tonyandkirsten.org

I wrote a couple posts earlier about two curriculum changes we’re making for science and phonics.  Here’s what Madeline and I have been up to in general for the past couple of weeks during her Kindergarten studies.

Bible: We’re continuing to work on the memory verses from church and read through the take-home devotionals from the 252 Basics.  Since there are four of those per week and we usually only do 4 days of school per week, this hasn’t left a lot of time for other Bible readings, like “Leading Little Ones to God” (which I have missed the last two weeks when we haven’t read it).  I’m still pondering what to do about this.  The 252 Basics devotionals are short, but Madeline usually seems ready to move on to other subjects after we have finished one.

Math: We’re now through (I think) the first 12 lessons of Right Start Math level A. Madeline is improving at using the Abacus and being able to quickly enter or identify any number from 1-10.  Most of the other material in the lessons is still review for her, so we are able to get through one (or sometimes even a bit more than one) lesson per day.  She is really looking forward to getting past the review section and getting on to something other than just the Abacus being new and challenging.  But since using the abacus and visualizing quantities is so important to this curriculum, I don’t want to skip any lessons.  She’ll just have to be patient a bit longer. 

Phonics/Reading: As I mentioned in my other entry, Madeline finished Level 1 of Alphabet Island.  Yeah! We’ll be moving on to using Explode the Code books 1 1/2 and 2…and you can read more about that in my recent entry on the subject.

Geography: We started studying the continent of Asia, and specifically the country of India the last two weeks.  I had hoped to spend no more than two weeks per country that we plan to study. But due to only having seven days of school in the past two weeks with Madeline visiting Grandma during week #17 and restarting our co-op this past week (and some other distractions on days we did do school), we didn’t get as much done as I was hoping to. So, we’ll continue to work on India this week as well.  So far for our India study we have read the chapters in Hero Tales about Amy Carmichael (a missionary to India), a folktale and a couple of non-fiction books about what India is like today.  This week we will read another folktale (from this book), a picture book story, and a “Magic Treehouse” book that takes place in India.  We’ll also make a couple of lapbook pieces for a lapbook about the whole continent of Asia.

Science: Okay, so I slacked and we didn’t get science done.    I had planned to not do science during week #17 since we only did three days of school that week.  Then I held off preparing for science this past week until late in the week, and then by Friday we had other distractions and we just did the basics, skipping the science lesson.  We’ll remedy that this week and start having a block for science planned in earlier in the week!

For fun: Madeline (and Erik) really enjoyed making valentines almost every day this week!:

I never got around to posting a Menu Plan last week…partly due to busyness and partly due to feeling uncertain about how some of my menu choices were going to work out.  And sure enough, I did make more last minute changes in my menu last week than normal.

This past week we ended up having Creamy Beef and Noodles, Leftover soup, Chicken Fajitas, Spaghetti (well, the kids had this while we ate at a church meeting), homemade pizza, Curried Chickpeas & Curried Cauliflower and Potatoes w/rice…and then today we had slow cooker pulled pork for lunch (family lunch to celebrate Kai’s birthday) and the traditional Superbowl meal of Chili for dinner.

Here’s what I have on the schedule for this week.  I am mainly planning to use ingredients I have gotten on sale previous weeks (like ground beef and potatoes), as well as taking advantage of the sale on chicken at Cub Foods and the sale on Pork Loins at Rainbow.  At least I hope I can make it out to both those stores this week!

Monday: Shepherd’s Pie

Tuesday: Chicken, Bean and Rice tacos/burritos with guacamole! (using up cheap avacados from my trip to Aldi last week)

Wednesday: Chili Bake using leftover Superbowl Chili

Thursday: Chicken Tettrazini

Friday: Pork loin, with (I think) some kind of a rice side dish (details are still fuzzy on this meal and exactly how I am going to prepare these two items…I’ll be looking at recipes and perhaps deciding based on what kind of deals I find this week!).

Saturday: Baked Potato Soup and bread

Sunday: Something that doesn’t involve me cooking.    Hopefully a date night!

For lots more great menu ideas, visit Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com!

