Homeschool: Kindergarten week 3

(Charlie making a collage of drawn trains and train pictures he cut out of magazines)

Charlie had another good week of school. He continues to do well with his lessons. I am hoping that within a few weeks of having the baby that we will be able to settle into a daily schedule, for now we are doing school between my doctors appointments etc. So sometimes we are doing school in the morning (which seems to work best for us), during naps (Charlie is usually pretty tired by then and needs a rest as well, not the best time for school) or after naps (which works fine, but Mama is low on steam by then). Mornings seem to be our "good" time of the day for all of us, so we try to sneak school in then whenever we can.

Charlie continued on with his core lessons of Language Arts, Phonics and Math. Charlie also took the KRAL test this week and one online session with his K class.

We have gone back to Explode The Code for Charlie's handwriting practice as well as supplemental phonics. He really enjoys these workbooks far more then the Handwriting without Tears program...which literally brought us both to tears at one point :)

For fun we made Mummy Pizzas for lunch. I used toasted English Muffins, spaghetti sauce, pepperoni, sliced string cheese and grapes (for the eyes). The kids loved them and ate them right up!


One of the craft projects that we did this week was make suncatcher leaves using contact paper and tissue paper. Both boys loved doing this project. Charlie started off by making a pattern with the different color paper and then dumped a bunch of tissue paper over them to fill in the spaces. Tommy placed piece by piece and refused any help. His attention span these days is incredible. I have had both friends and his speech therapist comment on how amazing it is.

After the boys placed the paper down, they rolled out the air bubbles and then I sent them out to the backyard to find as many types of leaves as they could. Charlie brought back 4 different leaf styles that I then traced and cut out of their mosaic tissue paper creations. Daddy and Charlie later identified what kind of trees the leaves came from.

Charlie also did 2 different art pieces this week using pastels, which was his first go with them and he really enjoyed using them. So much in fact that I had to cut him off after he completed 2 art pieces one right after the other. My friend Susana, over at Our Homeschool Fun, introduced me to an amazing new art site for kids. I allowed Charlie to pick out one of the fall art projects from Art Projects for Kids and use his pastels for the first time. He choose the How to Draw a Fall Tree project.
This was the first time I had assigned him to look at a something and then draw what he saw. I think that he did a great job. He smudged the pastels with his fingers and tried to blend colors together to make the clouds. I also sat with Charlie and drew the same picture. We talked about how each of us was looking at the same inspiration picture and yet our pictures were very different and why that was.


Charlie had such a great time that he begged to make another drawing. This time he choose The Symbols of the Season project.

The only thing I made sure that he did was divide the paper up into the 4 boxes. I was really kind of surprised at how with this picture he added more detail and paid closer attention to the actual inspirational picture. He added the lines for the pumpkin and his eggplant had great resemblance to the other picture.


We did a lot of fun things this week alongside our normal studies. However,it was a hard week in terms of scheduling everything we needed and wanted to do. The 4 weekly doctor appointments are truly putting a damper on all the extracurricular activities and fun projects that I would like to do and had planned for the boys. We have had to withdraw the boys from the homeschooling co-op that meets on Mondays for this semester. It just wasn't possible to make it on Mondays until the following session that starts in January. I am really bummed about this (thankfully I hadn't talked about it too much with the boys!), but I know that this is a short season in our lives and in a few months we will be settling into a new routine and will be able to add more back into our daily lives.

Planting Beans

One of our supplemental projects last week was planting beans. Charlie did a lesson on Jack and the Bean stock last week and we decided to plant beans to go with it. We placed Kidney Beans in mason jars and then put a napkin in it to act as the dirt. Tommy dumped a whole fist full of beans in his jar and Charlie only put 2-3 beans in his. We drip water on the napkin 1-2 times a day and after about 3 days the beans started to sprout.


The boys enjoy looking at the beans each day to see how they have changed. Charlie wants to plant the beans in the backyard to see if they will grow into a large bean stock like in the story.

After we planted them Charlie wanted to dissect the rest of the beans. He cut them open and looked at how they were formed.

