Just a cat and a dog?

We wrapped up our 2nd unit last Friday and surprisingly made it through the whole unit in one week. This may be because I had not learned my lesson yet in our "A is for Musk Ox," unit to leave well enough alone. Cause you know curriculum writers don't know what they're doing anyway so, obviously I needed to add a few things to it, right? Ha. 

They get paid to do that stuff and we paid for both the curriculum and the convienance so I've had to learn to stiffle my instinct to supplement with material from the library and worksheets from other sources laying around my house.  The result being of course that we were able to get everything done when it was suggested without being stressed. Imagine that!

So here is what the girls learned last week:

What a character in a book is, character differences between cats and dogs, how to use a Venn diagram, how to write upper and lower case "H," and its sound, retelling a story, acting out a story, how to read "he," how to tell the difference between more and less and beginning addition, describing characters, painting a picture of an activity, practiced writing her name, and learned that names begin with capital letters. We also reviewed number recognition for 1-20 and writing numbers 2 and 3. Whew! All from what I thought would be a boring book about a cat and a dog.

I can't believe they are learning so much. We are moving into our third unit this week and with the amount of information they have already learned it seems like we've been at it for months. Even Lydia surprised me and read the sight word flash cards for the past 2 weeks. She is so into the lessons now she initiates in the morning and pretends to give daddy lessons after dinner about we learned that day.  And Delores, learning is so effortless for her now. Teaching, learning, homeschooling, it's all so enjoyable now. Following God's choice for the right curriculum for us has been the best decision I've made since I said yes to Josh's marriage proposal.

So yeah, last week was much better. So far I can say that bad week we had was just a fluke.

Time for yet another...

With all this extra self time I have now I find my blog posts becoming less and less enthusiastic and less frequent. I'm pretty sure my readers can sense this too because my page views have been dwindling rapidly since we began our new school year.

It isn't that I'm not passionate about homeschooling our girls anymore but, since I don't put as much time and effort into preparing their lessons now, I really don't have much to write about. I'm not as involved so when I do write it is lackluster. 

In my post "Changing the Tune," I wrote this exert regarding our decision to change curriculum from Montessori to Moving Beyond the Page:

Josh pointed out that Montessori had consumed my life. I never wanted a classroom environment or my home to feel like a daycare and, by God, 4 years into this mommy business and that is exactly what my home feels like. I spend my weekends looking for materials, my nights making or getting lessons together and my days planning and researching. I've completely lost sight of the things I enjoy doing and of myself. After this was pointed out to me I realized that while I LOVE montessori it just wasn't for us as a full time homeschooling curriculum. I just can't devote that amount of time to something that isn't for me. It puts too much pressure on me as a mommy and I do not react well to pressure unfortunately.

Switching curriculums has not only done wonders for Delores it has also given me the time to self evaluate. Although, I have not fully discovered my self yet I have found that I have much more insight to offer on a ton of different issues besides just homeschooling and many more things that I am passionate about.

For instance, did you know that I can feed a family of 4 for less than $250 for 2 weeks and use no coupons? Or that I love the theater and good art? Or that I despise history pre 1920's (not counting the bible). Or that I love archaeologists type fiction based movies like Indian Jones and The Mummy. Or that I sew, crosstitch, quilt, paint, draw, photograph and design. I love rat rods and the timeless look of red lipstick and pearls. I love the smell of books, diesels, pumpkin, fall, Abercrombie & Fitch and leather. I like reggae, classical, 50's to 90's oldies, Paul Simon, techno, acoustic, Hank Williams jr., jazz and soundtrack music. I like to dance with a partner without music. I love to cook and bake but I suck at doughs. I refuse to pay for something I could make myself. I will eat anything twice.  I have dreams to live on a farm, be an interior designer, travel with Josh around the county in an 18 wheeler and tour every continent oversees.  I have a colorful past and a wonderful testimony that no one has heard except for Josh. These are just a few things about me that I had forgotten about myself that need to be shared with the world.