I realized soon after the new year started that Madeline was very close to finishing Level 1 of Alphabet Island.  We began this curriculum last spring and completed the first section (learning/reviewing letter sounds and practicing writing lower case letters) before we beginning Kindergarten this fall.   We then began the second half of Level 1 this fall (learning 3 letter “consonant-vowel-consonant” or “CVC” words and practicing writing upper case letters).

Level 1 of Alphabet Island was very well suited to Madeline.  She likes the characters and the songs.  There is some writing, but not too much.  The approach to learning the CVC words (using word families) really clicked with her.  She enjoyed the games when we find time to play them.  So, naturally, I was really looking forward to starting level 2A this month after we finished level 1.

A week or so ago I pulled out out Level 2A to start reading through the lessons and seeing what we would be working on.   I was quite surprised to find out that Level 2A is much more difficult than level 1!

After a handful of review pages, Level 2A moves quickly into marking short/long vowels on long lists of words, long stories to help learn complex phonics/spelling rules, and page-long spelling tests.  Whoa! Madeline is definitely not ready for that as not-yet-six-year-old Kindergartener.

I found this informative quote in the Teacher’s Guide: “The majority of this program is directed toward the phonics rules for spelling. But this approach alone can slow down the reading process. To help develop reading skills, some reading instructions and material has been included.  However, reading will not happen by chance. It takes lots of practice…Another reading program…or books from the library are sources of reading materials…Most students will want to read above their spelling ability.  This is good. Work with the student on two levels–one in reading and one in spelling.”

Reading this section confirmed to me that Level 2A of Alphabet Island was not what Madeline needed right about now.  I am not super concerned at the moment with developing her spelling skills.  She is still struggling with having the patience and perseverance to write more than a few words at a time — usually words that she has right in front of her (aka copying them from a text or from something I wrote).    I think a great deal of this is developmental.  Once she is six or seven, I would anticipate her fine motor skills will catch up, writing will not be such a challenge, and memorizing complex rules and long spelling lists will not seem so daunting.

I still think that Alphabet Island is a great program and I fully intend to pick it up again later.  I may even read some of the spelling/phonics rule stories to her so they can start percolating around in her brain (and so I can refer to them as we work on her reading skills).   But that means we need something else to use right now.  Madeline is eager to move beyond the three letter CVC words and learn new things about reading, so she can read more complex books.

I decided we would switch to Explode the Code for the rest of her Kindergarten year and possibly beyond.  Explode the Code is a simple workbook-based phonics program with 8 main levels and a “half level” in between each one for further review (there’s also an online version of Explode the Code, but it looks a bit expensive…so we’ll be sticking to the paper version!).  I ordered levels 1 1/2 and 2:

Level 1 1/2 will give Madeline additional practice in the skills she learned this year in Alphabet Island level 1, while book 2 will move into new skills like beginning and ending blends. My plan is to do one or two pages in each book per day.   This still may be a bit much writing for Madeline (some pages just involve circling or “x”-ing a correct answer, but other pages require writing quite a few whole words).  I may do some of the writing for her (as she dictates to me what letters to write) or I may get her an alphabet stamp set as  a fun way for her to get her answers on paper.   I’ll also add additional cards to her phonics flip chart, and we’ll use that for additional practice or for me to introduce new concepts. (files for the flip chart available here, here and here).

After quite a bit of research and thought (and Tony almost deciding to write his own science curriculum), we found a curriculum we thought would meet our needs: “Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2″ by Bernard Nebel (BFSU).  You can also read more about the book on Dr. Nebel’s website.

We really wanted to find a curriculum that didn’t just package a bunch of facts with fun little experiments that may or may not teach much of anything.   Instead, we hope to guide our kids to discover “why we know what we know” when it comes to scientific principles.

Dr. Nebel’s curriculum is not set up in a traditional manner with daily or weekly lessons to be followed in a specific order each year.  Instead, 4 strands of scientific learning (The Nature of Matter, Life Science, Physical Science, and Earth/Space Science) are to be pursued simultaneously with some degree of freedom as to the exact order of the lessons left up to the parent/teacher.  There are seven to twelve lessons in each strand, and these “lessons” can easily be stretched into a week or two (or maybe even more) of learning as extra library books and experiments are added in.  Since much scientific knowledge builds upon earlier foundations, there is a suggested order within each thread of which lessons should come before the others.