We will see if we can keep them going over the winter and then plant them in the backyard in Spring.

Tea Party

As part of our school fun, and just fun in general, we had a tea party. On the menu was lemon tea colored pink (which really turned orange...but close enough), warm apple cider and brownies bites. We sat out on the back porch and set the table with a white linen table cloth and our best china. We even used Great Gram's cake stand for the brownies.

The kids LOVED it!! Tommy kept saying "Oh tank you Mama! Tank you for tea patty"...too cute! They sat so nicely and nibbled on their 3 brownie bites, they were amazed that I let them have 3. I let them choose what tea they wanted and how much sugar (splenda) they wanted in their tea. They all did so well and enjoyed the free range to "do" and choose what they wanted. They had such good manners and the boys even said that Miss S should go first...ladies first you know!

We sat and chatted, drank, ate, drank some more and talked about how next time we needed to make big tea party hats.


It was so much fun, we can't wait to do it again!

RRSP: Letter T Week 1 and our "schedule"

We started Tommy's Preschool curriculum this week, Raising Rock Stars Preschool. Again, I was not nearly as prepared as I thought that I was, but I was happy to go with the flow. We are not following the curriculum to a tee, but changing things up to fit with Tommy's needs and my desires for his learning.

We typically start school doing circle time. We do the calendar, color of the day, the weather, our Good Morning song, and our Nameo spelling song and we color in the day of school that we are working on. These are our daily boards (picture to come), I got most of the ideas from 1+1+1=1 there are a few things on our boards that we don't do now, but will as the boys get a bit older.

After circle time we move to the school table and I get Charlie started on his math while Tommy completes the rest of his RRSP lesson and workboxes. Once Charlie is done with math I let Tommy play with whatever is in his open ended workboxes and move Charlie on to another subject, usually Phonics. Typically, Charlie and I do Language Arts either during nap time or before bed and we all do Science together.

The Bible verse for this week is "Thou shall not steal" Exodus 20-15
Both boys were able to grasp the concept of this verse as well as memorize it.
The Letter of the week is T and the color is green. Whenever the boys see the color of they week they are to call out..."the color of the week" and tell us what the item is.

Tommy practiced writing the letter T, he also wanted to write Dad...too cute.

He strung green beads onto a pipe cleaner and then wanted to make a bracelet, which he wore for most of the day.

He cut out different pictures that start with the letter T and glued them onto his letter T page.

Our crafty ABC was none other then a train for the letter T.


Tommy also LOVES Starfall.com and asks to do it everyday. It is a fun, educational website that teaches him letters, sounds, basic phonics etc.


A bin in his open ended workbox contained a Fall themed sensory bin. I bought small gourds, cloth leaves and jeweled pumpkins from the Dollar Store. I placed tongs, several measuring cups, serving spoons and his stacking cubes for him to play with. He scoped, poured, separated, and grouped the items for a good 45minutes.


For our "fun" we had a Tea party with lemon tea, hot cider and brownie bites.

Homeschooling: Kindergarten

We had another great week. We are all definitely learning as we each day passes what works best for us but it really seems that we are all enjoying our school adventure thus far.

Charlie is breezing through most of his lessons so I am adding supplemental material to keep him interested and to provide him with an optimal learning environment. I am grateful to have the direction that K12 offers and have already found ways to supplement those areas that are not up to my standards. I don't think there will every be "one" curriculum that will have ALL the components of learning that I am satisfied with ;)

We also added in the RRSP curriculum for Tommy this week and both boys will participate in that as well. It was a nice break from the academics portion of our day to do some craft projects and add the Biblical part of our school day. Next week I hope to incorporate our Raising Rock Stars weekly Bible lessons, which is something we will do as a family. So far, starting one boy and his specific curriculum at a time is working well. I feel pretty good about Charlie's work and how our daily schedule works with him, and now I am easing in to doing both boys schooling at one time...so far so good.