There are also just a few things I'd like to rediscover about myself that I used to consider good qualties. I used to be funny and a good listener.  Somehow in the bussel of motherhood I forgot how to do those things and I regret that.

With all that being said I'm announcing that it is time for yet another change to this blog. No more only homeschool, but I am vowing to myself, here and now, that I WILL start writing about things I am passionate about.  Because afterall, writings without passion are just news reports.

Reading on the horizon

Yesterday we got started on our second unit with "Hondo and Fabian," a seemingly simple book about a cat and a dog and what each animal did on a certain day. Short book. Simple text and, to me, somewhat of a yawner. In fact I read the book twice Sunday night to make sure there wasn't some hidden message or some grand thing that I was missing.  Nope. It was same those 2 times and the same the 3 times I read it yesterday. The girls however, loved the book. If you didn't notice in the last sentence, they had me read it 3 times back to back.

They worked on reading comprehension, naming the differences between what the cat did and what the dog did, acting out the Hondo and the Fabian activities, and 1-20 numerical order and recognition. That seems like a lot for 1 day but folks, it only took us 1 hour.

Delores' excitment after lining up the number cards

 (Don't ya love the hairdo? Lol)

If there is anything I can say about this new curriculum, Moving Beyond the Page, is that it is designed to jam pack learning into kids without them even realizing they are learning. Both the girls have learned more in these 2-3 short weeks than I could have ever imagined.

Which leads me to the reason behind my title. There is a page in "Hondo and Fabian," where the dog and cat are eating beside each other in their own bowls and "dog," and "cat," are written in each of their bowls. When we got to this page Delores, without being prompted, pointed to each of the bowls, sounded out and read each of the words! She read 2 words! Is that not awesome? 

During nap time reading we were looking at a lift-the-flap book with animal sounds on the top of the flap and the corresponding animal under the flap. Just to see whether or not reading "dog," and "cat," was a fluke I asked her to sound out "baa." She sounded out the word, then made the animal sound and then guessed the animal under the flap. I am one proud mama.

Following the Montessori method I've always referred to the letters of the alphabet by their sound instead of their name. Delores still doesn't know the names of most letters. That is meant to come later. Delores instead has learned to associate the letter symbol with its sounds so now she is able to sound out a word one letter at a time and is teaching herself to read!

This by far has been the most daunting task for me as a homeschooler. I've kind of always thought if I could teach her read it would be gravy from there. Probably not, but it is my biggest goal and hurdle at this very moment.

The curriculum we are using now teaches a new sight word every week which is a word that doesn't follow the traditional letter sounds so a child can't sound out the word. It has to be learned and remembered by sight alone. With the sight words in combination with the letter sounds she already knows I can see reading on the horizon. I can feel the reading explosion gaining strength and power and pretty soon our little Delores will be a reader!

Hmm...I guess now would probably be a good time to read-proof my house to make sure none of my embarrassing secrets get out.  :)

Wrapping up musk oxen

With Delores' new curriculum we are "supposed" to cover a new book every 5 days, but with our schedule and her abilities we can't get through everything that quickly nor do I want to. So this week we finished up our unit on musk oxen and the unit's introduction to the alphabet with the super cute and humorous "A is for Musk Ox," which I highly recommend for any children's home library. 

We only had 2 days worth of material to cover but it took us 4 days to get through it. I have to admit it was harder this week than last week.  Not necessarily because of Delores but just because we were still working out all the kinks. All the girls in the house were having an emotional week. Lydia's allergies were bothering her as well as still getting adjusted to the new schedule. Delores has not been sleeping well since, well ever really. But she was really showing it this week. And I was just having a hard week facing what I had to do each day. Oh and Josh had this idea that he was going to attempt to shave the cat because of the frustrating amount of shedding going on. So, we had a peeved off Rosie to deal with too. Sometimes I joke with Josh that we have to treat them like little women complete with their own mood swings, sensitivities and confusing moments just like any other women. And because we are a house full of little women most of the time (including the cat) sometimes weeks are just hard for that reason alone.

