tonyandkirsten.org

It’s “Day in the Life” week at Heart of the Matter’s “Not Back to School Blog Hop.”   My “day in the life” is somewhat theoretical at this point since we haven’t gotten back to a school year schedule yet and I am hoping to make some changes from what our schedule looked like last year.

We’re just finishing up our summer break.  When not busy with a particular activity like swimming lessons, most of the days in our life lately have looked like un-rushed early mornings, lots of time playing inside and out the rest of the morning (or maybe a playdate or shopping trip or other outing), time for reading or computer games for the kids or chores while Kai naps, and more playing outside in the late afternoon or early evening.  For the past month we’ve been doing a little bit of Madeline’s history  and Erik’s preschool lessons where ever we could fit them in.

Here’s what I am hoping a “day in our life” will look like once our school year is in full swing.  I am not very good at following precise schedules, but I am going to try and at least make one to give us something to follow and not have utter chaos. 

I will aim to get up before the kids to get ready for the day, make coffee and have some time to read the Bible and pray.   I think this might need to be at 6:15 am. My guess is that at least some mornings Kai (currently 18 months old) will be up before the other kids and while I am still in the middle of this routine…he is my early bird! But I can do these things with him around if I need to!

The other two kids will hopefully wake up after I have finished these things! Either Madeline (age 6) or Erik (almost 3.5) picks one show to watch (a video that’s 30 minutes or less or a recorded program from our DVR).  Kai usually watches with them — I suppose pretty soon he will get turns to pick out the show too! This will be my time to spend on the computer.  Or time to do other morning routine things that I didn’t get to before they woke up!

After the show it’s time for breakfast.  Typically this is something really quick to prepare like cereal, toast or a baked good that I prepped the night before or on another day.   Then the kids get dressed if they haven’t yet.  I’d like to get in the habit of reading the Bible or age-appropriate devotional materials to the kids during breakfast or shortly after.  We’ll see if that is a habit I can be consistent with! I would like to get devotional time with the kids in a time slot separate from “school” stuff so that we make a habit to do it even on non-school days.  After all, reading the Bible isn’t just a school subject — it’s a habit for life!

I’m thinking of having the kids play with each other for about half an hour after breakfast, to give me some time in the schedule to run through some quick chores.  This will be a new schedule element.  I’ll be testing this out to see if it is helpful, or if it makes it that much harder to bring our focus around to doing school.

Then comes a block of school time that will last from about 9 am to noon (with some breaks and snacks in there too!).  I am planning on doing all of Madeline’s academic subjects every day we do the regular school schedule, and trying out setting a timer to make sure we don’t spend too long on any one thing.  I discovered last year that my tendency is to keep at something until Madeline is absolutely done with it.  But that meant that it was hard to find time for everything because some days we might end up spending an hour on math or 45 minutes on phonics.  If it seems to jarring to spend 15-20 minutes per subject each day, I am going to try more of a planned “block” schedule with longer blocks for each subject area and not doing them every day.

That three hour block will also include half an hour of preschool for Erik.  I would guess that during that three hour block, Erik will spend some of the non-preschool time playing alone or with Kai, and some of the time at the table with Madeline and I either trying to participate with us or doing art or an activity book at the table.

I am hoping I have the energy to come up with some special toys for Kai to get out just during school time and maybe some special activities for him too.    I know that he will have Erik to play with quite a bit during school time, and he doesn’t mind too much playing by himself…or scribbling on paper with us at the table.

After the school block in the morning, we’ll have lunch (hopefully the kids will be playing and perhaps Madeline will work on a bit of independent work while I make lunch and bring it to the table).  After lunch the kids will have a bit more time to play freely.  If the morning chore time doesn’t work out so well, this play time may be a bit longer so I can do more chores after lunch.

After this play time, Kai will take a nap.  During nap time, we’ll do our elective subjects like art and music, have time for read-alouds, maybe do some science experiments or messier history projects,  and occasionally cook or bake or play board games.  I am assuming Erik will want to join Madeline for these endeavors.  This should work out to one elective subject per day, followed by some (or maybe a lot) of read-aloud time.

After 30-60 minutes of these electives and reading, I am aiming to have Erik rest for 30 minutes, and Madeline have 30 minutes to either rest, read or spend time at her desk in the “nook” upstairs where she can write, draw, etc.  I’ll either rest, work on early dinner preparations or perhaps chores or computer time.