If it sounds confusing…it’s probably because it is a bit confusing, and very different than most curriculum products.  A flow chart is provided of some suggested order to this buffet of learning and some research reveals that other users of the text have made up lists of the order in which they  plan to pursue the lessons.

I plan to take one of the suggested orderings I found on the web, and modify it a bit to give us a road-map of where we plan to go…while being willing to change that up as seems appropriate of course!

If we want the book to last for a couple years (and not rush through the concepts presented), it seems like one lesson every two weeks is about the right pace.  About once a month in between the lessons from BFSU,  I hope to add in another piece of science learning:  studying the history of science.   If Tony were to write his own elementary science curriculum (and who knows, maybe he still will someday), learning about the history of science would be integrated into it.  This is more than just learning a few facts about what scientists lived when and what they studied–it is learning about some of the foundational experiments in the history of science and what was learned through these experiments.   It’s another aspect of “learning why we know what we know.”   I’m not sure how much Madeline will retain or understand of this type of study at her current age, but we’ll give it a try.   As a tool to facilitate this, I purchased Janis VanCleave’s “Scientists Through the Ages”:

If these lessons turn out to be worthwhile, they should last us for about two years at the rate of doing them once a month.

I’m planning on attempting to set aside one longer block of time for science each week (though some reading of supplementary materials like library books would probably still happen on other days).  Our four-week cycle would look something like this:

Week 1: Lesson from BFSU

Week 2: Lesson from Scientists through the Ages (and continue to read supplementary books on Week 1 BFSU topic)

Week 3: Lesson from BFSU

Week 4: Another science or “health class” type of topic (I’m thinking things like nature study, studies of various animals and habitats, and maybe someday what ever one is supposed to teach elementary age kids for “health” — I haven’t quite figured that out yet!)…along, again, with supplementary reading on the previous week’s BFSU topic.

I wanted to start with our first BFSU topic this past week, and it didn’t quite happen.  We’ll do it this coming week for sure!

~Erik is 34 months old~

We’ve had three full weeks of school now since our three-and-a-half week Christmas break, but we are still looking to find our groove when it comes to Tot School…but we did have some fun times together this past month!

Before Christmas break, I was experimenting with either having some dedicated time for Tot School before starting school with Madeline for the day, or having some Tot School time after lunch.  We tried the “before Kindergarten” route a couple more times in the last few weeks, and I don’t think this routine will work for us.  There is a great deal of temptation to skip it all together and in the end it seems to reduce the overall time that Madeline is able to stay focused on her school work.

After lunch still holds potential, but usually both mom and kids are ready for some casual playtime and relaxation after lunch, there are chores to be done, Madeline wants free-choice read aloud time (as opposed to read-aloud time during our school routine, when I pick the books), and nap time comes around quickly.

So, I am back to attempting a dual-focus most days, at least for the time being.  I am finding that Erik is more and more interested in doing school “just like Madeline.”  That means including him in whatever way possible in what she is doing, or finding an activity that is equivalent in some way.

So, if Madeline is working on her phonics or handwriting, Erik likes having a something to write on too, whether it is a worksheet he just ends up scribbling on, or a pre-writing activity.  Madeline really enjoyed the Kumon “My First Book of Tracing” when she was about the same age, so I went ahead and got one for Erik. He really enjoys it, and it has been a good opportunity for me to help him learn to develop a proper writing utensil grip.   My only regret is not pulling out the handful of sports-related pages, laminating them, and then having him use the washable dry erase marker on those.  As it should be unsurprising to anyone who knows him, he has already covered over his lines several times on those pages!

Erik enjoys sitting in as we read our books for science and social studies as well (at least until he wanders off to play again), and asked for coloring and cutting to do while Madeline was doing her Antarctica lapbook. This portion of our school day is also when I’ve been encouraging Erik to do his other “old favorites” among our Tot School activities — preschool activity bags, puzzles, magnet scenes, board games, and so on.  One thing that is really perplexing is that he now refuses to use the Lauri stacking pegs/foam…this after we just got a large box of additional such pieces for Christmas! Here’s Erik enjoying a lakeshore learning “race car” math set, where he tries to sort the cars by wheel color:

Math is really the subject in which Erik has gotten the most involved with what Madeline and I are doing.  He is fascinated by the Right Start math program we just began with Madeline.  The first few lessons are on a really basic level, so he is able to follow along to some extent with what we are doing.  He asks to do math with us, and sits happily for at least half the amount of time that Madeline will spend at doing math.  The teaching method of the program relies quite a bit on the teacher asking the student(s) many questions as the concepts are presented, so I’ve been trying to ask the easy questions to Erik and the harder questions to Madeline.

