Mustaches courtesy of a Vacation Bible School prize that Sylvia won. :)
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
First Day of Home-School, 2014
Susannah, age 4
Kindergarten
Goal: Learning to Read
Sylvia, age 2
Observer and master of wooden puzzles. :)
We're eager to see what the year ahead holds for us. :)
Charity was napping when I took the previous photos, so here's her First Day of School picture:
Charity, 4 months and 2 weeks old
Charity's goal: figure out how to move!
Mama's goal: get her to like food
Monday, August 11, 2014
Preparing for Homeschool - The First Year
Do I really dare call it "homeschooling" when all I will really be doing is teaching Susannah how to read and doing some math? Since I have ordered the material and it will require me to use a portion of each day to teach the material, then I guess yes, it is homeschooling.
As I face the quickly approaching school year as a first time homeschooling mom, so many thoughts cross my mind.
Can I do this? Can I really teach her how to read, do simple math, AND do everything else that must be done? Can I keep up with the dishes? The laundry? The baths, potty trips and diaper changes? Can I keep two other little people happily busy while I teach one something specific?
Is she ready? Yes, of course she's ready. She wants to know how to read. ...but what if it doesn't click? What if I don't know how to teach everything in a way she can understand and learn and retain and and and...
Will she pay attention long enough to do each lesson?
Will I recognize if it's not working so we can step back and take a break if we need to? I don't want to frustrate her...
I want it to be fun. I know that all learning cannot be "fun" but as much as I can I want homeschooling to be a good experience. For all of us. What if either of us gets tired of schooling? You can't just stop doing school like you can stop playing with kitchen toys or blocks or whatever.
And on and on go similar thoughts in my head. So many "what ifs."
On the other hand, I am so excited for so many reasons. Mostly to see her mind unlock the treasure of reading. I love books. I think Susannah will enjoy reading so much! She wants to be able to read so badly. I haven't told her yet that we will be starting school soon, so that she can learn to read. I am excited to see her excitement.
I'm excited at all the fun adventures the future holds. All the fun field trips I want to do. We had gone to the printers to pick up some teacher's handbooks that I had printed off of a disc. While standing in the print shop I had the idea to someday take a field trip to a printing place. A working dairy. Museums. Historic places and landmarks. Factories (Hershey, PA is top of the list when they are old enough!!!). So many more ideas go through my head. I know these aren't homeschooler-specific things to do but things that I think will make homeschooling "the bee's knees!"
I've heard about many ways to teach reading and have honestly done little-to-no research on what method I wanted to use. For a while I thought I would just use the same curriculum that I had learned with, but then I heard about American Language Series from a friend. The more I heard about it the more I wanted to use it.
We will be using American Language Series which covers phonics & reading and spelling, writing & vocabulary simultaneously. (I didn't order from this site, but you can read a very good overview of the course here.)
For Math, we will use Horizon - K (overview here). It was recommended for going together well with the learning to read program. I have had fun looking through these books and anticipate that Susannah will have fun, too.
I don't anticipate that at 4 years old she will grasp everything covered and my guess is that we will make it so far and then put the books away for next year. My goal for this year is to teach her how to read. We can worry about nouns and punctuation and graphs and math later. :)
We are fortunate that when we built the addition we included a school-room. It's the least-finished room in the entire house but finished or not, here we come!! One thing I am really excited to do is to make our school room an enjoyable place to learn. I don't know how realistic it is, but I plan and hope to put up some decorations and use various decorative/creative ways to help with learning. I bought a huge bale of colored contruction paper at Costco the last trip and plan to put it to good use!!
As I face the quickly approaching school year as a first time homeschooling mom, so many thoughts cross my mind.
Can I do this? Can I really teach her how to read, do simple math, AND do everything else that must be done? Can I keep up with the dishes? The laundry? The baths, potty trips and diaper changes? Can I keep two other little people happily busy while I teach one something specific?
Is she ready? Yes, of course she's ready. She wants to know how to read. ...but what if it doesn't click? What if I don't know how to teach everything in a way she can understand and learn and retain and and and...
Will she pay attention long enough to do each lesson?
Will I recognize if it's not working so we can step back and take a break if we need to? I don't want to frustrate her...
I want it to be fun. I know that all learning cannot be "fun" but as much as I can I want homeschooling to be a good experience. For all of us. What if either of us gets tired of schooling? You can't just stop doing school like you can stop playing with kitchen toys or blocks or whatever.
And on and on go similar thoughts in my head. So many "what ifs."
