...occupying the preschooler part II

Other days, the preschooler makes things really difficult. Like today!

In phonics, we're studying nursery rhymes about kings and queens. DD3 became enthralled with Humpty Dumpty & made loud demands for it to be said over & over & over again. I repeated it, said we were done, & went on to phonics. Well, she's holding the BJUP visual for Humpty Dumpty & going on & on about it, while I'm trying to introduce DD5 to Mrs and Mr Short and Uncle Short (vowel-consonant-consonant in words that make the vowel sound short). DD5 was completely NOT interested in the lives of Mrs and Mr Short, and Uncle Short, so holding her attn while constantly shushing the preschooler was a little tricky.

In math, I realized that I didn't get the apples manipulatives ready the night before, so had the genius idea of having the kids do it for me. I let the kids use watercolor paints because marker and crayon takes so long to color with, and they had 14 apples to color. Well, DD3 painted a hole into the soggy page of apples. Then she waded up the paper & stuck it in the dish of water for the watercolors. Ok, so we'll need 7 more apples, and I print off another page. While I'm cleaning up the watercolor mess, she gets my new sheet of apples, rolls it up and puts it into someone's water cup. Ugh. I finally got some apples made: I will cut them myself later & do math when I feel I've recovered from watercolor painting.

A lot of homeschooling is finding what works. Having the kids make the manipulatives did not work for me today, LOL.

occupying the preschooler & more

Yesterday was an extremely successful day of homeschool. It was the dream day of homeschool - the day you imagine having everyday before you set out to actually start homeschooling.

In phonics, we learned the -ck sound for the end of words. DD5 caught on immediately. And to think I fretted about this the night before.

In math, I read a story about a duck & her eggs. The lesson was about 11 & 12. Per the book's instructions, I hid 11 plastic easter eggs around the house. As DD5 & DD3 found eggs, I had them place them in an empty egg container that holds 12 eggs. I saved egg#12 for last, for introducing 12, after we had talked about 11. The kids had a blast & were attentive to the lesson. DD3 was occupied for the rest of the lesson by taking eggs out & putting eggs back in to the carton, and re-arranging the colors. This will be a great tool for teaching addition & subtraction later.

Falling behind...

One of the biggest disadvantages to a boxed curriculum is missing school days & then feeling that you have fallen behind. BJUP is set up as a Monday-Friday curriculum. We've missed several days & by now our Friday has fallen on Thursday. Which means we are starting a whole new theme on Friday. And...you can't really cram 2 phonics lessons in to one day, because the daily practice is critical to getting good results. There are certain lessons, though, that can be put together: Thursday & Friday's phonics lessons can be made in to one lesson. In Math, the cumulative review days can easily be added in with another day. I've found that we really have the concept down by the time we've reached cumulative review and don't need the extra hands-on practice. So we skip right to the workbook page. If we do a few Saturday lessons and combine the easy lessons, then we should have our Friday lessons back on Friday.

Tip: Glue activities in workbooks

Tip: Glue activities in workbooks
When your workbook calls for your child to cut out pictures and glue them on to the workbook page, here are some tips (learned the hard way)...

Make sure the pictures to be cut out aren't actually on the reverse side of a workbook page. Yes, I have actually had this happen. But rest assured, BJUP has been VERY good about not having material that needs to be cut out on the other side of something important, LOL.

Important: again, check the other side of the workbook page. If the other side of the workbook page has work for your child to fill out, fill out that side FIRST. You'll find that if you have your child fill in the answers after gluing on the other side, the page will be all wet and crinkly - not so easy to fill in the answers!

BJUP specific:
In the K5 Beginnings program, the workbook pages always follow the same format. The first part of the lesson is the Unit Study part. For example, this week's lessons are on different types of songs. The first workbook page had a picture of a family singing campfire songs. The student had to cut out a picture of fire & clue it in the middle. Next, we learned the letter "c". The other side of the workbook page had handwriting practice. It is really hard to write properly on a wet soggy piece of paper. We have learned to do the handwriting & reading lessons first and save the fun unit study, gluing activities for last. It works out anyway, because if you find that your younger child had a potty accident all over the floor and everything is going wrong for the day...well, get the nitty-gritty stuff done & skip the fun stuff for the day!

Beginnings!!

Here it is, the first post.

What is this about?
We are a "homeschooling from birth" kind of family. When I started our preschool adventure, I was anti-school-at-home (boxed curriculum) and much more of the unschooling philosophy. As kindergarten approached, I began to soften toward school-at-home. I read everything under the sun about how to teach reading, when to teach reading, or if reading should even be taught at all. It zapped a lot of my time and energy to search the web for games that teach, songs that teach, activities that teach. In short, I was already feeling burnt out on homeschooling before we began. My mind was loaded with so many different opinions on the right or wrong way to teach. We attempted a few ecclectic methods with my own thrown together teaching philosophy for about 6 months. Despite all my research, I felt like I didn't know anything about teaching. And so...I thought...let's just pick one single curriculum, where everything is planned for me, & put my first year in their hands. I'll squelch all of those thoughts that keep saying "don't teach reading that way" and squelch all of those doubts, and we'll just follow this through for a year...see what happens. I looked at a few boxed curriculum. When I saw Bob Jones, I knew it was the one! This journal is to track our experiences with Bob Jones K5 Beginnings. My hope is that it gives a little light to all the other moms asking "what is the right curriculum for us?" My goal is to offer a glimpse of day-to-day home education using BJUP's K5. When I was researching BJUP, I heard the name mentioned everywhere, but I still felt the support was lacking. The goal here is to fill that need for other moms wanting to know what a typical BJUP day looks like.

Why BJUP?
I picked BJUP for many reasons-

• it was mentioned EVERYWHERE
• I was actually able to see the product before I bought it
• The workbooks were bright & colorful; very similar to what I liked about what we were currently using before BJUP.
• It offered more of the repetition & practice that I felt we were lacking with our pieced-together method
• It stressed Understanding the material more than Memorizing. It stresses Memorizing, too, but after Understanding.
• It had fun kindergarten school type activities that I didn't feel I could pull together as well, on my own (puppets, games, songs, etc.)
• K5 Phonics incorporated a lot of Unit Study. The 2nd week's lessons incorporate firefighters in the Community Helpers unit.

Is this blog supposed to convince other homeschoolers that they should use BJUP too?
No. Absolutely not. I haven't even decided if we will use it again next year. It is simply to chronicle our experiences with it: the good, the bad, the ugly. After a year, I can review my own journal to see if it is worth repeating. Or I can review what I learned throughout the year about teaching and then fly solo. It is also for moms that want to really know what BJUP looks like when taught in the home (at least from one other family's experiences!) I also hope to compare BJUP to what I have learned about other popular homeschool products, or homeschooling philosophies (such as the Unit Study method, as mentioned above). In the end, you might read this & decide that Sonlight is for you. Or you might decide that, "yup, school at home is definitely the wrong approach". I will also provide tips (usually learned the hard way!) that make working with BJUP a little easier.

-bjupMoM