During week #15 we did a unit on measuring, and this brought Erik’s favorite activity of the past few weeks: practicing pouring and transferring with rice:

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but never got around to it.  It easily kept him busy for 45 minutes straight! I think we’ll have to do it again sometime soon.

To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly round up 1+1+1=1!

It’s time for another Menu Plan Monday! Here’s what we have on the menu this week:

Monday: Meatloaf, sweet potatoes and salad

Tuesday: Fish Tacos (haven’t decided on which recipe to use — suggestions are welcome!)

Wendesday: Buffalo chicken spaghetti and a veggie or salad

Thursday: Tamale Casserole.  This is a bit of a freezer/pantry experiment. I have tamale filling that has been in the freezer a long time that I want to use up.  I still have corn masa left from the last time I made “real” tamales.  But I have no corn husks, and I don’t even have a lot of extra paper coffee filters I want to spare to do it the “cheater” way.  So, I think I will try and invent something where they don’t need to be individually wrapped.  We’ll see how that goes…or maybe I will just break down and buy something to wrap them in individually.

Friday: Egg, Shrimp and Rice casserole and a veggie or salad (search for this recipe in a previous blog post)

Saturday: Beef roast and either a pasta side dish or mashed potatoes, with a veggie or salad

Sunday: We have potlucks at both lunch and dinner! I think for the one at dinner time I will be making some Cheeseburger Soup ((I make it similar to this recipe, except without the spicy ingredients).

For hundreds of other menu ideas, visit Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com!

After our three-and-a-half week break for Christmas, we resumed our regular school schedule the week of January 11th.  I think the break was good for both teacher and student, and now we’re both excited to be doing school again.

Here’s what we’ve been  up to the past two weeks:

Bible: Our church started a new children’s curriculum called “252 Basics“.  The kids get take-home materials each week with 4 additional short lessons to do at home, so we did those and worked on her memory verse.  We also read a couple  chapters out of “leading little ones to God.”

Reading/Phonics/Writing: We resumed our Alphabet Island lessons, working on some of the “U” word families and starting the short “O” families.  Madeline’s handwriting practice was primarily working in her Alphabet Island workbook.  I was very pleased that Madeline retained (and even possibly improved) in her reading skills over our break!

At the end of this past week I looked to see how many lessons we have left in Book 1 of Alphabet Island, and we only have nine left! So, we’ll definitely be starting Book 2a this semester.  I am pondering taking a short break in between books to focus more on sight words for a few weeks, since I don’t think we have been giving them the attention they deserve as Madeline has been eager to study all the short vowel word families.

Math: As I mentioned in my post about our Kindergarten plans for our new “semester”, we decided to switch to RightStart as our new math program.  While waiting for it to arrive, we did a short unit on measuring.  During week #15 we used a small workbook on measuring with non-standard units that I picked up for a buck last year.  Since I don’t have a balance scale, we just did the pages on measuring length and perimeter. Madeline did a great job with this and really enjoyed it.

At the beginning of week #16 we worked on volume measurements, as in the type that are used for cooking:

This was super fun and great practice for Madeline (who wants to be working more independently in the kitchen).  Then on Tuesday we worked a little bit on measuring with “standard” units, a.k.a. inches on a ruler.

Right start arrived mid-week and we were able to work through about five of the lessons.  The early lessons are very basic material, so most of it was review for Madeline — she just needs to get familiar with the terminology, tools and other things unique to this program.  A neat by-product of starting with these very basic lessons is that Erik has been eager to sit in with us and “do math with mommy and Madeline.”  I’m sure it will be over his head soon, but for right now learning how to recognize groups of three or four objects, count out two beads on the abacus, or make a triangle with “tally sticks” is right up his ally.

