5th November, 2009
Mid week check in
I just wanted to take a minute and upload this Library Thing Widget. I can’t get it to load in the post, so you’ll have to see the widget at right. See a theme? We’re using Itty Bitty Bookworms unit for Time to Sleep this week- from November year 1. We haven’t made it to the activities yet, but we’ve started our own work on the letter B (great activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler). We’ve also been to the library to check out books on bears- both fiction and non fiction. We’re trying to grasp the concept of hibernation right now. We have a “cave” set up in our living room with all available stuffed animals. Now that we’ve read Time to Sleep, well add the other characters (that we have) that also hibernate to the den. We did our reading before bedtime in our cave in the floor, and the floor is no place for a Mama 29 weeks pregnant.
Tater is in a not listening- testing my boundaries stage that is really testing my ability and resolve to home school. With that in mind, we may not get to much this week in the form of curriculum. She’ll always sit still for a book, so for that I am grateful.
Tomorrow is a big day for us. Tater goes in to have her dental work done. She is going to be sedated. Then immediately afterwards Mama is going to the dentist. I broke a molar today. I had great teeth pre-pregnancies, not even a cavity. Now I’m destined for dentures I’m sure.
Posted at 1:25 am | Comment (1)
23rd August, 2009
It begins with a step
The past month has been a whirlwind: To use vs. what not to use, Free resources vs. purchased, literature based vs. worksheets. I purchased one preschool curriculum and dumped it after trying too hard to make it work. That’s was my first lesson learned. If you don’t like- don’t use it. Better to be a waste of money than a waste of your time and money. I discovered that worksheet heavy resources aren’t for us. After a lot of prayer, some searching, and some staying up too late at night planning, I’m proud to say that our 1st month of activities is ready! More importantly, I’m happy with it. But before we get into what we’re using, I’d like to discuss our “plan”:
While this post should be about our school plans for this year, this year is the stepping stone to our homeschooling journey. My plan is to learn about myself, my teaching style, my willingness and ability to be gentle with my children and faithful to God. Is homeschooling for us? Am I patient and/or effective? Am I nurturing or stiffling? Is Tater learning? Does she have a love for learning? I’d like to be able to recognize and fight the temptation on putting too much on our plate- in the end- doing more harm than good. But I’d also like to fight the complacency I tend to have in my heart, the willingness to settle and be too comfortable. I pray to be able to fight the greed and selfishness I have for my “own time” and to be able to joyfully work at this- if this is what we’re meant to do. My “plan” was to go back to work this year and put my brand new Masters degree to use, when God sent us an unplanned bundle of joy. I took that as sign number one that our home is where He wants me to be. Above all, our biggest plan is to follow the direction God has for us in educating our children- whatever it may be. So, onto our “plans”.
We’re using:
- Itty Bitty Bookworm (IBB) and
- Hubbard’s Cupboard (HC) for Bible based activities to be used during our morning time.
- We’re going to focus on developing pre-writing skills from this Handwriting Resource
- We were lucky enough to get in as a beta tester to Lesson Pathways. The pathways available to the preschool level are sparse, but we’re going to be using what we can.
Our schedule is still to be determined. We’ve been working on hodge podge activities based on the results of an evaluation I did of Tater’s current skills. We officially start our curriculum based instruction Aug 24th with Week 1 of the 3’s Curriculum of HC. I started out with the idea of doing school three times a week, and IBB has such a variety of great activities that I’m not sure I can fit it all into just three days. I’m planning for four days a week. If we don’t get it all in, that’s fine. We’re going to do Kids Gym at the YMCA on Tuesday mornings and swimming lessons on Tuesday and Thursday Evenings. I’m leaving Tuesday free of school work because we’re going to be joining our local MOPS group. Thursday schooling will be light because we’ll be going to story time at the library- and we reserve Thursday’s for impromptu playdates with friends.