But the girls did manage to work on learning the continents, recognizing numbers 1-10,  following words in books from left to right and top to bottom, beggining letters sounds, cutting on a line,  pasting,  writing numbers 1-3, free writing with illustration, narrating a story, journaling, learning how the days of the week work and learning how a calendar works. Below are a few pictures I took of our work this week.

Covering the musk ox with fur

Playing with shaving cream for prewriting practice

Our wall of work for this unit. 

Lydia top, Delores bottom 2.

Even though it was difficult this week they still learned a lot and we made it through. Some of us with more dignity than others. But my hope is that next week, as always, goes a little easier and that we continue to learn about life, ourselves and each other. I'm looking forward to getting started on our new unit and the new book, "Hondo and Fabian."

Rosie's choppy hairdo.

Go!

We kicked off our school year Tuesday and it has been an interesting week. As I mentioned in previous posts Delores is using a new curriculum, Moving Beyond the Page, and Lydia is still doing Montessori activities. 

The first 2 days we had a rocky start. I realized I had not specifically told Delores that she didn't have to do anything on the shelf that holds Lydia's work so she spent almost all morning doing Montessori activities and didn't leave time for much else.  She seemed happy with that though and Lydia did really well too, but I ended up doing some of Delores' work in her new playset after her nap. Which, was a little strained. 

The next day I may have focused too much on catching up with Delores' work and Lydia didn't get any work done because she was so absorbed in what we were doing. I realized she was feeling overlooked or left out because that evening she was a very clingy and cranky girl.

See, Lydia is no where to be found.

So, obviously I was going to have to find a balance somewhere. I had tried getting Lydia started first but she was too interested in what we were doing to do her own stuff. I had tried to get Delores involved with her stuff first but by the time I got to an activity Delores could do without my assistance Lydia had lost interest. I really didn't know how I was going to teach 2 different curriculums successfully.

Then, all of a sudden Thursday morning I had an idea.  No one told me I couldn't teach both of them Delores' curriculum.  Yes, there would be a lot of things Lydia would not understand,  but she is happier being involved than she is being by herself.  So, that's what I did. She did some of the same activities Delores was doing and she did some Montessori activities when there was something she couldn't participate in. It worked out really well.

Friday we had an appointment we had to attend so we skip lessons that morning. We did some review that afternoon with a combination of Montessori, using the wet, dry, try method on the chalkboard and then we used some worksheets from the new curriculum to practice the lowercase "a."

Everyday I've had to make adjustments and work out the kinks. I knew I was going to have to change my teaching style with this new curriculum. I just didn't know how much I would learn in this first short week. Here is what I discovered:

1. I have to teach them the same thing at the same time or one child suffers.

2. I have to let them know what is expected of them the night before and the morning of.

3. We have to take frequent breaks.

4. I have to teach when the opportunity arises, not on a schedule. Even if that means 10 minutes before bath time.

5. I will not get housework done like I would like so I have to get use to a messy house.

6. I need to drop my expectations and listen to my children and give them only what they can handle at one time, not what a book tells me they should be able to accomplish in one day.

7. I have to make time for play.

8. I can't look ahead in the curriculum or I get overwhelmed. 

All in all Delores has learned much more than I would have expected she would learn in four days. She can write capital and lowercase letter "a's" and knows the difference between the two. She learned about an artic animal and their characteristics.  She knows alphabetical order, letter sounds, numbers 1-20, she can read the word "you," and is actually enjoying our lessons. I can't even imagine what we will all learn next week.

Ps: my new non-iPhone phone has many quirks so blogging exclusively from my palm is very difficult. Please bear with me as I adjust my writing to this setback.

Writing obstacle

Delores has been struggling with proper grip of writing utensils for sometime. I've tried all the usual recommended tricks to help develop her muscles and to practice her pincher grasp but nothing seemed to work.  We've done the small knobbed puzzles, tongs, triangle shaped crayons, clothespins, you name it, we've tried it. 