Social Studies/Science: We’re studying the continents this semester, and we began with a two week study on Antarctica.  This worked out very conveniently since a study of Antarctica is as much as science study as anything else, and at the beginning of week #15 I still hadn’t decided on a science curriculum for this semester. (I did end up picking something — it will either get it’s own blog post or I will write about it next week).

For the literature portion of our study we read “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.” This book was thoroughly enjoyed by all, including me.  It’s very funny! We also read a stack of non-fiction books about Antarctica.  Most of our reading was done during the first week of the study, then we worked on our lapbook project during the second week of the study (see my previous post for more on that).

The next stop in our world tour of the continents will be Asia.  We’ll focus for 2-3 weeks each on two different countries — first India, and then China.

Lapbooking is something I’ve been curious to try out for a while, and I finally decided we would take the plunge and try it out with our Antarctica unit.  I’m not sure I can say it any more clearly myself, so here is a quote from the Cathy Duffy Reviews site explaining what a Lapbook is:

“Lap Books offer creative ways for children to record information they are learning and create attractive presentations of that information, as well as use the information to study. A Lap Book is essentially a creatively folded manila file folder with lots of smaller creatively cut and folded pieces of paper that are attached in different ways. This loose definition reflects the realm of creative options that might be used to create lap books.”

Madeline really enjoys crafty projects and I have to admit that I enjoy it too…so lapbooking seemed like it might be a good fit for us.

There are many free resources out there to download various pieces for making your own lapbooks.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a whole one about Antarctica that encompassed exactly what I was looking for.  I definitely didn’t want to start from scratch on my very first go-around with lapbooking, so I used printables from three different sources:

The Penguin lapbook at Lapbooking Lessons (free registration required to download)

A Penguin Lapbook by Angela Frampton

Various mini-books found on the Polar Animals lapbook page at HomeschoolShare

We also selected from creative-commons licensed photos on flickr to include, and use a map of Antarctica cut out from an old atlas I got for free recently.

And, here’s how it turned out:

We accomplished the entire project this week.  It turned out to be quite an undertaking to do the mini book on Penguins within the larger book on Antarctica. But, all told, we probably spent no more than 4 or 5 hours on the project, including my research and printing time.

Madeline really enjoyed helping with some of the cutting, nearly all of the pasting, some coloring and doing some of the writing.  She also dictated a fictional story to me (a mini-book that pulls out of the yellow pocket in the penguin folder) and helped me decide what to write in several of the flaps where some decision-making was required on our part.

This project was a great way to review what we learned about penguins and Antarctica from all the library books we read over the past two weeks, as well as learning new facts.  Madeline seemed to be retaining quite a bit of information as we discussed what was in each mini-book of our lapbook.

Madeline enjoyed this experience enough that she would like to do lapbooks for the other countries/continents we study this semester.  I would like to think we could do at least one for each continent! Hopefully by making these lapbooks, Madeline will have something to refer back to later and review or remind herself of what we have learned.

I think I can reduce my prep-time for future lapbooks having now done it once, and I can be better organized by being able to work on some of the mini-books as we read our library books (rather than starting the lapbook after reading most of the books, and having to pour back over the books to find answers to some questions we had). Maybe some of the places we study will even have “ready to use” free lapbooks already available…which would definitely decrease my prep time by not having to sort out and keep track of possible printables from a variety of sources.

If you want to learn more about lapbooking, a great place to start is this Squidoo lens on the subject.

I’m finally ready to get back on the “Menu Plan Monday” bandwagon, having finally made it through both the holidays and my quarterly editing deadline.  Here’s what we’re having this week:

Monday: Lasagna Roll-ups with salad and bread

Tuesday: Whole chicken in the crock pot, mashed potatoes and a veggie du jour

Wednesday: Hearty Bean and Rice casserole (recipe in this post) and a salad or veggie

Thursday: Chicken Tortilla soup…probably with quesidillas on the side

Friday: Heavenly Ham and Potatoes with a veggie du jour

Saturday: Cabbage Augratin Casserole (recipe in this post) and honey glazed carrots.

Sunday: Tony thinks we should have a “hot dish vs. cajun” potuluck (casserole vs. cajun for the alliteration?) in honor of the Vikings vs. Saints game.  We’ll see if we pull that off!

For many more great menu ideas, visit Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com!

