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It’s still a little over three weeks until the date I have in mind for our “official” first day of school  (August 30th), but we did get started with our first two subjects last week — History for Madeline and Preschool for Erik and did most of a science lesson today.

Madeline’s “Mystery of History Volume 1″ curriculum has 36 weeks, and in order to finish by the beginning of June in 2011 and also take the extra breaks I want to take during the school year, we needed to start by July 26th.

Madeline will be studying ancient history from Creation through Christ.  Since Erik’s “Little Hands to Heaven” preschool curriculum also begins with Creation, I thought we should start both at the same time.  That means we’ll finish up his preschool curriculum a couple weeks before summer break, or we have extra leeway to skip a week or two or a few days here and there and still get it all done before next summer.

Besides getting done in a timely manner, another benefit to starting a few subjects early is the opportunity to see how the lessons work for us and what we might need to “tweak” about how we use them.  I now know that this history lessons will take an average of about 10 minutes to read, and that Madeline would prefer to have timeline figures that potentially involve some coloring, but not too much drawing.

Here’s the start of Madeline’s timeline of Ancient History, beginning with Creation:

We decided to go with a notebook style timeline because we thought it would be easier to keep Madeline’s hard work safe from Kai in a notebook.  While the wall or folded board timeline might be neat looking, I think it would be very tempting for Kai to color on or tear off pieces.

I am also getting a feel for the nature of the extra activities in Mystery of History.  I just assumed that we would only be interested in the activities suggested for “younger students”, but I’ve found some of the “middle” student activities could be more interesting for Madeline (possibly with some modifications) than the younger student activities.  For example, the lesson on Noah suggested playing a game of “Memory” with animal pairs cards for the younger students.  That’s okay and fun, but the “middle student” activity involved a series of questions and answers which I turned into a couple of lapbook-style mini-books that we’ll put in her history notebook.

I’ve found out that we can get through one of Erik’s preschool lessons fairly quickly — perhaps in as little as 20 minutes (not counting any involved art projects, which we will do during Kai’s nap time anyway and not during our regular preschool time).  We did all of the first week’s lessons on Creation and the letter A (skipping a few suggested activities, but doing most of them), and we did some of the “B”/Noah lessons this week — luckily I had the second week of “Little Hands to Heaven” extending over two weeks in our schedule, so we are right on track. 

We got back into the science habit today after taking a long break from science toward the end of the school year and into the summer.  We worked on most of the Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding lesson on Gravity.   I find it intimidating when I think about starting one of these lessons on a given day because the format is not as “user friendly” to just read out of like many homeschool books.

It’s a great book, but the author does assume you will read what he writes and synthesize it enough to present it to the student.  I feel like the extra work is worth it because I really like the way scientific thinking is taught in the text (and I really didn’t have to prepare much ahead of time — just read it through and find the supplies for the experiment/demonstration section).  Once I got going with the lesson, it was not as “hard” as I remembered it being to teach from BFSU, and I was able to lead Madeline to a basic understanding of the topic.  I think.

When I tried to review with her at dinner tonight, she did have a hard time remembering where the force of gravity is pulling everything. (She said toward the center of the sun, instead of toward the center of the earth…and of course Tony had to complicate things by pointing out that there are gravitational forces pulling our planet toward the sun as well, it is just that it is traveling through space fast enough to keep moving past the sun and around it in an orbit!)

We’ll do something to review the lesson tomorrow — maybe make a mini-book (another lap-book type piece) to stick in her science notebook.

Erik is really psyched to be a “big boy” doing preschool.  I’ve heard him repeating often that he isn’t going to do “tot school” any more.  Since he is so eager to learn and “do school” like Madeline, I thought it would be helpful to use a curriculum with him this year.

I bought “Little Hands to Heaven” when Madeline was 4.  At the time I thought it was too young for her — she already knew her letters, colors, shapes and numbers to 10.  The Bible stories in the curriculum looked fun, but she needed something beyond what was provided for the other subjects.  I liked it enough though that I kept it.

Erik is at the perfect age for this curriculum.  While he is pretty good with colors, shapes, and numbers (up to about 7 or 8), he hasn’t learned his letters much at all.  I think it will be a challenge to keep up with a separate curriculum for Erik, but it will be fun and Madeline is excited to help Erik learn and do some of the activities with him.  Hopefully it works out that way in practice!

I think I’ll also be purchasing the “Letter of the Week” printables from Erika at “Confessions of a Homeschooler“.  Most of the printables are available free on her blog individually, but I like the idea of having them all in one place! I intend to use these materials to keep Erik busy when Madeline is doing school and Erik wants to “do school” along side her.  We purchased a color laser printer this past spring, so it won’t be a huge expense to print out the colorful activities.

Of course, I’m sure we’ll throw in there some Tot Printables from 1+1+1=1.com and miscellaneous activities and studies on topics of interest to Erik.

