- Christopher completed three lessons in CLE LTR.  He took his exam for Light Unit 106 and scored and 100.  He began Light Unit 107.

Language Arts- Learned about sentence order and continued practice of alphabetical order.  Ending words with the /k/ sound short vowel words end with ck long vowel words end with ke.  We also learned the ve rule.  Words that end in ve can be long, short or have the schwa sound.  The schwa sound is the short u sound.

Bible- Exodus chapters 6-12.  Christopher was convinced that Pharaoh would never let the people go.  "He's just lying", Christopher would say as we read through the chapters of Pharaoh continually changing his mind about the Israelites.

Independent Reads- We started a new book.  Frog and Toad Together and Christopher read the first chapter The List. We made a list of all of Christopher's friends then later in the week we alphabetized the list. 

History- We learned about the land bridge that once connected Asia and North America.  We read about the Vikings in Norway and how Eric the Red left Norway and settled in Iceland. Later Eric the Red sailed with twenty four other ships to Greenland. 

Art- Studied a new artist Mary Cassatt.  I have to say that Emmanuel was not happy about moving on from Vincent Van Gogh to another artist. 

Preschool Corner-Emmanuel did not get much accomplished this week but we shall pick up where we left off next week. 

Science- Emperor Penguins.  Emmanuel learned that emperor penguins live in Antartica which he calls the purple continent because it is purple on our world map. 

Math-Its great to see him picking up on concepts.  We completed pages 20-26 in his math curriculum.

Motor Skills- His motor skills are improving slowly but surely.

Tot School- Continued his learning board with the letter C and increasing his speech.  His vocabulary is picking up so we will continue on until I feel we need to shift. 

Goals for next week- Continue making progress with my home organization and cleanliness.  Try not to stress. Think positive.  The holidays are approaching and that can be a stressful time for me. 

Goals from previous weeks-  We still did not start one class by 9am.  For home organization I started using Flylady again Currently I feel my cleaning and organization lacks strategy but I did accomplished a lot.  Reviewed several African American resources that I would like to order for my personal library. 

Website to checkout- Blessed Heritage.  Belinda has put together a literature based curriculum for minorities.  The customer service is excellent and I appreciate that her curriculum gives a broader scope on the minority experience and contributions than what is typically offered in standard curriculum.

Well here is my review, hopefully your week was blessed.  See you next week. 

Weekly Review 2

What's New - Finally figured out how to incorporate a time line into our History.  We read a chapter from STOW and then find the corresponding timeline card and add it to our book.

The boys enjoyed- The boys really enjoyed our field trip to the fire house.  This was especially fun for Emmanuel who believes he is a fire fighter.

Subject Updates

Science- This week in science we learned about diluting solutions. We conducted an experiment with koolaid from weakest to strongest. 

Reading- Christopher finished his first chapter book Frog and Toad are Friends.  He even asked if there were other books in the series so I brought home two more Frog and Toad books from the library.  He is doing well, we just have to work on his fluency which will come with repetition.

Goals for next week- This week my focus is on home cleanliness and organization. I realize that our home is harder to keep spotless since we are in it all time. But I feel that I would benefit greatly, from a regular cleaning and organizing schedule. My next goal is going to bed at a decent hour, ideally 11:00 pm. Lastly, I will continue research on the Charlotte Mason Method and my search for African American history books. I will write about this more in depth later.

Website I visited often- Earlier this month I was blessed to attend a monthly homeschool meeting. The speaker for the evening was LindaFay.  She was a public school teacher for eleven years before she became a homeschool mom. She is very passionate about her life's work and her passion oozes through her when she speaks. Anyway she explained how she implemented Charlotte Mason's philosophies into their life.  She brought some of her children's notebooks with her to showcase some of what they have done, and their progression over the past fourteen years. What an inspiration!  Two of her daughters were there and after the general session they were available to answer questions.  She has a website that offers suggestions and general help for those who are using the Charlotte Mason method. 

How did I do with this weeks goals- Despite my valiant attempts to start class at 9am I missed the mark every day this week.  Well you know what they say if at first you don't succeed. We will continue working on this goal.  Another victory from last week, was that I prepared all my materials prior to late on Sunday night. 

How was your week?

Acts of Service: Project 1

Serving my community has been on heart for a while.  In fact, getting my family involved  in acts of service has been a dream of mine that has been on the back burner for a variety of reasons.   When I found out my homeschool group had a mission club, signing up was a no brainer.  Today was our first opportunity to give to others.  We went to a local nursing home, passed out painted pumpkins and visited with the residents. I came away from the experience very emotional in a good way.  It was obvious that Christopher was out of his element and seemed unhappy to be there.  I reminded him that today he needed to focus on others and have a happy heart.   Emmanuel on the other hand had no problems socializing  with the seniors.  So glad we had the opportunity to give to others today, I will definitely be pursuing other opportunities and bringing the boys along.

