Good-Bye Old Friend: Five In a Row Bible Supplement

We are done now with FIAR, so to keep the clutter to min we are selling off all our stuff. So sad, but it can bless another family.

2010-2011 Homeschool Curriculum HOP

Thanks to the good folks at Heart of the Matter for hosting Not Back To School Blog Hop. This always helps me organize my thoughts and plans.

So here we go……………….

We are introducing new math, grammar, spelling and History program this year. Also we are going to start to focus on more home education and a little less roadschooling.


This is our planned curriculum for homeschool for 2010-2011 2nd/3rd Grade Years:

Core: Five In A Row
Our primary curriculum will be Five In A Row Volume 4. I wanted to move to Winter’s Promise for a theme program because I simply didn’t have time to plan, print and organize FIAR this year. But after going to the local homeschool conference I realized that FIAR can work for us just modified. In the seminar about gifted children the speaker did warn changing everything from year to year. After the BIG MOVE last year where his whole world changed, I think we need to limit the amount of changes this year.

After much prayer we thought it best to leave the spine of FIAR but altered it to fit our needs. FIAR has a bible curriculum which I will be using and adding lapbook elements for scripture.

Grammar
Introducing Grammar with Winter’s Promise Language Arts curriculum and living books from the series “If you were” .



Mathematics
We are excited to start Right Start Math this year. The box arrived last week and we can’t wait to get our hands on the manipulatives.

History
This will be our first year of formal history study using the Story of The World program Volume I, Ancient Times. It covers history from the First Nomads, Egypt, the Jewish People, Abraham and Joseph, Hammurabi and the Babylonians, the Assyrians, Ancient China, Ancient Africa, Exodus, the Phoenicians, the Greeks and Rome.



Physical Education
We are enrolled in a Homeschool Physical Education co-op class, basketball class, swimming and martial arts.

Art
We are enrolled in a local co-op class and visiting museum exhibits throughout the year.

Music/Drama
We are enrolled in a local co-op class and taking part of in free concert/play venues in the area. The search is still on for individual instruction but we do have an at home drum program.

Science
We are enrolled in a accelerated local co-op class and visiting museum exhibits throughout the year.

I am so excited!!!!!!


You can read more curriculum plans and add yours at the Not Back to School Blog Hop.

A Change Is Gonna Come

I have been in prayer about what is to become of this blog. It has become clear that this should be a virtual space to record our homeschooling journey. Which means it will be incorporated into our school year plans with timely updates.

To that end let me share that this is planning season. Planning season for homeschoolers is exciting time because everything is fresh with new possibilities and grand goals. The trick I have found in my three years of homeschooling is to embrace those grand design, explore them and put them down in revision 1 of the plan. Then back off, give it a day and think about your life. Who are you? Who are your kids? How many outside activities do you plan on doing? How long will they really take? Where are the potential rabbit holes or unexpected cool field trips likely to happen? How your household actually functions? Then adjust the plan to this reality. Thereby avoiding complete homeschooling meltdown when things do not go as planned. Remember it is homeschooling so keep it SIMPLE and FLEXIBLE.

Part 1: What worked and what didn't work last year.

FIAR kinda worked last year but is planning intensive in order to support ds's learning style.

I honestly didn't think I had the time this summer to pull all of it together. But the other options are outside our budget right now, so I made a choice to slow down our summer plans to incorporate planning days. That is right days because I had to adjust my expectations of getting it done all at once.

Here is my attempt to plan with Five In A Row (FIAR). All items highlighted in gray were completed in 2008-2010. Items in green are planned for this year.
Five In A Row 2010-2011 School Year Plan

April Thus Far........................

Okay this month has been busy with classes, co-op, work and learning. It seems my head barely hits the pillow and the alarm goes off. A couple of weeks ago I actually fell asleep folding laundry. I miss blogging because it is my record keeping tool. Plus it is fun, but it seems like it has been added onto the chores of things “To Do”.
Sometimes I forget we just moved and it takes at least a year or two to get adjusted to a new city. I praise God every day for the good that is in our lives and I trust him to provide for the things we seek.

So what have we been doing this month…hmmmm

We got to see the Cherry Blossom Festival! It was amazing especially after all the snow.



We also did the Smithsonian Natural History before tourist season began in mid April.





Our son had his first science fair. Way to Go son!

We learned about simple machines.

We also studied three FIAR books, but more on that later.

FIAR: Owl Moon Lapbook

This was book was a struggle at first. Reading about snow when there is about 30 plus inches outside your window was not a good move. I think it added to his cabin fever. The great thing was we were able to get out and take a fieldtrip to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Naturalist Center. We got to spend one on one time with the staff and explored owl pellets collected by the staff as well as see giant mouths. The day also included working with rocks, minerals, bones, and learning about animal tracks.

I will include the photos later...Blogger is having issues uploading them tonight.

Lapbook Resources

Homeschool Share

The Homeschool Mom (THM)

Enchanted Learning

Snowschooling: Getting Back To Normal

Yesterday started out late after a late night of watching the Olympics. We had fun as a family watching the games. But we paid for in the morning, tired and lacking directions. That was completely my fault for not getting up and setting the tone for the day. But hey homeschooling is about whole family learning.

We are slowing getting dug out around here but there is still a lot to do on the sideroads.

