The closer we get to the fall, the more my homeschooling journey begins to feel like we’re really going somewhere. It feels like this isn’t just “preschool for fun, if we feel like it.” The material we’re covering is more like beginner kindergarten material. We even call it “doing school” now instead of “doing preschool”.
So, I’ve decided to just call these “homeschool” updates from now on. We’ll pick up the pace a bit in the fall and add in a bit more history and science, but our “three R’s” won’t change very much when the typical “school year” start date rolls around in the fall. I guess that’s yet another benefit to homeschooling…no need to do school just from September to June just because that’s when traditional schools do it.
It feels great to say we’re still doing the same basic things we were in April, and still enjoying it. Madeline has now “met” letters “Active A” through “Qualified Q” on Alphabet Island. Just nine more to go (plus a few review lessons thrown in there). The letter sounds portion of the Alphabet Island lessons is still pretty much review for her, but the handwriting lessons are new each time as she learns to write the lower case letters. Penmanship is still not her favorite thing to practice, but her confidence and skill in writing is definitely improving.
My goal with Alphabet Island is to make it through the first section of Book 1 before the end of the summer — a goal we should easily meet. I think we’ll continue on to section two of the book whenever we finished — that’s where the real reading lessons begin. Madeline has started to memorize the spelling of some words — she can read and spell a few basic words like man, map and tap…but still can’t easily put letter sounds together to make a word even if she already knows all the sounds of all the letters in a given word. I’m really hoping that the teaching methods in this curriculum will help her make that big jump into really reading!
Currently, Madeline says she likes math more than her reading and writing lessons. That’s a huge change from a few months ago when she really disliked anything related to math. We’re still using Saxon Math K, but I am such an oddball that I took the list of lessons and re-arranged them more to my liking. Saxon is perhaps the ultimate example of a “Spiral” math curriculum. This means that many topics are introduced at a very shallow level before any of them are mastered. Saxon is so “spirally” that, as written, there are rarely more than two days in a row on the same topic. It was driving me batty to be teaching Madeline something about graphing with teddy bear counters one day and patterns the next day and shapes the day after that.
Tony and I both agree that “Mastery” curriculums seem the better way to go for Math. In a “Mastery” style curriculum, one topic is (as you might expect from the name) mastered before going on to the next. Some math curriculums take Mastery to the extreme, and go so far as to, for example, spend an entire year teaching addition — going all the way from adding one digit numbers to adding huge four digit numbers — before ever teaching even one bit about subtraction! I don’t think I want to go that far with the Mastery concept, but I also don’t think I can stick with Saxon in the long run.
However, since Saxon K is working so well for us right now, I am going to keep using it with the lessons re-arranged until either we finish it or I find just the right program to replace it with (one we will keep using for a few years to come, since Math is one of those things where consistency seems to count). I love the scripted lesson plans (though as time goes by I am getting more of the drift of how to teach this stuff to her and I find I am relying less on them) and Madeline loves that writing is not involved and she gets to use fun manipulatives like teddy bears and pattern blocks.
We’ve developed a pretty good rhythm in the past month or so of alternating days between doing the Alphabet Island lessons and the Saxon math lessons, generally doing about two days per week of each. In the past couple weeks we’ve also been trying out doing a “calendar meeting” in the morning. This is adapted from the “meeting book” section of the Saxon Math curriculum, and involves filling in our own calendar each day and practicing the date, the days of the week, the time (to the hour) on the clock, and a few other tidbits here and there. It only takes a few minutes if we keep up with doing it most days, and it is really helping Madeline with some of those basic skills.
Sometimes doing the morning calendar meeting has naturally led into us doing our math or reading/writing lesson for the day, giving us a chance to practice doing school with Erik awake. I’ve discovered that if I specifically give him a toy or toys to focus on, he will play very intently for at least 15 minutes or so. He also will start saying “Erik school! Erik School!”, and enjoys “doing school” by scribbling on paper or the dry erase board or playing around with the math manipulatives.
I’m really encouraged with how things are going with homeschooling and I can’t wait for the fall! I know we’ll take a number of days off this summer as we travel to Iowa for weddings and visiting family and friends, and as Madeline does things like swimming lessons, vacation Bible school, and a week-long art day camp at one of the parks. But once fall hits and we can settle into a rhythm of doing school 4 or 5 days a week, I think we will have some exciting learning experiences together!