Boys painting pumpkins

Emmanuel talking with one of the residents.

Ms. Blair showing us her bears. 

The Mommy Binder

The Mommy Binder also known as The Brain is my one stop location for everything organization.  This folder is key to planning and scheduling our lives.  One day I was hanging out in Bloggerville, when I stopped at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She posted about how she was updating her mommy binder.  Her post got me thinking that my mommy binder needed an overhaul as well.

Pencils, pens and erasers are kept within the binder.

So what is the mommy binder?  The binder is a simple 1 1/2 to 3 inch binder suited to your personality.  It has tabs for everything that's important to you. My binder has the following tabs;

• Calender- Everything is placed on the calender, church, athletics, parties, vacation, meetings, dates etc.  If its not on the calender chances are we will forget about it. It's best if the calender is consulted before committing to any event.  Otherwise we can easily be overbooked.

• Attendance-Keeping a paper copy of attendance makes it easy to update my tracking software if I get behind. 
• Children- Each child has a tab with all their lesson plans.

• Blog- There are many times an idea comes to me that would be great for my blog, but I am not able to get on the computer right then.  When that happens I work out the ideas on paper, then type on the computer later.
• Lists-  I am a true blue list maker so my list tab holds several key lists. Things We Need Around the House, Personal Items We Need, Leisure Book List, Resources I am researching.  The benefit of having such lists is, on the rare occasion if anyone ask me what we need, I can locate our needs quickly.  Or when there are additional funds, they can be used to purchase something on our list. Case in point at the beginning of the school year my mom asked what school supplies we needed. At the time our school supply list was stored on the refrigerator, I gave it to her thinking she would get what she could.  She purchased everything on the list.  What a blessing.
• Contacts-  Its is always great to have a contact list handy.
• Homeschool Vision-  This trusted tab keeps my year in line with my vision.  When I need encouragement or when I need to see how our year is progressing.  All I have to do is flip to this tab. The most important benefit of this tab is that when its time to purchase curriculum I can easily tell if the curriculum is in live with my vision or not.
• Research- There are times I read about curriculum, educational philosophies, games or articles that may be useful to us.  I simply make note of it then conduct my research at a later date.   
• Curriculum Planning- After my research is done, this is where I put my final selections for the upcoming school year. 

Well that's the Mommy Binder, its very simple and can be tailored differently each year as you see fit.  Do you have a Mommy Binder, if so tell me about it. 

Weekly Review

I've decided to change the format in which my weekly Wrap-Up's are presented.  First things first, the Wrap-Up for my site Random Uttering will now be called Weekly Review.  The spirit of  Weekly Review is the same as the wrap up but with a few tweaks.

What's New - This week was a short week for us because of the holiday.  Perfect week to implement something new.  The first new thing was incorporating Joshua into our school day. Balancing the three was actually quite smooth and Joshua is doing well.  The second addition was a composer study.  Our composer was Aaron Copland.   Copland was one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century. Everyday for a few minutes we would stop and listen to an arrangement from our chosen composer. 

What I enjoyed most- One day I decided we would all lay down on the floor with our eyes closed and listen to our composer.  I asked the boys to listen to the music and tell me what instruments they could hear.  Once they began responding, violin, flute etc., a feeling that I can't describe came over me .  In that moment, while lying on the floor with my boys, it just felt right.  I feel so privileged  to watch these three precious boys grow up before my eyes and witness the little moments. 

Subject Updates
Math- Christopher was introduced to fractions by way of a recipe this week.  We made peanut butter or tried to at least.  My food processor broke last year so I did my best with our blender but we were not able to get the peanuts to break down until they were smooth. 

Emmanuel worked on classifying by color and identifying which group has the most or the fewest.

Reading-Christopher is now reading chapter books!  Somebody pinch me.  It was just last year I had a stack of cvc words on 3 x 5 cards.  Next, we were combining the cards to make short sentences.  Now he is reading chapter books.  Yesterday he read two chapters out loud to his grandmother and he is always reading to his little brothers. 

Emmanuel was assigned several cvc words this week.  His words were an, pan, fan, ran and can. He is not really ready for this but I am taking it very slow.  I am debating if he should be introduced to sight words.  Christopher never learned sight words, the methods I used with him were strictly phonics based. 