Besides doing his school work, Charlie had a alot of fun building different vehicles with his Legos, mining in the dirt in the backyard, used Daddy's drill to put a new hitch on the back of the firetruck finding grasshoppers and ants,
planting beans to go with Jack and the Bean Stock he read for LA, making a birthday card for our neighbor, playing with friends, using pencils/twigs and tape to add to his trucks to make them "cooler"

and being a good helper while Mommy was at her 10,000 doctor's appointment for the week.

I love having our boys here everyday, learning with them and teaching them. They are excited to do school each day and we are really looking forward to the start of our D6 Homeschooling Co-op at the end of the month!

First Week of School

We just completed our first week of homeschooling and it was really awesome!! Charlie was excited to the majority of his lessons, really I think he had fun doing all of them except for the last phonics review this morning. He even asked to do school on Tuesday ;)

This week was a little haphazard with our school schedule due to some doctors appointments and a playdate, but that is one of things I like about what we are doing....flexibility. We didn't do any school on Thursday but easily made up the work earlier in the week as well as today. We are actually a few lessons ahead of the game which is nice to have a cushion! I hope to get a week or two ahead of the game for when the baby comes.

Monday was certainly a day of learning :) I thought that I was prepared but there were several materials missing. Not a huge deal, just a bit of looking for the crayons, a certain book etc. At first I started to get frustrated, but I didn't want my frustration to ruin the day. So, I said a little prayer for help and just rolled with the bumps. I am so glad that I didn't let my need for everything to be "just right" to put a damper on our lessons! See, I am learning too :)
Charlie and I are also really enjoying the K12 curriculum that we choose. He LOVES working on "his" computer and doing all the games and educational activities. He even got a chance to meet the rest of his "classmates" and his "teacher" in a virtual school room. We both thought that was pretty neat!

Even though I like the basis of the program I do think it is a little dry and not very imaginative. So I have already started looking through our lessons and planning extra activities of us to do. I am going to incorporate some more crafts and different science projects into our lessons. I am grateful to have the program though and "know" exactly what Charlie needs to know and have most of the curriculum planned and provided free of charge. Thank you State of Ohio!

It is also evident, but not surprising, that Charlie already has quiet of few of the concepts already down. He is already able to do small math problems in his head, so starting off with identifying shapes etc for math is a bit of review for him. I think that review is good, but I am also going to keep on eye on things and make sure that he isn't getting bored. I know that he can skip through lessons if he needs too.

Here is what Charlie has to say about our first week:
Charlie how do you think your first week of school went? "Good"
What was your favorite part of school? "coloring the trains and making my robot" (There were a few worksheets that he had to color the train cars different colors, practicing beginning, middle and end. And the robot was a shapes game that he played on the computer. Tommy even loved this game!)
Something you didn't like? "Saying the words" (The phonics lesson we did today where I told him 3 words and he had to tell me which 2 of the words had the same ending. This is something he did fine all week, but was DONE when the review came around. Next time we will take a break and come back to it :)

I am so grateful to be given this opportunity to teach our children at home. I never would have dreamed that this would be the path that our family, let alone myself, would be traveling down, but I am so happy with our decision! I feel so blessed to have a husband that is so supportive as well as friends and family members who are encouraging and interested in what we are doing.

Last year as we contemplated keeping Charlie home from PreK I was full of anxiety, fear and uncertainty of what we should do. I felt led to keep him home and be his teacher. My heart told me this was what we needed to do, what we were being called to do. I prayed about it over and over again and always got the same answer. I knew what we needed to do. However, homeschooling is certainly not the norm and to choose to actually do it felt very uncomfortable as far as what other people might think of us.

Then I read this: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is- His good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12-2

We had a great week! I can't wait to see what the future holds for us!!

Getting Ready for School

We are gearing up for the start of our newest adventure, home schooling. We dabbled in it a bit last year doing a loose PreK curriculum with Charlie. I discovered a little bit of what works for us and what does not.

What really worked for us this past year was our work boxes, school in the morning and lots of fun and play added into our school time. Having something set up for Tommy to do when Charlie was doing school was also VERY helpful to keep him occupied. We all enjoyed doing science projects and crafts together, so Tommy will be joining in on a lot of the fun again this year.

