Sheesh, I am not very good at this record keeping. I should probably get better at it since I will have a high schooler in 2 years - ack!
In April and May, we did school on the days that my hubby was gone. He had classes to teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays and often went to his office to work on things on Mondays and Wednesdays, so most weeks we did school M-Th.
As planned, we did a Hawaiian history unit. For science we did a bunch of experiments from kits I had purchased at the beginning of last year and we hadn't gotten around to using. For math and grammar we continued working through Singapore and Growing with Grammar. Sierra and Kali did their usual did copywork, typing, and spelling. They also memorized the states and capitals using this website. For composition, we continued to use ideas from K12. Sierra did a how-to essay, an advertisement and presentation, and a book review. Kali learned about different writing types - narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive. She wrote short essays using each type. Sierra read Alice in Wonderland. Kali read several Magic Tree House books. She is working on reading them all and I think she is to about #32. Arwen worked on becoming a more fluent reader and read several Dr. Seuss books and other easy readers.
Also, during April and May, we had the opportunity to participate in a furlough Friday co-op with some public schooled kids. Because of lacking of money, the public schools in Hawaii had no school almost every Friday. Some of the parents were concerned and decided to hold a co-op on the Fridays with no school. The classes included reading, math games, science, poetry, sign language, music, and art history. It has been nice to be able to join the public schooled kids for activities like this since the are so few homeschoolers in our area.
We finished out the month of May with a choir and violin concert and seeing the campus play, Wizard of Oz. May 25th was the last day of school for the public school, so I decided to make that our last day of school, too. Rand's semester ended around that time also and he had the next term off, so it made sense to take a break.
My sister came to visit in June. We went to the Bishop Museum, Pearl Harbor, and Waimea Valley and, of course, the beach. Our church had a ward camp in June. The kids had a great time playing with all of the other kids.
Rand was out of town in July. We attempted to do some school. Sierra and Kali did some math and grammar and practiced their instruments. Arwen did math and reading and writing. Arwen has made a leap in her reading ability this summer, despite of, or maybe because of, our lacking of formal practice. She read an entire Magic Tree House book on her own- yahoo!!
In July, we also went to the Bishop Museum for its Super Science Saturday. The extra displays were kind of lame, but we also went to the volcano show and the planetarium show. We hadn't been able to go to either of these before, so that was fun (and educational).
School starts back up for the public school kids on August 2nd. I figure we might as well get started, too. It has been great to take a break from our formal studies. I am feeling much more motivated to start back up again now that we have had a little break. Rand only teaches Tuesdays and Thursdays again this term, so we may just do school on Tuesdays and Thursdays in August and then go back to a full schedule in September.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
January, February, March
Back to our own independent homeschooling - yeah!!!! I cannot believe how much happier I am than I was when we tried to do k12. We spent the last 3 months doing all of the things we would have done in the fall had we not tried k12.
We finished up SOTW 2 ( finally - it only took us 2 1/2 years..). We worked through the Real Science 4 Kids Biology book. I liked that it taught lots of scientific vocabulary, but it wasn't super exciting and as my oldest expressed, " The experiments didn't really work."
We went back to Singapore Math. Sierra was able to skip the fractions sections and is almost finished with 5B. Kali needed to get her multiplication facts down, so we worked on those and started back up where she left off. She is almost done with 3B. Arwen also picked up where she left off and is almost done with 1B.
We started using Growing with Grammar levels 4 and 6 with Sierra and Kali and are loving it. Well, I am loving it. It is pretty self teaching and doesn't take much time each day to complete. The girls kind of think it is boring, but it gets the job done. When they finish with their current levels I am going to skip Sierra to level 8 and Kali to level 6 since grammar curricula are often too repetitive. I am using First Language lessons for the Well Trained Child with Arwen and we are almost finished with the 1st grade section.
The older 2 did some spelling using Natural Speller. We began copywork again - 2 perfect lines in cursive - for both older girls. The older girls also did some writing assignments from K12. Kali did a poetry unit and a narrative essay. Sierra did a research paper on Kiwi birds complete with a bibliography. I also came up with a writing assignment for both girls to go with their literature reading -yeah me! We also returned to my girls favorite kind of writing - free writing.
Read alouds included The Number Devil and The Phantom Tollbooth. We tried The Second Mrs. Giaconda, but found it a bit boring. Sierra read Anne of Green Gables and Kali read Ballet Shoes for their independent reading.