After this, Madeline will get 30 minutes on the computer if she would like to do this, or extra time for reading, playing or art.   I’m hoping I’ll have the patience to help Erik on the other computer at the same time at least once or twice a week (he hasn’t learned how to “mouse” yet), and other days he can play or choose another activity that is good to do while Kai is sleeping (assuming he is still asleep at this point!) like play-doh or painting.

In an ideal world Kai would wake up after those two hours, and the kids would have been full enough from lunch that they didn’t even ask for a snack until this time, then we all eat a snack together.  Maybe that will all work out once a week or so. 

We then have a two and a half or three hour block of time before dinner.  Some days this will be chore time together (like laundry folding), some days play time (perhaps outside or with friends), some days errands, or once a week,  a late afternoon elective class for Madeline (or if we do the Ballet class that meets right after lunch once a week for part of the year, on that day Kai’s nap and the afternoon routine get pushed back an hour and a half or more, and then this late-afternoon block all but disappears!).

The last 30-60 minutes before dinner consists of time for me to prepare dinner (unless I got it done earlier) and (in an ideal world) time for the kids to straighten up and put away whatever toys, school stuff and art supplies they have gotten out.

Most days I let the kids pick out one more 30-minute-or-less show to watch while I do my thing in the kitchen.  In all honesty I let them do this because if I don’t it takes twice as long for me to make dinner — between Kai getting into things he shouldn’t be into and the kids fighting over toys and the boys getting too rough with each other — if they aren’t watching a show while I cook it feels like I am dealing with the kids every two minutes and not getting any cooking done.  I wish it wasn’t like that, but that’s the reality right now!

Then it is finally dinner time, and after dinner we have an hour or so to enjoy time together as a family before the bedtime routine begins.

My guess is we’ll follow something like this routine 4 days per week. The 5th day will be for co-op or a field trip.  Our co-op meets approximately every other week for three hours in the afternoon.  I think we’ll do a light school schedule in the morning, possibly playing educational games and doing a project for history or science that can be done with Kai underfoot.  I am assuming we’ll use most of our non-co-op Thursdays for some kind of outing, and do little to no other school work.  Perhaps some weeks we’ll just stay home on our non-co-op days and take a day off or do a light schedule or have a playdate with friends.

That’s the “day-in-the-life” that I am envisioning.  I’ll have to revisit this topic in a couple months to see if a day in our life really looks like this!

It’s been a busy week for us with Vacation Bible Camp at church, but in my spare moments here and there I’ve been trying to re-organize our school space in preparation for the new year.  It’s also “school room week” at the “Not Back to School Blog Hop” so it’s the perfect time to share the progress I’ve been making.

We’re very blessed to have a dedicated room for play and school.  All three kids sleep in one main floor bedroom so that the other main floor bedroom can be used for this purpose.  Here’s what the “play” side of the room often looks like:

You can’t see ALL the toys in this picture, but you get the idea.    Most of the focus of my reorganization was on the other side of the room, but I did significantly reduce the number of things on top of the tall book case, and thin out the books a bit.

Here’s a few “before” pics on the “school” side of the room (the white cabinet is our arts and crafts supplies, the brown cabinet is our game/activity cabinet, and the shelves with the magazine holders are where we keep school books we are using regularly):

Whew! These areas needed some big time organization!  Now here’s the “after” shots:

First, showing off the tops of the cabinets and the new hook for the kids’ painting shirts:

Inside the art cabinet…not a ton of change but definitely neater:

Now for the two spaces that changed more dramatically.  Here’s what the closet looks like with a shelf inside:

And finally, the game/activity cabinet completely re-organized, with lots of new bins to hold the smaller stuff that used to just pile up on various shelves:

Much better!!! I’m sure this will all need re-organization and cleaning out at this time next year, but I think our “stuff” will be easier to use for a while anyway. 

The only organizational item left is the “school shelves” that hold the books and other supplies we used daily.  These shelves used to hold our clear plastic workboxes last year.  I decided to move away from these for several reasons. For one thing, I was mainly only using them as an organizational system for myself, so I didn’t need to stick to something clear as the author of that system recommends when it’s used to keep kids on track.  Also, Kai seemed so much more interested in anything in a clear box than when it was in another sort of container.  Finally,  I didn’t really have enough space to put everything I needed for both Madeline and Erik this coming year on the shelves with the clear plastic bins.

