School Status

I planned to do no school this month. However, a couple of weeks ago, I felt really good with how we were doing with the new arrival. I thought about it and figured that starting one “fun” subject would be ok. So, we started doing history using Story of the World 2. We just started Chapter 4 on Thursday and we are going pretty slow – using my lesson plans but spreading the work out over a couple of days. This has been good since I have a LOT of books for most of these chapters, so we do read-alouds most days.

We’ve “eaten like Roman soldiers” and recently also “eaten like monks.” We’ve made our own ink and quill pens. We’re learning to draw mythical creatures from a book we checked out to see how to draw Grendel from the Beowulf story. (Child #2 is very artistic.)

This past week, we also started our religious studies. So, if I feel adventurous, we’ll add science this week. I still have a few weeks until I planned to start “full school,” so whatever we get done now is “gravy.” The kids love history & science, so they enjoy it and I still have time to keep up with the laundry, house, and feeding a newborn.

School year planning

We usually start our “traditional school year” right after Labor Day. That day is approaching quickly, so I’m posting an update on how planning is going – even though we aren’t going to start then.

Lesson plans (each on individual subject sheets) are done for those subjects that I thought needed them – History, Religion, Science, Map Skills, etc. I didn’t do any for math this year as it is easy enough just to “do the next lesson” with a little bit of pre-planning either the night before or the weekend before for the hands-on manipulatives or up-on-the-white-board work. Grammar (GWG 3) and Writing (WWE 2) will also be “do the next lesson” type of lessons with no need for lesson plans.

We like to use quite a few “living books” for our history studies in conjunction with Story of the World. Thus, I spend several hours during the summer at the local library combing through the card catalog for related books for each chapter. (Our small local library does not have an internet-reachable online card catalog, so one has to physically be at one of the library’s two computers to search their card catalog.) I am just under over half-way done with my search (Chapter 19 22 of 42).

This year, we joined a library about an hour+ from us (paying the “out of area” fee) in order to have access to more books. I am only one-fourth of the way through this search as I have more “hits” at the bigger library system. However, I can do this searching from home using our internet connection.

Both sets of searches require me to carve out time away from the children – a difficult task this summer as my spouse has been working many (MANY) extra hours and those he is home, we like to spend as a family (usually doing an outside activity).

I have my organizational notebook started and as I am in a state which has some homeschool reporting requirements, I have my “letter” from the state officials in hand.

So, why aren’t we going to start after Labor Day as usual? Why will this “school year” be different than our others so far? Well, you see, I’m due to deliver our fifth child in the middle of September. So, I don’t really want to “start school” and then stop it again for those first several bleary-eyed weeks of newborn-ness. We’ll be waiting to start “school” in earnest until after I feel up to running the day-to-day household and managing school – hopefully in October for at least some of the subjects and November for the full fledged schedule.

There’s your update on school planning at the Learning As I Go homestead.

Summer Reading Club

The tiny local library has started their summer reading club up. Activities are planned once per week at the library and all books the kids read (or have read to them) are recorded on sheets and turned in. At the end of the club, the kids get a chance to redeem their “book bucks” for prizes and also have a chance to win a bike donated by a local business.

The older kids really enjoyed the first week’s activity. We arrived early enough to pick up our stash of books (eventually maxing out our checkout number). Child #1 who now “loves to read” has already read between two and three (170-210 pg) books per day since then. It is hard to find “suitable” reading material on her reading level in our small town library. We are going to be joining the “big city” library system (1 1/2 hrs drive away) sometime this late summer/early fall to gain access to more books we would like to use for our Story of the World history curriculum and hopefully more books on Child #1′s reading level.

Until then, we are having a great time with the summer reading club, swimming several times a week at the local pool, and hitting local (or regional) kid-friendly events while trying to stay cool!

The Best Laid Plans . . .

I have my book of lesson plans that I refer to daily to see what I thought we would do each day. We have only had three full days of school and already I am glad I am so flexible.

For example, this summer, Child #1 went after the Singapore math books I purchased for her to keep her math skills fresh. It went so well that the built-in review of A Beka’s math program is almost boring for her. I pondered simply skipping the first 29-some lessons completely, but think a little review is good. Besides, I haven’t been doing the mental math with her that A Beka’s program encourages. My lesson plans had us finishing Lesson 5 at the end of this week. We finished Lesson 8 today.

In another example, I planned to ease into Spell to Write and Read. I figured it would take about two weeks to review the 26 (alphabet) single-letter phonograms while doing some other fun games and such. On Day 2, Child #2 remarked that she knew all these so could we go a bit faster? So, the next day, I tested her on her knowledge. When I held up the phonogram card, she was to say the sound(s) as quickly as she could. If she hesitated or got them wrong the first time through (even if she corrected herself), I counted them wrong. She got 25 of the 26 single-letter phonograms perfect. She also knew 24 of the remaining 44 phonograms immediately and perfectly. So, a week early, I gave her a new Learning Log and we started on the Consonant/Vowel reference page.

I have also learned that I might have been a bit optimistic in how many pages we can cover each day in Story of the World I and Apologia’s Astronomy. Child #2 is doing great with Learn to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and is completing, on average, three pages per day of Singapore Earlybird Math (1B).

Happy Labor Day!

I have no plans for anything “special” on Labor Day. My spouse is working and we are getting ready for school to start tomorrow!

Just a note about what we did last week before the official start of school:

History (Story of the World I)- We did some pre-reading from library books – mostly about Egpyt.

Math (A Beka 2/Singapore EarlyBird 1B)- Both older children completed a few pages in their workbooks. We breezed through three lessons already in A Beka Arithmetic 2. The math supplement books Child #1 worked on during the summer kept her pretty much up to speed. I plan to speed through the ‘review’ that is built in to the beginning of the math book. (How do year-rounders deal with this, I wonder?)

Spelling (Spell to Write and Read) – I gave Child #1 a spelling diagnostic test. She scored at the same grade level as her final spelling diagnostic at the end of May. Nothing gained, nothing lost. Still pencil-phobic!

Science (Apologia Astronomy) – I read the first page and a half of Chapter 1 aloud to all the kids to get a jump on that first week’s planned work.