The roundness of the utensil really bothered her delicate slender little fingers. Her muscles were fine for the task but using a proper grip caused a problem because it hurt her fingers and because of that she had gotten into the habit of fisting the utensil.

Obviously, this bothered me a bit but I did what I could to show her and guide her and then I just ignored the issue when it didn't get any better which, of course, bothered me too. I just figured she wasn't ready until I was reading over her new curriculum and day 2 of the first unit required her to do some writing. I want to make this new school experience as enjoyable as possible for her so I set out to find a solution. 

I really wanted her to start using pencils because they have a finer tip and, since Delores' writing tends to be on the smaller side, pencils seemed like a resonable utensil. I had heard somewhere that there were pencil grips for preschoolers to help with grasp but I haven't been able to find any in stores. I'm sure they probably have some at the teacher supply store on Woodruff road, but I don't have any free time to get over there and honestly don't to want to brave that store this time of the year.

So, next option; finding a different shaped pencil. If only there were fatter triangular or even flat shaped pencils. Kind of like a... carpenter pencil. Eureka! A carpenter pencil.  Why didn't I think of that before?

At my trip to Walmart today I found some for 0.83 a piece. I got 2. When I got them home I had Josh whittle the point and cut them in half.  Making a writing utensil shorter, about half the size, forces the child to hold it in the proper place for lack of having anywhere to hold it. And the result?  See for yourself:

Beautiful isn't it? It fixed all our issues. It lays flat on her middle finger. It's wide enough that it fits perfectly behind her pinches and it's short enough that she can maneuver it with ease. It doesn't hurt her fingers and she loved it so much she drew a very elaborate picture of daddy holding a baby. She hasn't even attempted any drawings in a while because she's been so frustrated with writing. I just love when things click and everything falls into place.

So, if you have a preschooler who complains about writing utensils hurting his/her fingers or just can't seem to grasp the concept of holding it properly, give the shortened carpenter pencil a try. You might just be amazed.

And...

In my last post I discussed my exciting delivery of Delores' new curriculum,  but I can't forget about my little fireball, Lydia. If you remember from my post "Get ready...,"  I mentioned that I had decided I was going to continue to use the Montessori method with Lydia but I was going to use a more laid back approach. Below is what I've come up with for her lesson plan for the month of September.

As you can see this is a great deal less stressful than what I was doing for the last two years. If you are unfamiliar with my previous lesson plans please visit "May calendar," or "June calendar," to get a 

better idea. 

Originally I started to put together my usual day-by-day calender but apparently all this free time has made me a little more lenient and the thought of sticking to a schedule just  made me cringe. So, I came up with the list above of some things we'd done before but, I thought she might need a refresher on, and some new things. All while keeping in mind what I would like to accomplish for our first month. When we ended, what I guess you could call, our school year Lydia was developing a good stretch of concentration time.  So, my goal is to rekindle her focus and build on her concentration. 

I also plan on taking a different approach in putting together and presenting lessons. In the  past I would put together a new activity almost every night and put it out in the shelf the night before I presented it.  Which, as you can imagine, was a bit daunting. Beginning next Tuesday however, I plan to put together and put out all the activities at one time. She can go through the activities as quickly or as slowly as she wants and choose what she wants to do. I can't offer a whole Montessori classroom to her but at least I can put out a month's worth of materials at a time.  From there I can judge her interest level and whether I need to increase our decrease the number of activities as well as whether or not I need to challenge her more.  

A lot of changes are being made this year but I can already feel it is for the best. The air doesn't seem so tense and I don't feel stressed or pressured by the subject matter. In fact Delores spotted her box of materials today and get very excited at all the crafty type things we will be doing. Lydia has been showing signs of eagerness to get back to her lessons. So I'm feeling pretty comfortable that this year will be the most successful year we've had so far and that is all I've really wanted.  For my children to develop a love of learning and for us to enjoy the blessing of being able to homeschool.