So, I decided at the beginning of the summer I would move to using the Ikea magazine holders you see behind the table in the “before” pictures. They work great, Kai leaves them alone, and lots of materials fit on the top shelf.  Unfortunately, there is currently not quite enough clearance between the top and middle shelf to hold another row of magazine holders! So, I need Tony to lower the shelf for me, then we will put additional magazine holders there.  I’m not sure what I’ll use the bottom shelf for — maybe a special bin of toys and activities for Kai, or maybe a container for school-related books we’ve checked out from the library.

I can’t wait to get better use of all our crafts, games and activities now that we have everything organized!

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.

I’m going to participate in a “blog hop” this week hosted by Heart of the Matter.  It’s a chance for homeschoolers to share posts with one another on a weekly theme during the month of August.  This week’s theme is sharing Curriculum for the new school year.  Next week is “school room” week and the following two week are “student photo week” and “day-in-the-life week.”

I’ve already posted our curriculum plans in previous posts, which is why I am not repeating them for a special post this week.

My plans for Madeline’s First Grade year are in this post.

You can read about Erik’s preschool year here.

Thanks for stopping by if you found me through the “blog hop” and I am looking forward to discovering some new blogs through the blog hop this month!

The past couple weeks Madeline and I have been working on a big project: A lapbook about the books “Betsy-Tacy” and “Betsy-Tacy and Tib” by Maud Hart Lovelace.  The Betsy-Tacy series is a favorite of both myself and Madeline.  I read them as a child (the first four anyhow) and now I am on my second time through reading them to Madeline (we’re in book #3 for our second-go around).

The first four books are great for young-elementary aged girls, while the last six books in the series aim a bit older.   I am reading them now (I’m on book #9) and I am enjoying them very much!

Since we both love these books so dearly, I thought it would be a fun project to make a lapbook. A lapbook is one or more file folders with “mini books” inside about various aspects of the book and its subject matter or about a particular topic. When done about a book, I am telling people it is a cross between a book report and a scrapbooking project!

We finished the project yesterday.  Here are some views of our finished work:

(Edited to add on 8/5/10: I’m not sure why the pics disappeared and are only links now…until I have time to fix them, you can still see them by clicking on the links, then clicking to the second page of our “Homeschool 2010″ album)

Front cover:

Inside views:

Close-up of the “Flowers” mini-books within in a mini-book:

Back cover commemorating our trip to the Betsy-Tacy houses in Mankato, MN:

Yes, this project really was a lot of work! This project was definitely a notch in difficulty above our previous lapbooking projects because I created it from scratch! Google searches and searches of favorite lapbooking sites did not reveal any Betsy-Tacy lapbook projects available to work from.  So, I brainstormed a list of min-book ideas, and spent a good deal of time with Microsoft Publisher to create the mini-book templates, fill in the text and find clip-art that I could use freely. (And yes, we did copy the front cover art for our lapbook from the books themselves — Madeline insisted on doing this and for our own personal use I think this falls well within the “fair use” guidelines of copyright.)

After I created and printed all the mini-books, Madeline and I worked together to assemble the project and fill in the information inside the books.  We eacg did some of the cutting and folding. I tried to create a number of mini-books that she could draw pictures inside of, since writing is not really her “thing”.  For the mini-books that did require written responses, I asked her the questions and wrote down the answers.  If she couldn’t remember, I looked it up in the books, read her the relevant section, and asked her to answer again.  She seemed to enjoy the process.  For the mini-books where more “factual” answers were required, I looked up the answers, wrote them down, and shared them with her.   Gluing the mini books in the folder is one of Madeline’s favorite parts in the lapbooking process, so she did almost all the gluing (hence a few upside down flowers!).

Had I not been trying to create a project that I could share with other people (hopefully all my mini-book templates for this project will be up on homeschoolshare.com sometime in the coming weeks, once I finish refining and editing my work!), we probably would have made a slighly smaller and less extensive lapbook.  While Madeline enjoyed the process overall, she was more than ready to be done with it by the end.

We’re already pondering our next lapbook — Madeline has requested we do one about ballet!

Recently, I wrote a post about free printable reading materials for beginning readers.  But how about “real” books that don’t use up your ink (or your time to cut them)?

Here’s some that we have enjoyed:

The Bob Books:  I think these must be the most well known, classic phonics based readers.  I tried Set 1 with Madeline before she was really ready and it was just frustrating for her! So when she was really ready to take off with her reading, we jumped into Sets 2 and 3, which I was able to check out from the library. We also checked out set 4, but Madeline didn’t care for this set as much.  It was getting more difficult in different ways than the other materials we had been studying, so it was less of a good fit for us. These stories all feature black and white simple drawings.