Shortly after I decided not to send Tater to preschool, I started gathering furniture for our classroom downstairs. Our dining room has been transformed into our classroom. I even got bulletin board paper today to tape to the side of our tall cabinet to create a place to display the pages from our Creation Booklet. We’ve even got a really relaxed version of workboxes going, and I’ll be looking for more information on tips and ideas for using workboxes with preschoolers.
In January we’ll be adding another Spud to our patch. Who knows what will happen to our plans once we get closer to bringing him home, or after he comes home. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get enough lesson planning done in advance that it will be no big deal for us. It may be that we take a couple of months off. Time will tell. At least I won’t have to worry to wake and bundle up a newborn, toddler, and preschooler- drive said preschooler to institution, drive back home, unload newborn and toddler, nurse newborn, put toddler down for nap, wake toddler, bundle both back up and drive back to preschool to pick up preschooler.
If I win, my choice would be: it depends:
If the Itty Bitty Bookworm Curriculum is for an entire year, it is my first choice. If it is for 1 month, it is my 3rd. The Rainbow Resource center would be my first if the IBB is for a month, and CurrClick my 2nd.
Posted at 12:24 am | Comment (1)
29th July, 2009
Mommy, are you a good teacher?
We went to Target today to look for the preschool workbooks that I’ve heard tell of in the dollar spot. I found them and immediately Tater was interested. She wanted to do them right that moment, but I explained that they were for school. Her idea of school comes from Sid the Science Kid, a new PBS show. She told me that I would take her to school, give her a kiss, and come back to get her. I used the opportunity to tell her that we were going to have school at home. I could tell by her look that she was confused, but she mulled on it for a while.
During lunch she seemed concerned, “Mama, are you a good teacher?” I told her that I was a very good teacher. I had taught her to talk, and to walk, and to use the potty, her ABC’s, to count, her colors, and to be kind to others. She said “I wish I could grow up to be a good teacher”. I assured her that she could if she wanted to do it. So, so far no disappointment in “staying” and not “going” to school.
I’m working on getting stuff ready for week one, and I have to tell you that CLP, so far, is unorganized for my personal taste. Each week has a ”suggested outline of weekly units and activities” in the introduction, followed by step by step instructions called the “Teacher’s Guide” on how to use the pages in the activity book in the curriculum. I thought after reading Week 1 outline that I’d have a lot of supplementing to do to get an hour a day in, but once reading the “Teacher’s Guide” portion, I discover it’s comprehensive- although- disjointed As an example, pages 4, 8, and 10 are concerning the colors blue, red, and green. This specific information is nowhere in the outline for week 1. On the instructions for page 8 it says “do an activity to develop the awareness of the color red”.
My friend Heather pointed out to me the random use of italics in the book Leading Little Ones to God. In preparing for our lessons, I’ve skimmed through the first few teachings; the italics are driving me nuts!
Posted at 5:18 pm | Comment (0)
19th July, 2009
New potatoes
Welcome to our homeschool blog. I am a 30 something year at old stay at home mom to beautiful girls- Tater and Cheezer (I am also 13 weeks pregnant with a baby whose gender is yet to be determined). I always insist of mentioning our daughter who is no longer with us. Tater’s twin went to live with Christ when they were 9 months old. I am a professionally trained librarian, having had graduated with my Masters in Library Science from the University of South Florida just this past December.
After Christmas discussions around other mothers turned from poop, tantrums, and sleep to preschool. We must tour and pre-register or risk being on waiting lists, or not getting the preschool of our choice. So, I toured and I pre-registered, assuring my tot a spot in the “best” preschool in the area. In the back of my mind I always left room for homeschooling. Homeschooling is an idea that I had toyed with even before becoming a mother. I could pre-school then homeschool, right? After some thought, a lot of prayer, and inner struggle, I now know that our home is the best preschool for our children.