On the other hand, I am so excited for so many reasons. Mostly to see her mind unlock the treasure of reading. I love books. I think Susannah will enjoy reading so much! She wants to be able to read so badly. I haven't told her yet that we will be starting school soon, so that she can learn to read. I am excited to see her excitement.
I'm excited at all the fun adventures the future holds. All the fun field trips I want to do. We had gone to the printers to pick up some teacher's handbooks that I had printed off of a disc. While standing in the print shop I had the idea to someday take a field trip to a printing place. A working dairy. Museums. Historic places and landmarks. Factories (Hershey, PA is top of the list when they are old enough!!!). So many more ideas go through my head. I know these aren't homeschooler-specific things to do but things that I think will make homeschooling "the bee's knees!"
I've heard about many ways to teach reading and have honestly done little-to-no research on what method I wanted to use. For a while I thought I would just use the same curriculum that I had learned with, but then I heard about American Language Series from a friend. The more I heard about it the more I wanted to use it.
We will be using American Language Series which covers phonics & reading and spelling, writing & vocabulary simultaneously. (I didn't order from this site, but you can read a very good overview of the course here.)
For Math, we will use Horizon - K (overview here). It was recommended for going together well with the learning to read program. I have had fun looking through these books and anticipate that Susannah will have fun, too.
I don't anticipate that at 4 years old she will grasp everything covered and my guess is that we will make it so far and then put the books away for next year. My goal for this year is to teach her how to read. We can worry about nouns and punctuation and graphs and math later. :)
We are fortunate that when we built the addition we included a school-room. It's the least-finished room in the entire house but finished or not, here we come!! One thing I am really excited to do is to make our school room an enjoyable place to learn. I don't know how realistic it is, but I plan and hope to put up some decorations and use various decorative/creative ways to help with learning. I bought a huge bale of colored contruction paper at Costco the last trip and plan to put it to good use!!
Thursday, August 7, 2014
The Good Ol' Summertime
It is hard to believe that we are already to August!! I was gazing at Charity today (yes, gazing :) ) and felt some sad twinges to realize that she will be 1/2 a year old next month. The end of next month but still...
She enjoys playing and holds her head up well. She CAN roll herself over but has yet to do it intentionally. That is nothing new for our babies. They learn at their own speed. :) She is one happy little girl! Matchbox cars are a little advanced for her, but I took these pictures when Sylvia so kindly shared a car with Charity. :)
I feel like I am finally back on the wagon of maintaining our house since Charity was born. A big boost in that department was when my sister invited Susannah and Sylvia to spend a few days at their house last month. Charity and I hung out here and I did some serious "get things back in shape" cleaning!
I am learning to harness the power of the natural energy that lives in our house. ;) The girls love running the vacuum sweeper so I let them each take a turn or two after we've cleaned up the floor. Once it turns into a "turn it on/turn it off" game I take over and sweep up everything that's left.
I'm pretty fortunate that at the age of 4 (almost 4 1/2) Susannah still takes a nap almost every day. However, if I put her down for a nap at 2:00 she is like a jack-in-the-box and doesn't get any rest (and ends up not in the greatest of moods by bedtime). So most days she gets the privilege of staying up and we work on something together until 3:00. Then she has to stay on her bed and rest at least until I go open her door at 4:00. It is rare that she doesn't fall asleep and take a good 2 hour nap. :) That tells me she's still benefiting from naptimes. Unrelated, but I'm pretty certain she's going through a growth spurt. She, who never complains about being hungry and typically eats like a bird most of the time, has been coming to me about 2 hours after every meal asking for more food because she's hungry. Last night she polished off a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 9pm!!
One day this week she helped me finish making the bread I started at lunch time. She used her little wad of dough to make tiny cinnamon rolls. It thrilled her to no end and she and Sylvia had them for their after-nap snack.
We have now officially experienced the Coxsackie virus in our family (also known as Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease). Daniel had it the mildest several weeks ago and we didn't even realize that's what it was (he had 3 spots on his arms) until the rest of us got it and we put two and two together. Susannah and Sylvia were great little patients and were pretty happy through the whole ordeal. Susannah did have an ulcer in her mouth but rarely made mention of it and always ate well.
Poor Charity had it the worst on her skin. She didn't seem bothered by it, but two of the days she didn't have very good naptimes and didn't like being down to play. I ended up pulling out the Snugli baby carrier and used that some since she was happy if I was holding her.