Now I’m Reading series by Nora Gaydos: We really like this series a lot — it is probably our favorite early reader series.  Each set has either 10 or 5 books (definitely look for the 10 book sets — they are a much better deal!) with colorful pictures and fun stories. We were lucky enough to find two sets (a level one set and a pre-reader set) at a garage sale.  Madeline is ready for at least the level 2 sets, and it’s on my wish list of books I would like to buy for her, since our library does not carry them.

Dr. Maggie’s Phonics Readers: These are full color books that gradually increase in difficulty over the course of 24 books.  At our library, these come in a package of 4 books and a read-along CD.    If you consider these, be aware that Book 1 is kind of an anomaly in the series and is more sight-word or whole-language based than phonics based.  But after the first book they are more firmly phonics oriented. We found the read-along CDs to be somewhat annoying, though they did have some catchy tunes to go along with the stories.

Flip-a-Word: This is a really cute series of books we found at the library.  Each one covers about three word families and is perfect for beginning readers who are learning to blend initial sounds with a word family.

“Get Ready, Get Set, Read” Series“: This series of books published by Barron’s is similar to many other beginning readers, but is much more phonics-based than most I’ve looked at.  There are still some “sight words”, but not too many.  We found the linked title at a used book store, but I would guess that most of the books in this series would be equally useful.

“Sounds Like Reading” Series by Brian Cleary:  This phonics based series is one of Madeline’s favorites.  It uses word families and rhymes to teach various phonics skills.   Each page presents about three new words, then uses them in a sentence.

Are there other beginning reader series we should check out? Let me know!

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!!!

I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this sooner, but in the past few months we’ve discovered that audio books can be a great way to pass the time.  Madeline enjoys them a lot, and Erik can enjoy them for somewhat more limited periods of time.  I really enjoy how it can make car rides more pleasant and laundry-folding sessions less contentious (Madeline complains less about having to fold laundry if there is something to listen to in the process!).   Audio books can also be a great “resting” activity for the kids or something to listen to during a meal or snack time (I’ve often thought I would like to read to the kids during meals or snacks, but I am usually either too hungry or too tired!).

I’ve even found two great ways to get audio books for free (without so much as even a trip to the library!)

Librivox is a site full of free audio books from public domain works that volunteers have recorded and made available on the site.  Of course, this means it only includes books written before 1922.  But, there are many classic works that are old enough to be public domain! The site is not incredibly easy to browse, but if you are looking to see what children’s works they have available, trying going to the advanced search page, and entering “children” for the genre.  A long list of books in alphabetical order by author will greet you!  These free audio books are in Mp3 format that you can do just about anything with — play on your computer, put on your ipod or other MP3 player, or burn to CD.

If you have a Hennepin County Library card, you are eligible to download audio books from two different services: The NetLibrary AudioBooks Center and the Overdrive Digital Catalog.   These services offer both recent and older books for “checkout”, and in many cases you are more limited in what you can do with them.  Most of the books contain DRM or digital rights management.  This is what allows them to just “check out” the book to you for 21 days and then have it not work for you any longer (aka it is “returned” to them).   A limited number of books are in MP3 format, allowing you to burn them to disc or play on any MP3 player.  The rest of the files will work on most computers and some MP3 players and phones.  The technical specifications are different for each of the two services, so read the fine print! Books from one catalog will work on the kids’ MP3 player, while books from the other service will not…though books from both services can be played on our computers.

If you aren’t in Hennepin County, be sure to check with your local library to see if they subscribe to a service allowing you to download free audio books!

So exactly what do we do with the files once they are downloaded? The files from the library that won’t work on our MP3 player get downloaded on to our laptop.  We can move it around the house and listen where ever we are doing chores.  Sometimes I have even let Madeline bring it upstairs to listen in the nook during a quiet rest time.

We haven’t actually tried any of the library files that will work on the MP3 player, so that leaves the MP3 format books we can do as we please with.  We actually have no working CD players in our house or car other than those in the computers.  So, that means we have done one of two things — loaded the files on to a USB stick to play in the car stereo or loaded them on to the MP3 player.

Using the MP3 player offers us the most flexibility, so that is what I have been doing most often.  Not only can the kids listen through their headphones (we actually have a headphone splitter, so both older kids can listen at the same time), we can plug the MP3 player into the living room stereo, the car stereo or a small boom box via a cord that looks like it has a headphone jack on both ends.  One end goes into the MP3 player where the headphones typically go, and the other end goes into an axillary jack on a device.  A simple and cheap way to use audio books anywhere in our house or car!