My reasons for not sending my daughter to preschool can’t be summed up in one sentence, but I’ll try. You’ll proabably get a few more. I’m not ready to let loose of her to be influenced by the behavior of other children. I’m not done with forming our relationship, and neither is she. Barbara Curtis in her book Mommy, Teach Me , I think, says it best “Why send your child to preschool to fall in love with a teacher?”. There are economic reasons. I can justify it either way. Preschool turns out to be just about $6 per hour, but our family could use that couple of hundred dollars per month.
Having had made the decision not to send her to an organized pre-school I developed a plan of action. My first step was to write and mail our withdrawal letter ffrom the preschool in which she was enrolled. Goodbye to that registration fee. Secondly, I bought books, it’s my nature. Of course I needn’t do any formal education; she’s three. We could continue on our merry way with exactly what we’re doing. But then I’d miss the opportunity to do a “dry run” for homeschooling. The first resource I bought was the previously mentioned book. It in itself could be the start and end to our purchases, but in the interest of “practice homeschool”, I purchased a homeschool curriculum for preschoolers. Choosing the curriculum was harder than I though. Immediately I rejected free on-line curriculums, and although I could design a program myself by continuing to do the activities we do at home and purchasing some workbooks from educational places, I was itching to spend the money I was now “saving” by not sending her to preschool.
After discussions on forums and pouring over curriculums, I settled on CLP: Christian Liberty Preschool. I understand that this is the first year that the preschool curriculum has been published, but there are really very few professionally published curriculums to which I was drawn. I looked at the Horizon’s Preschool Curriculum kit, and discovered that it was 180 lessons based on Creation. Now for the disclaimer. I am a Christian- a conservative evangelical Christian, but the thought of studying Creation for 180 days sounds arduous to me. It was also more money than I wanted to pay. From the reviews that I read on it and the Weaver Interlock Program, they seem to be the same curriculum, just repackaged for different groups. I’ve seen this before in the Christian Community. Baby Wise for some is Growing Kids Gods way for others. I also looked at A beka and Sonlight. A beka has a nursery preschool curriculum kit, but with no way to view samples I decided against it. I was also looking for a curriculum with worksheets for seat work to work on pre-writing schools, hand eye coordination and fine motor skills. My children already get Biblical instruction in their every day lives and at church. I’d already purchased and made plans to use the book Leading Little Ones to God as part of our daily devotional. Sonlight is another curriculum I strongly considered, preferring it to the others. However, the pre3/4 version wasn’t really a curriculum at all, but a fun package of books to read. Wonderful I’m sure, but at $248 it was out of my price range, not providing the practice preschool experience I wanted, and duplicated what we already do in our home. I’ll remind you that I am a librarian and my kids are not only immersed, but drowing, in books.
CLP is affordable and provides the practice homeschool experience that I seek. I’ve ordered it and expect it in the next week. I hope that it meets my expectations because I’m not sure where I’d go from here. I did omit the CLP readers from the kit. The books seemed- boring to me, which is another problem I’ve noticed in Christian publications.
Additionally, I’ve bought Get Ready, Set, Go for the Code the early education reading program for the Explode the Code series. I don’t believe that Tater is ready for it just now, but perhaps in the next year.
So, that’s where we are. Finding the confidence to admit that I am my child’s best teacher was the hardest part. There are a lot of outside pressures to send children to preschool. Preschooling mom want you to get in on it and flaunt kid-free mornings in your face. When you raise objections, there is always an answer. Putting our withdrawal letter in the mailbox was easy, but as I left the house and noticed the flag on the box raised signalling that it was still in there, I did have a little twinge of doubt. When I returned home and saw the flag down there was no regret, just finality. In order to disciple my children, I need to lead them. We’re now waiting for our boxes, we’re working on getting our “classroom” organized. I have lived without a schedule since Tater’s twin died two years ago. I’m using this opportunity to teach get my children on a schedule, to organize and re-organize parts of our lives that need it.
Posted at 2:39 pm | Comments (4)