I feel like I suffered the worst. Since it's more prone in children I was hoping to escape. Not helping was randomly getting Strep Throat out of nowhere to start my round off. I went to the Dr. to have that checked out and while we were getting my prescription filled I noticed the first blister forming on my thumb. That was Saturday at noon, and by Sunday morning I had 3 ulcers in my mouth from the virus. It was complete agony as my feet had blisters on the soles and felt like walking on stick-pins when I walked, and anything with my mouth besides carefully moving my lips and tip of my tongue hurt like fire. I lived on drinking smoothies and pureed soup through a straw from Saturday evening until Tuesday night when I very, VERY carefully ate some "real" food.
At first I was thinking "it's just a virus, no big deal..." Well, I will never, ever, EVER consider it to be "no big deal." I admire Susannah's pain tolerance (or perhaps the Lord's protection over her?) and am so grateful to be mostly on the other side of this now.
Now August is here and I am turning many of my spare-time-thoughts towards school. I'm pretty excited that this coming Monday is our first day of home-school. Susannah doesn't know it yet, but she will be learning to read. :) She really wants to be able to read and is showing all the signs of being ready. I am eager to watch it "click" in her brain! She has seen two "secret packages" come in the mail (the school books) and is very, VERY excited to find out what was in them. We plan to tell her this weekend. You might want to stay tuned for a post or two about that. :)
She enjoys playing and holds her head up well. She CAN roll herself over but has yet to do it intentionally. That is nothing new for our babies. They learn at their own speed. :) She is one happy little girl! Matchbox cars are a little advanced for her, but I took these pictures when Sylvia so kindly shared a car with Charity. :)
I feel like I am finally back on the wagon of maintaining our house since Charity was born. A big boost in that department was when my sister invited Susannah and Sylvia to spend a few days at their house last month. Charity and I hung out here and I did some serious "get things back in shape" cleaning!
I am learning to harness the power of the natural energy that lives in our house. ;) The girls love running the vacuum sweeper so I let them each take a turn or two after we've cleaned up the floor. Once it turns into a "turn it on/turn it off" game I take over and sweep up everything that's left.
I'm pretty fortunate that at the age of 4 (almost 4 1/2) Susannah still takes a nap almost every day. However, if I put her down for a nap at 2:00 she is like a jack-in-the-box and doesn't get any rest (and ends up not in the greatest of moods by bedtime). So most days she gets the privilege of staying up and we work on something together until 3:00. Then she has to stay on her bed and rest at least until I go open her door at 4:00. It is rare that she doesn't fall asleep and take a good 2 hour nap. :) That tells me she's still benefiting from naptimes. Unrelated, but I'm pretty certain she's going through a growth spurt. She, who never complains about being hungry and typically eats like a bird most of the time, has been coming to me about 2 hours after every meal asking for more food because she's hungry. Last night she polished off a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 9pm!!
One day this week she helped me finish making the bread I started at lunch time. She used her little wad of dough to make tiny cinnamon rolls. It thrilled her to no end and she and Sylvia had them for their after-nap snack.
We have now officially experienced the Coxsackie virus in our family (also known as Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease). Daniel had it the mildest several weeks ago and we didn't even realize that's what it was (he had 3 spots on his arms) until the rest of us got it and we put two and two together. Susannah and Sylvia were great little patients and were pretty happy through the whole ordeal. Susannah did have an ulcer in her mouth but rarely made mention of it and always ate well.
Poor Charity had it the worst on her skin. She didn't seem bothered by it, but two of the days she didn't have very good naptimes and didn't like being down to play. I ended up pulling out the Snugli baby carrier and used that some since she was happy if I was holding her.
I feel like I suffered the worst. Since it's more prone in children I was hoping to escape. Not helping was randomly getting Strep Throat out of nowhere to start my round off. I went to the Dr. to have that checked out and while we were getting my prescription filled I noticed the first blister forming on my thumb. That was Saturday at noon, and by Sunday morning I had 3 ulcers in my mouth from the virus. It was complete agony as my feet had blisters on the soles and felt like walking on stick-pins when I walked, and anything with my mouth besides carefully moving my lips and tip of my tongue hurt like fire. I lived on drinking smoothies and pureed soup through a straw from Saturday evening until Tuesday night when I very, VERY carefully ate some "real" food.
At first I was thinking "it's just a virus, no big deal..." Well, I will never, ever, EVER consider it to be "no big deal." I admire Susannah's pain tolerance (or perhaps the Lord's protection over her?) and am so grateful to be mostly on the other side of this now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