That just leaves Kai…I’m not sure if I am going to do any Tot School (aka fun purposeful playing) with him this next year…or come up with some toy rotation or just hope for the best! I have noticed he is interested in scribbling and just likes being at the table with his siblings.  I may try and regularly put him in a booster seat at the table and let him scribble along with them for a few minutes.  We did this one day recently when the bigger kids were both doing projects on table, and even after Kai was done with his table activities, he seemed more inclined to leave them alone!!!

~Erik is 34 Months Old~

We’ve had some fun Tot School times the past couple of weeks! I think we’re finding a balance that works for us of Erik sometimes joining in to the best of his ability with what Madeline is doing, sometimes doing his own “tot school work” alongside Madeline and other times just playing and doing his own thing during our school time.  And every now and then while Madeline is taking a break or doing work independently, I can work one-on-one with Erik.  While I would love to do more of this, it just doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards right now.

Math is still Erik’s favorite subject to “join in” with.  And why not? Math manipulatives are so much fun, and he loves exploring numbers and counting:

Art is another favorite activity we have not done as much of lately, and Erik requested coloring (and then cutting) and painting this past week:

Erik and I did get a chance for just the two of us to play Cariboo this week:

We had our “Game Day” on Friday, and Erik participated whole-heartedly…even in games he didn’t fully know how to play, like sight word bingo.

It’s hard to believe, but it won’t be long before I am thinking up “tot school” activities for Kai.  Even now, I am realizing that the reason he has been whining more frequently during school time is that he gets bored! I am working on setting aside a few toys that I will only get out for him during school time.  He really likes manipulating the pieces of these jumbo-sized puzzles:

To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly tot school link-up at 1+1+1=1!

~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!

The two weeks prior to this one we did do some school, so for the sake of posterity I thought I would do a quick overview of what did…or at least attempted to do.  My plan from the outset was for December to be a light school month, but the past two weeks were very light.   I think we had a total of about five school days during the two weeks.

First up, Tot School with Erik:

We attempted to do Tot School at the beginning of our school day, and the days we did it, it was great.   Madeline was happy to help Erik with his activities (or do something similar along side) and Erik was more content to play or do activities on his own after having had Tot School time with me.

I did find it a little bit difficult to chose to put Tot School time at the beginning of our day.  A couple of days we just got started with Madeline’s school, hoping to do Tot School later…and it didn’t happen.  After our Christmas break, I am going to continue the experiment of having focused Tot School time with Erik first and really make an effort to get started with our day early enough to make that a reality most of the time.

The days we did do Tot School, we mostly did Preschool Activity Bags, and old favorites from our game cabinet, and activities like stacking pegs and lacing beads.

Kindergarten with Madeline:

Bible/Character: We continued with our focus on Christmas, some days reading the verses from our Advent paper chain (other days we read them at dinner) or reading Christmas related books

Math: We worked on money — specifically counting coins.  We covered this topic last year, but I don’t think Madeline retained a whole lot.  Pennies and nickles are easy to remember, but she still has a hard time remembering about the dime and quarter and how much they are worth\

Reading/Phonics/Handwriting: We continued to practice the  short “i” word families and did just a bit on the short “u” families in Alphabet Island. Most if Madeline’s handwriting practice was doing her Alphabet Island workbook pages.

History: We read about the Revolutionary War time period, reading biographies about George Washington and Benjamin Franklin by the D’Aulaires and starting a “Magic Treehouse” book that takes place in that time period.

Science: Hmmm…not much! This is one subject that definitely got shortchanged with  our light school schedule.

We’ll be on Christmas break for at least the next two weeks…and we may take the week of January 4th off as well.  I have my quarterly editing deadline that week, and after a week of traveling and other excitement, I have a feeling that we may need another unstructured/fun week before we return to the routine.  (And I may need another week to get ready as I retool a few of our subjects).

~Erik is 32 Months old~

It wasn’t a big picture taking week for me, but I do have a lot to say.  This week our Tot School started shifting away from activities Erik would do mostly independently (after I got him started initially) while Madeline did her Kindergarten work, and toward a time where Madeline, Erik and I would all sit down together to do at least some of Erik’s activities:

I started noticing during weeks 10 and 11 that Erik was less interested than he initially was in completing activities on his own.  I think he had gotten bored of a lot of the things he could do completely by himself (or with minimal introduction from me) but I didn’t have our schedule set up in such a way that it was easy for me to spend more than a few minutes at a time helping him.

The first part of this week Erik did not choose to work on his Tot School baskets at all, so I knew that I change in our schedule was in order.  We had our co-op on Wednesday, and then on Thursday I tried having all three of us (Me, Erik and Madeline — Kai at 10 months old is still busy utilizing his new found ability to crawl to explore the playroom and all it offers) do Tot School together after lunch.  We had a lot of fun, but it wasn’t the best time of day to do it.

I wasn’t sure how excited Madeline would be to start our school day doing Erik’s stuff and not hers, but it turned out that (at least on the one day we tried it) she was very receptive to doing Tot School activities along side Erik and “helping” him do Tot School.  My main concern with doing things this way is that the time spent on Tot school would take away from the total time that Madeline would be able to focus on school and it would be harder for us to get her school work done.  The day we tried it, and this month in general, won’t be a good test for that, since we are doing a lightened school load during the month of December anyway.  We’ll try this new schedule now and into the new year and see how it affects Madeline’s school work.