Workbox	Wednesday
1	Ancient Olympics
2	Sort Library Books
3	Life Skills-Smells
4	Handwriting
5	Make Birdfeed
6	Winter Olympics
7	Jump Around
8	Art
9	Winter Walk
10	FIAR-Owl Moon Scripture
11	Birdfeeding
12	Co-Op Homework-Review-Water Cycle

Snowschooling Post Blizzards: President’s Day

Yesterday started out late after a late night of watching the Olympics. We had fun as a family watching the games. But we paid for in the morning, tired and lacking directions. That was completely my fault for not getting up and setting the tone for the day. But hey homeschooling is about whole family learning.

Also as we were suiting up for our nature walk it started to snow. Ironhide is so over snow at this point. Personally I am running out of snow related fun things to do in the lesson plans. We still have Texas roots which like to get out and run this time of year. I have fought the expensive of going to one of those inside playscapes but if it snows again tomorrow, it cannot be avoided. The young man needs to run.

Workbox	Monday
1	Magic School Bus Re Aloud-Cells
2	Listen and Learn-Positional Words
3	Read Aloud –Why President's Day
4	BrainPopJr. – Abraham Lincoln Movie
5	Craft- Make Lincoln's Log Cabin
6	FIAR-Owl Moon Social Studies-Family
7	Jump Around
8	FIAR-Owl Moon Science-Owl Games
9	Co-Op Homework-Review-Water Cycle
10	FIAR-Owl Moon Dramatization of Book
11
12

Week in Review: Wee Gillis, Migraines and Flag of Scotland Built From Legos

Pardon the corporate jargon but last week’s key learning was “learning happens all the time”. Praise God for the opportunity to homeschool first and for most. Last week was a struggle for both mom and student with a healthy dash of only child homeschooling guilt on my part. But let us start at the beginning….

We started the week learning about earth’s core in Co-Op. TS came home with a model of the earth made of clay and our job was to cut into the layers and discuss it as a family. It was so AWESOME!

However by midnight I felt like my planet was cracking in half. I had a blinding migraine headache. It was not your typical sinus relative migraine this happened after I took new allergy meds. First I had the chills, and then the migraine and the pièce de résistance I broke out in bumps and hives all over. After talking to the allergist apparently I had an allergic reaction to the allergy meds. So much for Mom being proactive and preventing down town.

The most I could handle was Read-A-Loud of Bring Me Some Apples and I'll Make You a Pie: A Story About Edna Lewis. We then drew “What-Ifs” of the story.
The week got better as we had a wonderful time on a nature walk and started Wee Gillis. In order to get fine motor skills into this unit I incorporated Legos. I built the flag of Scotland out of Legos, took a picture of it and challenged TS to rebuild it from the picture.
He had a BLAST! Now he wants to do all the flags of the world. Hmmmmmmmm let me work on that.

For Math we did more Horizons but also worked more on graphing. Then we read Stuart J. Murphy’s Lemonade for Sale introducing bar graphs. We took a Slinky and graphed how many stairs we could get it to go down. (I had so much fun with this….)

Additionally we:
• Daily Journal
• Handwriting Without Tears
• Redefined Chore Expectation Chart
• Workbook Reading Comprehension

I am now designing basic Capitalization Rules Chart Jedi style.

Blessings!

The Week In Review: October Week 2

We are in our second month of using Sue Patrick's Workbox System. We love this system. Using this system I can plan work that is challenging followed by something fun and met all our milestones. It also keeps me from running too far off track with something "oh just for fun".

This week we finished FIAR Mr. Gumpy's Motorcar. I finally stopped calling it Mr. Grumpy's about day three. Ironhide liked the book and his officially review was "It wasn't Glorious Flight but it was OK."

• Workbooks: We learned about constants and vowels.
  
• Horizons Math: Completed double digit math and graphing experiments. We choose to document Slinky and Steps.
  
• Art: In art co-op we studied Monet.
  
• Music: We discussed Vivaldi's Spring Concerto.
  
• Science: In co-op we discuss Creation and the Sun.
  
• Cool Science: We completed a Mad Science flask experiment of explosion. Thanks Chick-fil-a for the cools kids meal science tools.

Baking Soda+Vinegar+Lime Jello= Gooey Slimcano

• Fieldtrip: Our co-op got to visit the Capital and received tickets to the Congressional Gallery. That my friends is a separate blog.
  

Well those are the highlights.

FIAR:Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car

Lapbook Resources

Homeschool Share

The Homeschool Mom (THM)

FIAR: The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

Added Reading....

New York, New York!: The Big Apple from A to Z

Lapbook Resources

Homeschool Share

The Homeschool Mom (THM)

After we complete each lapbook this school year Ironhide will complete an elementary book report for his folder.

Our Homeschool School Room

This is "School Room" week at Life with My 3 Boybarians . Darcy will be doing a four week Not Back to School blog hop. This gave me a personal goal to have our room put together in time to share it. We have officially been in our new home here a little over two months. Yes, there are still boxes unpacked and pictures are not on the wall but we are working slowing toward normal.

First let's start with my homeschooler planner. All the sections were pulled from Donna Young's Free Homeschool Planner as well as organization charts from Sue Patrick's Workbox System.

Each month is colored to match the files in our Five In A Row planning box.

I have printed out all the lapbook material for each book. This works because I can load up the workbox system without a marathon night before printing session. Kendall from FIAR Forums shared this great planning system last year.

We downsized with this move which has been a blessing and adjustment. You will be amazed how simple life can be with less stuff. TS desk is the right fit and can grow with him. Next to his desk are the workboxes waiting for work. We were also gifted a digital microscope that will be using on the kitchen table.

Our world map is going up this weekend in this cozy spot with the easel and library and coloring books.

We have been so incredibly blessed with this move and look forward to an exciting year of learning.