We’re only perhaps about 40-45% done with our school year, but the Christmas break makes it feel like the half-way point.   We finally got “back to school” this week after taking about three and a half weeks off for Christmas.

We’re also changing gears at our homeschool co-op for the new semester, swapping main subjects from science to social studies.  Since my plan has been for us to study co-op subjects in more depth at home, we’ll be switching gears in both of those subjects as well.

Here’s a look at what we’ve been doing in the various subject areas, and what direction we’ll take for winter/spring 2010.

Math: We worked through about 75% of the material in Kindermath during our first 14 weeks of school.  I knew this would be a temporary program for us, lasting through the school year at most, and possibly only through the first half of the year.

After a lot of research and discussion with Tony, we decided on RightStart math.  It’s more expensive than a lot of programs, but I think it will be worth the investment (and like our phonics curriculum, most of the items are reusable…so assuming we’ve made a good choice, investments made now will pay off over time as we use the materials for at least three kids).  Since RightStart uses somewhat novel methods of teaching adding, subtracting and so on, I thought it would be best to drop Kindermath before I got too far into teaching Madeline one way of doing math, only to have to unlearn it with RightStart.  I ordered RightStart today, and so hopefully it won’t be long before we start using it!

Phonics/Reading: Alphabet Island is still proving to be a good fit for us (which I am very glad of, since that was my big curriculum investment in 2009).  It’s looking like we may finish Book 1 before the end of the year, in which case we will move on to book 2A.  Madeline is definitely making progress in her reading ability!

Handwriting: We’ve done a mish-mash of things, from name-writing practice to short copywork to a few lessons of “Draw, Write, Now” and various “real life” writing activities like writing notes and cards to send.  Between these things and the handwriting practice contained within Alphabet Island, I haven’t felt the need for any other formal handwriting programs.  I think we’ll continue along this same path in 2010.

Science: We spent our fall semester in co-op exploring science topics inspired by the days of creation in the Bible.  At home, we read along in a corresponding text book, as well as reading some library books and doing a handful of projects and experiments.   I was disappointed by the textbook component of our study.  It just wasn’t very “science-y”.   While I had at first liked the idea of linking in the study of the Biblical creation account directly with science, I think the textbook we used was too heavy on describing what the Bible talks about, and too light on teaching scientific principles.

Despite the fact that we are “back to school”, I don’t have a firm plan for our science studies for the rest of our school year.  I am intriguied by R.E.A.L. science.   Today I discovered “Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2“.  And Tony has been talking about just writing his own elementary science lessons for us to use.  It should be an interesting adventure no matter which route we choose!

Madeline also received a microscope and a telescope for Christmas, so we may wing it a bit and try and incorporate using those two tools into our science study this semester.   Madeline loves experiments and we didn’t do nearly as many as I hoped we would in the fall, so doing more experiments would certainly be a winner with my student.

Social Studies: As we move to geography studies in our co-op, we will also move to studying geography at home. This fall we our focus was on history (mostly early US history).  We used parts of  “History For Little Pilgrims” and also read fiction and non-fiction from the library.  Using that textbook cemented in my mind the idea that using literature to teach history is a much better idea than using a dull textbook.  Madeline really enjoyed listening to me read historical fiction or biographies written by the D’Aulaire’s, while she got bored of me reading from the textbook after a very short period of time.  I think more literature-based history study is in our future!

This winter/spring, our co-op will study the seven continents, focusing on one or two countries on each continent and learning a bit about those countries as well as missionaries that traveled there.  I purchased Galloping the Globe to use as a tool to further our study of each continent at home.  We’ll plan to read books from the library, try cooking various foods from around the world, and maybe do some other hands-on projects to help Madeline learn about world geography and culture.  We may do some kind of semester-long project like making a notebook or binder with maps and other pages about the various countries we study. I think the trick for me will be to not let us get overwhelmed by too much detail and activity.  I’m sure we’ll revisit world geography and cultures various times through elementary school, so I need to remind myself to save some of my great ideas for when Madeline is a bit older. 

Bible: We’ll continue reading “Leading Little Ones to God” as well as doing the take-home lessons/activities from the new Sunday School curriculum our church started this month called “252 Basics”.

I’m excited to see what our semester holds as we continue with Madeline’s Kindergarten year!