Trent and I decide to enroll Charlie into a virtual public school. It is basically a state funded charter school that supplies all the curriculum, computer and printer. We also like that this program is essentially a public school and therefore he is "enrolled" in a school, hence we need not jump through all the hoops to "prove" that we are schooling at home and what exactly we are doing. And since the boys will most likely go to a traditional school down the road, I like the idea of them being right on track (if not ahead) of what they will be expected to know in a public school. That way it will make the transition easier for them, at least from an educational standpoint.

The materials have arrived and I have been busy reading through all the Teacher Guides, looking over workbooks and making a list of school supplies that we will need. It is overwhelming, but oh SOOO exciting and I can't wait to get setup and started!

I have also been putting together a preschool curriculum for Tommy. This time around I found several wonderful websites that offer free curriculum that are right up our alley. They are geared towards Tommy's age group, but I know that Charlie will also benefit from the lessons, so we will be incorporating Raising Rock Stars Preschool into our daily schedule as well.

Raising Rock Stars Preschool is a Biblical curriculum where the children learn about God's Word, scripture verses, Bible stories, songs, character building, weekly emphasis on sight words, color and numbers. It is a great preschool program and I am excited to see how the boys will enjoy it. Carisa over at 1+1+1=1 is so generous to share all the lesson plans for free. I also opted to join her members only section for a one time fee of ONLY $10 which has a whole slew of fun computer stuff for the boys to do that goes a long with the weekly lesson. Now, we only have to purchase Word/Excel for our computer to be able to take advantage of it!

I have been a busy bee, cutting out all of our Crafty ABC projects. Charlie knows all of his letters, but I plan on doing these educational ABC crafts with all the kids, including Miss. S. I saw most of them on No Time For Flash Cards and Totally Tots. Just a fun way for Tommy to learn all his letters and for Charlie to reinforce what he already knows.


As a family we will also be following Carisa's Raising Rock Stars family Bible time. I have printed off all the weekly lessons, have ordered most of the books from the library that go along with them, and am busy putting together the fun crafts for each week. We did some of these lessons around Christmas time and they were so fun to do together. It was neat to see all of us working together, learning about God. This is also a great way for Trent to be involved in the teaching of the kids, spending good quality family time and worshiping God all together.

I have been told my other moms who are teaching the virtual K program that it is very possible to complete the weekly lessons in 3-4 days, about 2 hours a day. Not only do I have to record attendance and Charlie is "quizzed" daily on his progress as to assure that he understands what he is being taught but that we are also moving along in the curriculum. Since Charlie is enrolled in a public school, he also has a teacher that keeps a close eye on how he is doing and if he completing the work that he needs to be doing. The nice part is that we can determine how much we want to do in one day, when we want to take vacations, if we do school in the morning or at night, during the week or on the weekends, and on the road or at home.

I have looked through the curriculum and so far I know that Charlie is already ahead in many subjects. I think he will pick up the Phonics very quickly as we have already been doing a lot and he is eager to read. He is far ahead in math, already doing simple addition and subtraction in his head without having to count on his fingers etc. I have plenty of material to supplement his curriculum and it is nice to know that if we need to take a few weeks off when the baby is born, that he is already ahead of the game.

To add to the academics of Charlie and Tommy's learning, we have also enrolled them into a Home School Co-Op that meets once a week. Tommy will be in a preschool setting and Charlie will take 3 classes a session. The classes are taught by other moms on a variety of subjects that I sign him up for ahead of time. I hope they offer the Math Lego building class this time around because I KNOW that he would just love it! The Co-Op is set up just like a traditional school, with lunch, gym etc. They also have field trips, recitals and achievement nights at the end of each session.

I am so looking forward to this year. I can't wait to get the basement set up as our new school room. To organize all the materials and go school shopping. I am so excited for him to pick out his new book bag and folders. I am thrilled beyond belief to know that our boys will be home with me again this year and that I get to be their teacher. That I get to teach Charlie how to read, to see all those first "ah ha" moments. I am so grateful to be given this opportunity and to have the complete support of Trent. I couldn't do it without his assurance and love!

School starts August 26th and we can't wait!!!