With Madeline’s Kindergarten year behind us, the task ahead of me is to make plans for 1st grade! Now that Erik is three and wants to do everything his big sister does, I will be doing some preschool activities with him too.  And now that Kai is walking, climbing and trying to get into things even on top of our school/crafts table…so I might have to come up with a plan to keep him from destroying our schoolwork!

Here’s the headlines of what we’re doing for First Grade:

Math: RightStart Level B

Science: Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding + science lessons at co-op

Language Arts: Reading practice +  Alphabet Island 2A for spelling/phonics + spontaneous grammar instruction by me.

History: Mystery of History Volume 1

Bible: Continue Beginning in Christ, read the Bible together, possibly other devotionals

Handwriting: Not sure yet if we will do something focused or just integrate into other subjects

Music: Pfieffer House first grade music curriculum and Stories of the Great Composers

Art: Artistic Pursuits K-3 Book 1 (I just found a good deal today to buy this used!) + art lessons at co-op

Phy-Ed: Dance class, PE class at co-op, play outside. 

Now, here’s the long explanations if anyone is curious:

In Math, we will move on to Level B of Right Start Math.  We didn’t finish all of level A, but many of the topics we did not cover were things we covered in the two previous math programs we used (Saxon Math K in preschool and Kindermath last fall).  Students can start Right Start with level B and skip A all together, so I am guessing it won’t be a problem for Madeline to miss a few of the level A lessons…or we can always go back and do them if there is a problem!

In Science we will give “Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding” a real go of it.  We did a few lessons this past spring (and we may even do a few this summer) and I still think it is the right curriculum for us — I just need to stay on top of it and do it.

In the realm of Language Arts I know that Madeline will need to be practicing reading.  I think she will be ready to try at least a little bit of spelling too.  Since we already own Alphabet Island level 2, I feel like I should at least give that a try.  I am very curious about All About Spelling , but I think I should resist the urge to spend the money on something new just out of curiosity.   One of the things that appeals to me in All About Spelling is the use of letter tiles to form words — I may adapt Alphabet Island to use more of this approach given Madeline’s dislike of writing.

I’m also looking to begin some very gentle instruction in other areas of language arts such as grammar.  A lot of people seem to like “First Language Lessons” by Susan Wise Bauer to meet this need for 1st and 2nd graders.  But it has a lot of memorization of poems and such, so I am not sure that’s our style.  I am thinking instead I will get a good elementary level reference book (maybe this one) and weave in some grammar instruction as we read and write.  I’ve already found myself trying to explain things to Madeline like the difference between present tense and past tense, so I think spontaneous grammar instruction will come naturally to me!

In the realm of History, We are going to give something approaching the “four year cycle” a try (aka, starting with Ancient history, moving on to Middle ages, and so on in a repeating four year pattern…though I think I will have a “side” of some American history thrown in simultaneously!)  I really can’t find a curriculum that is all I want it to be.  I want to like Sonlight, but I just don’t like their world history book picks for Core 1.  I kind of want the same concept as Songlight, covering ancient history for early elementary, but with different books.  There are some programs out there, but not that I have found that would work super well with a first grader being the oldest student.

So even though I really want to do a literature based approach, I will try out Mystery of History instead.   The text is written in somewhat of a narrative format, so it is much more interesting than a typical dry textbook, and hands-on projects are included as well as some literature suggestions we can read if we have the time.

Mystery of History covers a lot of history from Biblical times, so Bible study will be somewhat integrated into History. We’ll also continue with the “Beginning in Christ” Bible study we started in the spring as well as other devotionals or just reading the Bible together.

Handwriting is really an Achilles heel for us at the moment.  Madeline knows how to form all her letters, but hates to write.   She really freaks out if she has to write more than a few words most of the time — and this is true whether it is a school assignment or something fun, like writing inside of a birthday card.  Every now and then she will be very motivated and write several sentences in a row, but that is rare.  All through Kindergarten, I was hoping this was developmental, and she would not feel this way about writing by the time first grade rolled around.  And it still may be something she outgrows.  So, I am torn on what to do.  Do I segregate Handwriting into its own subject, to practice it without dragging us down in any other subjects?