My new challenge will also be keeping Erik from creating too much chaos after Tot School and while Madeline and I are doing Kindergarten.  So far Erik is more than happy to play by himself or with Kai, or be at the table with us coloring or scribbling so we’ll see what the coming weeks hold for that aspect of things as well.

To read more about what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly Tot School round up at 1+1+1=1!

~Erik is 31 Months Old~

I started out this past week with high aspirations for a baseball-themed tot pack I created myself. Here’s Erik spending a little bit of time with it on Monday:

Unfortunately this was not nearly as much of a hit with Erik as the Monsters tot pack was the week prior.  This was a big surprise to me since baseball is Erik’s most favorite thing ever.  Luckily I hadn’t spent a ton of time so far working on it.  At some point I might put some more time into it and see if I can figure out what would make it more interesting for him.

Erik enjoyed joining in with Madeline for our Thanksgiving unit study and participated with some of the Thanksgiving themed coloring sheets and crafts:

He tried out Madeline’s three part word puzzle cards, and was able to do them with a little help from his big sister:

Arts and crafts are, as always, a popular Tot School activity:

We’re taking this week off for Thanksgiving break, then we’ll be back to school on 11/30.  To see what other families are doing for Tot School, check out the weekly Tot School round up at 1+1+1=1!

~Erik is 31 Months Old~

Erik was really into creating artwork this week:

Since Madeline had a fish to color for science, Erik had a fish to color too.   Thus began a week of Erik wanting to color, “cut” (aka try and cut with some help from mom), and paste as much as possible. I think he may have created about a dozen works of art this week!

Board games are still a Tot School favorite for Erik.  Here he is playing Cariboo (his absolute favorite game) at the table.  We combined reading time, snack time and tot school time for a bit on Thursday morning! I read to the kids while Madeline colored and Erik played with his game.

We did activity bags again this week too.  Letter/number matching activities and button sorting were hits, while another color sorting activity and these clothes pins were not:

His little fingers just weren’t quite strong enough to easily open and close them.  We might try this one again this next week while Madeline is at Grandma’s house, so I can give him more assistance.

Just for fun:

Erik ran around the house and yard a bunch this week telling us that this was his “rocket ship helmet” (which must be worn this way, of course).  He also let us know he had lots of “rocket ship work” to do.  Surprisingly, he didn’t run into much wearing his hat in this way!!!

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

~Erik is 31 Months old~

While I was making Madeline’s new phonics flip chart, I decided to make something new for Erik as well.  I downloaded the Happy Monster Tot Pack and printed/laminated the Monster shape matching game:

He did a great job matching the plain shapes to the shape monsters…and apparently enjoyed it enough that even after we put it away he asked to get it out again later the same morning.

Madeline did Tangram shape puzzles for math this week and Erik enjoyed some simple shape matching Tangram pages too. Luckily I had made a set of laminated Tangram shapes ahead of time for him too, knowing this might happen:

I snagged some sports related scrapbooking stuff on clearance at Target, and Erik used some of it to make this great art work. I don’t think you can see it in the picture, but he scribbled on every single baseball!!!:

I thought this car-themed early math set from Lakeshore learning (which I bought really cheap at a garage sale a few years ago) would be a huge hit with Erik.  I got it out for him this week for the first time, and he was kind of so-so on it.  He spent a while using it, but at the end told me he didn’t want to do this for Tot School again.  I guess we’ll save it for a while longer!

Since Erik seems to think monsters are pretty cool, I gave him this monster mask to color on Friday.  We never got so far as cutting it out, but he had a lot of fun scribbling on it:

Those are a few highlights of what we did for Tot School this past week.  To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly Tot School round-up at 1+1+1=1!

~Erik is 31 Months Old~

Erik turned 31 months old today, though I guess he was still 30 months for all of Tot School this week.    We had a bit of a light week of tot school since we were away from home two mornings this week instead of our usual habit of just being gone one morning per week.

Erik enjoyed working alongside Madeline quite a bit this week, and often chose to take his Tot School activities and sit right next to her:

We did a lot of our typical recurring Tot School activities this week like puzzles, board games, lauri foam puzzles and stacking pegs, coloring sheets, busy bugs, and so on.  I tried a couple activity bags, but the ones I picked were flops with Erik — they will probably more interesting to him as he gets older.

My one really great idea this week was to get our our Cheerios Activity Book and Sunmaid Raisins Activity Book, and give him those two books along with the matching snacks in one of his tot baskets.  He loved it…though he didn’t do much of the raisin book…those mostly just went in his mouth.  But he did most of the pages of activities with the  Cheerios.

I think this will become a regular part of our Tot School activity line up!

Erik seemed to really enjoy our field trip to the Mill City Museum.  I think one of his favorite parts was the big old train car:

To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly Tot School roundup at 1+1+1=1.