History- We learned about Christopher Columbus.  Christopher was so happy to learn about another Christopher.  We discovered Christopher Columbus grew up in Italy and always wanted to be a sailor. During that time boats took goods back and forth from India and China to Italy and vice verse but Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) stopped Christians from traveling east.  Columbus thought he could get to India and China by going west.   The queen of Spain helped Columbus.  In 1492 Columbus set out from Spain and landed in the New World America.  

Science- Emmanuel studied a mammal and a bird all in line with his letter of the week.  This weeks  letter  was C so his mammal was a cougar and the bird was a cardinal.  We read library books about these animals and he narrated back to me what he learned and then colored a picture.  Simple and effective!

Language Arts- Copy work is being introduced through the books that we read.  Currently Christopher is reading Frog and Toad are Friends.  Once we finish a chapter he and I pick out a sentence that he writes for copy work.  Christopher looks through the chapter and picks out the shortest sentences.  He even has decided he does not want to write his full name. It is evident there is some character training that needs to take place here.  He has got to learn that taking the easy way out may feel better short term but is detrimental long term. This is an issue that I want to nip in the bud sooner rather than later. 

Emmanuel worked on the letter C.





Art - Emmanuel worked with his primary colors this week. 

Preschool Corner- Joshua worked on the letter A, the number one and the color red this week.  I am focused on increasing his vocabulary. We compared clean vs. dirty and clothing colors.  Your shirt is blue and your pants are black.  We played the Clean up Game with him.  It was so fun. I put several stuffed animals in the laundry basket and then dumped the contents on the floor and encouraged him to clean up.



Blog I read several times this week-  The Joys of Homeschooling  Shawon is doing a great job of encouraging fellow homeschoolers.  She is posting 31 Days of Homeschooling tips and tidbits, I look forward to reading her advice for the day. 

Goals for next week- I would  like to start our school day earlier. This week my goal is to start no later than 9:00am.  Our day genreally begins around 10:00 am. If we could begin earlier that would free up more afternoon hours for us to do other things. One final goal for next week is to complete most of school my preparation prior to Sunday night. Wish me luck. 

Goodbye Vacation

After a much needed week off, school at Trinity Academy is back in session. Vacation week was a welcomed retreat. There were no fancy hotels or trips to the beach. Nope, this break was deliberately set up for me to relax and do a few things that I have not had time to do.  Much of my time was spent catching up with chores around the house. My home was suffering from neglect and its effects were beginning to show. The remaining time was spent creating lesson plans through the end of the year.  Honestly, what break would be complete if I weren't planning something.  We are preparing for a special event. Christopher's seventh birthday is coming up at the end of the month and there is much to do.

Joshua has officially joined us in the classroom.  Technically, he does not sit with us, on the contrary he runs in writes on his brother's papers, then runs out.  Occasionally he will sit down briefly, but then he decides it is time for another adventure.  Creating lesson plans for him gives his day more structure and reduces the amount of mischief  he gets into.   Having children in various age groups or stages can be a challenge.  However, planning ahead of time helps me to implement a well thought out game plan.  I will talk more about this in a future post, titled the Mommy Binder.   

Goodbye vacation, our time together was great.   I hope to see you soon. 

Wordless Wednesday: Park Day

Joshua is my free spirit. He has no fear and eagerly explores his surroundings.  Consequently I am filled with fear that he is going to severely hurt himself.

Science, Science, Science

What do you do with a child that ask for science everyday? We have a great science program this year but the subject matter is not keeping Christopher's attention.  Christopher believes that science is chemicals in beakers and viewing things under a microscope.  "Science is not the human body, mom" he says, every week.  Well of course the human body is science I reply but debating with a six year old is only going to go so far.  So what should you do:

1. Tell him the human body is our science for the year, whether you like it or not.
2. Purchase another curriculum.
3. Buy a science experiment book, and weave in topics that will interest child.
4. All of the above.

The answer is all of the above.  There will be times where each response is appropriate. As a parent one of my jobs is to teach my children some things have to be done despite how they feel about it.  On the other hand it is up to me to recognize opportunities and seize them.  So for my science lover I decided to switch a few things up.  I acquired these new resources.

 We studied Solids and Liquids this past week.

Here are two solids.  Ice is solid water crayon is solid wax.

We played with the ice until it melted into a liquid.

Peeling crayons to melt in oven.

Crayons are peeled and ready to go into the oven.

Heat melts the crayons turning them into liquid.

Once cooled the liquid solidifies.

Popsicles are a solid that turn into liquid when you eat them.



Lab sheet.

Coloring with our created crayons.

This was a hit!  Both boys had such a great time.  Christopher said mom this was not beakers but it was fun.  Alright I'll take it.  Stayed tuned for more of our adventures in science.