We didn’t do much music instruction at home last year, but it’s something  I am eager to do more of.  We used the Pfieffer House curriculum at our co-op last year, but since we are joining a different co-op this year that does not include a music class, I decided we would continue this at home — especially since I was able to find a used copy of their 1st grade curriculum with the CD for $8.  This curriculum doesn’t include much in the way of music appreciation, so we’ll read about (and listen to the works of) great composers via the Stories of the Composers book and CD set.

Art: I have read a lot of great reviews of Artistic Pursuits and am eager to try it out. Madeline loves art and I hope this helps her develop her natural talents!

We’ll also be doing lots of read-alouds throughout the year.  Some of these may be classics of children’s literature, while others will just be fun books that Madeline picks out at the library.  Some we may listen to as audio books! I don’t have a specific plan as to what we will be reading, though I will probably take inspiration from Ambleside Online, Sonlight and other book lists.  Maybe I’ll even make a list of titles we may read this year and write a post about it. 

This post is long enough as it is, so I will leave my plans for preschool with Erik for another post as well!

With Madeline trying to practice her reading every day, I’m always looking for new books for her to read.  We own a couple sets of easy reader books, I’ve found some books on our bookshelves that work for her. and we’ve checked some easy-to-read books out from the library.

Even with these books to read, it has still been a challenge to find enough reading material that is not too difficult or frustrating for Madeline.  Part of the problem is that  it seems many books that are marketed for beginning readers aren’t really designed for students who have been primarily taught via phonics.  While I am not a huge stickler about an occasional long, hard-to-sound-out word in a text, some books labeled “Level 1″ have tons of words the student is expected to somehow figure out from the pictures.  Or perhaps they assume that the student has already mastered most phonics rules.

Some days I like to challenge Madeline with books that are a little bit harder for her to read (ones where I have to help her figure out longer words or ones that follow rules of decoding that we haven’t studied as often), but at this point I want her to spend most of her time building speed and confidence while incrementally increasing the difficulty of what she is reading.

I did a lot of searching to find free texts to download that would meet our needs.  I thought this list might benefit others too!  We have not used all of these, but even the ones that didn’t fit my style might be a good fit for you and your students.

Reading A to Z is a paid site that offers some free samples (look for the ones labeled “phonics” if that is your primary style of teaching).   All the other sites I will share have a greater quantity of completely free materials, but I wanted to share this site because they do occasionally offer a free trial or preview during which you can download additional books.  I have quite a large number of their books I downloaded during an Educator Appreciation week they held a year or two ago (don’t forget, homeschoolers qualify as educators!).

Their pricing is more appropriate for schools than for individual homeschoolers, but if you really love their materials you might find it worthwhile to join the site.  Madeline has enjoyed most of the books I have printed for her from this site, and I like the fact that the phonics books increase in difficulty very gradually.

Starfall.com (a great site with many learning-to-read activities) offers all fifteen of their phonics-based readers in a black-and-white printable format for free download.

Hubbard’s Cupboard offers many free printable booklets.  Some are sight word-based readers, and there are many “word family” books as well.  Some are listed on this page I liked to, but to see the Sight Word-based books you do need to click the link near the top of the page.

FreeReading.net is a site with many, many lessons and activities for teaching kids to read.  And it’s all free! They have various “decodable passages“, some of which are like very small books with pictures. Others are just sentences or paragraphs that focus on a particular skill and have no pictures — but they still might be a great resource for practicing skills your student struggles with.

Progressive Phonics is another free learn-to-read program with lots of printables like books and worksheets.  Personally, I am not a big fan of the format of their books.  Each book or page to read contains red words for the student to read, and all the rest of the words are to be read by the parent or teacher.   I guess I just prefer books that do their best to use words the student knows and give them the satisfaction of reading the whole book.  But, if that doesn’t bother you, there’s lots of great material there!

DonPotter.net has various phonics resources for free download, including curriculum materials and articles.  There are also some decodable passages without any pictures.  Look for the link for “Blend Phonics Reader” part way down the page.  I thought these might fun to print out and have the student illustrate one or more pictures to go with each paragraph.  I’ve had Madeline do that with some other phonics passages with no pictures and she thought it was a lot of fun.

An Old-Fashioned Education has lots of reading materials that are well…old fashioned.    They have links to quite a few public domain works like the classic “McGuffy’s Reader”.  These aren’t really my style, but they worked “back in the day” for generations to learn to read, so I am sure there is some value there!

Wordway and LittleBookLane are two sites I just found yesterday.  It looks like both of these sites have lots of little books to download — but I haven’t explored them very much to see how valuable they are to the phonics learner.

Have I missed any other sites with free phonics based reading materials?