We also worked through some of English From the Roots Up and a poetry curriculum that I have been beta testing for the last few years - ha!
Whew! It is also nice to record what we have done. Sometimes it feels like we have not done much, but when I type it all up, I realize we have accomplished quite a bit.
Originally, I had planned to continue our history and science studies (SOTW 3 and RS4k Chem) after the break we have been taking the past 2 weeks while Grandma and Grandpa visited. But then we visited the Bishop Museum and I decide we should do a unit on Hawaiian history. More on that later.
We finished up SOTW 2 ( finally - it only took us 2 1/2 years..). We worked through the Real Science 4 Kids Biology book. I liked that it taught lots of scientific vocabulary, but it wasn't super exciting and as my oldest expressed, " The experiments didn't really work."
We went back to Singapore Math. Sierra was able to skip the fractions sections and is almost finished with 5B. Kali needed to get her multiplication facts down, so we worked on those and started back up where she left off. She is almost done with 3B. Arwen also picked up where she left off and is almost done with 1B.
We started using Growing with Grammar levels 4 and 6 with Sierra and Kali and are loving it. Well, I am loving it. It is pretty self teaching and doesn't take much time each day to complete. The girls kind of think it is boring, but it gets the job done. When they finish with their current levels I am going to skip Sierra to level 8 and Kali to level 6 since grammar curricula are often too repetitive. I am using First Language lessons for the Well Trained Child with Arwen and we are almost finished with the 1st grade section.
The older 2 did some spelling using Natural Speller. We began copywork again - 2 perfect lines in cursive - for both older girls. The older girls also did some writing assignments from K12. Kali did a poetry unit and a narrative essay. Sierra did a research paper on Kiwi birds complete with a bibliography. I also came up with a writing assignment for both girls to go with their literature reading -yeah me! We also returned to my girls favorite kind of writing - free writing.
Read alouds included The Number Devil and The Phantom Tollbooth. We tried The Second Mrs. Giaconda, but found it a bit boring. Sierra read Anne of Green Gables and Kali read Ballet Shoes for their independent reading.
We also worked through some of English From the Roots Up and a poetry curriculum that I have been beta testing for the last few years - ha!
Whew! It is also nice to record what we have done. Sometimes it feels like we have not done much, but when I type it all up, I realize we have accomplished quite a bit.
Originally, I had planned to continue our history and science studies (SOTW 3 and RS4k Chem) after the break we have been taking the past 2 weeks while Grandma and Grandpa visited. But then we visited the Bishop Museum and I decide we should do a unit on Hawaiian history. More on that later.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Fall 2009
OK, time to catch up on this blog. If you read my other blog you know that we spent this fall trying out the K12 curriculum through Hawaii Technology Academy. For the most part it ended up being a huge disaster. I was miserable. The kids were miserable. But I am glad that we tried it because we did gain a lot of insight.
1. We now appreciate better the way we have always homeschooled
2. I have learned better what kind of work I should be expecting of my kids at their grade levels.
3. The kids learned the kind of work that would be expected of them in school.
4. I discovered areas where my kids were weak and areas where they were strong.
5. I got ideas to use on our own in certain subjects especially writing.
Things the girls learned about using K12:
Sierra - Earth Science, American History from 1865, fractions, read Island of the Blue Dolphin and a bunch of short stories, art lessons
Kali - some Hawaiian History, ecosystems, chemistry, plant and animal interactions, the human body, read Charlotte's Web, an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe, and some short stories
Arwen - Mesopatamia, ancient Egypt, states of matter, weather, animal classification, light, read aloud Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and Winnie the Pooh and other short stories
1. We now appreciate better the way we have always homeschooled
2. I have learned better what kind of work I should be expecting of my kids at their grade levels.
3. The kids learned the kind of work that would be expected of them in school.
4. I discovered areas where my kids were weak and areas where they were strong.
5. I got ideas to use on our own in certain subjects especially writing.
Things the girls learned about using K12:
Sierra - Earth Science, American History from 1865, fractions, read Island of the Blue Dolphin and a bunch of short stories, art lessons
Kali - some Hawaiian History, ecosystems, chemistry, plant and animal interactions, the human body, read Charlotte's Web, an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe, and some short stories
Arwen - Mesopatamia, ancient Egypt, states of matter, weather, animal classification, light, read aloud Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and Winnie the Pooh and other short stories
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