The Country Life

So much education just...happens. Today was a good example of a science lesson that just happened & was a lot of fun. We took our mail out to the mailbox. In warm weather, it is a 5 minute walk to get to our mailbox and back. In snow, towing 2 little girls on an unplowed driveway, it takes about 10 minutes, LOL. On the way, we stopped to look at tracks. I couldn't believe how many creatures had paid a visit the night before! We found dog prints, of course (from our big goofy standard poodle). And we found deer prints. We saw prints from a rather large bird (not sure what). We also found some prints that looked like small cat prints (a neighbor's cat?) Some prints had five distinct little claw-like fingers that left 4 sets and ended at a tree. I have a lot to learn about wildlife, so I can only guess, but I'm thinking it was a raccoon. DDs also enjoyed watching themselves make tracks in the snow. It would be a fun project to research tracks and see if we can match some of them to what we find in our yard. Today we read the Night Tree by Eve Bunting. In it, a family decorates a tree in the woods with food for the wildlife. Here in the country, we could actually do that! At our house in the city, I'm sure we would've just fed neighbor cats, a few birds, and the occasional stray dog.

Christmas questions, answered

1. Hot Chocolate or apple cider? hot cocoa
2. Turkey or Ham? ham
3. Do you get a fake or real-you-cut-it-yourself Christmas tree? artificial
4. Decorations on the outside of your house? no
5. Snowball fights or sleddin'? sledding with the kids - love to see their excited faces!
7. Do you enjoy going downtown shopping? no
8. Favorite Christmas song? Hark the Herald Angels Sing (love verse#3 best), Winter Wonderland, O Holy Night always makes me cry for some reason:)
10. How do you feel about Christmas movies? Love the classic kid movies (Grinch - the original cartoon, hated the newer movie version), claymation Rudolph, etc.
11. When is it too early to start listening to Christmas music? I;'ve been known to listen to it in April, LOL.
13. Carolers, do you or do you not watch and listen to them? Have never had them around. Would love to go caroling someday
14. Go to someone else's house or they come to you? both
15. Do you read the Christmas Story? yes
16. What do you do after presents and dinner? different every year
17. What is your favorite holiday smell? christmas baking (cookies, dinner, etc.), eggnog, cinnamon, hazlenut
18. Ice skating or walking around the mall? NOT the mall!!
19. Do you open a present or presents on Christmas Eve, or wait until Christmas day? Christmas afternoon after husband wakes up LOL
20. Favorite Christmas memory? the Christmas after my brother was born, my Christmases with my husband
21. Favorite Part about winter? seeing my children enjoy snow, Christmas, etc.
22. Ever been kissed under mistletoe? no
23. Tagging... Ok, I filled this out for Melanie:) But anyone is welcome to play along!

TV

Ok, so we all know that TV isn't good for our children, and that the less -the better. We know TV affects body weight, physical health, and mental performance. Studies link the number of hours of TV viewing per week with school grades, negatively. So TV = BAD, right?

I try to limit TV usage during the day. We usually only use our TV during the day to listen to music (Sirius radio, which has all music, no commercials, and no visuals). Often, I mix up the music selection, giving us all a sampler of different music styles. One day, we even listened to Hawaiian music to broaden our horizons. The kids found it great to dance to!

This week has been quite a week! We run a home business and it is always the week before Christmas that I get lots of work. So this is the week that I am using the TV. I've found that children's programming is really trying to change the TV from completely without purpose, to an instructional tool. Here are insights that I have found in our one-week TV splurge:

TV shows for children are trying to incorporate facts. Dora the Explorer teaches Spanish, and early computer-mouse skills. Go Diego Go (Dora's cousin) continues with Spanish instruction and focuses on animal science. Blue's Clues deals with a multitude of preschool topics (numbers, colors, shapes, early reading skills, and social skills - things like waiting patiently, or what to do when you loose something). Little Einsteins (Disney) introduces a famous music piece/composer, famous artwork, geography, and musical vocabulary (staccato, forte, etc.). I've been surprised to hear my 3 year old call out what color of something she wanted to play with - but using the Spanish words for the colors. Or hearing DD5 talk about all the neat things a certain animal does.

TV shows are attempting to get children to stand up and move along. Ok, they are trying really hard, but so far I haven't seen any success in my home. Dora the Explorer tells children to shout the word in Spanish, or to jump over obstacles with her. A new show, Lazy Town, is all about the Evils of repeated TV viewing or just plain sitting around, and how you're supposed to get up and move. Nice message, but the children aren't really catching on. Instead of doing jumping jacks with Stephanie on Lazy Town, my kids are giving her the blank eyed stare as they continue to vegetate on the couch, LOL.

In summary, TV will probably never give us the same mental workout that sleeping does. TV really shouldn't be Preschool, like Noggin claims (their slogan is something like "Preschool on TV"). But limited viewing is probably OK and probably isn't going to significantly damage our children. And, given the right show, it may serve to spark our children's interest in a subject. With our influence, they can transfer that interest from the TV to books and exploration.

Christmas...so far

We don't really have established Christmas traditions. Every year I wish that we had done more. This year, however, we started celebrating right after Thanksgiving, and this has made a big difference! It has given us a lot more time to just slow down & enjoy the holidays. We put our tree up at the end of November and decorated it - leaving room for all the new ornaments that get created by the kids during the season:) Another secret to our success this year: I've signed us up for group Christmas activities, rather than just planning to do it on our own (which then never happens, LOL). We went to the library last night for their annual Gingerbread House Decorating Night. We each brought our own frosting & 1 bag of candy per child. We all shared candy and had a lot of great decorations for our houses. One thing that is sort of my own personal tradition: I try to memorize all the words to one Christmas song each year. Last year I memorized Frosty the Snowman, since my youngest DD was enchanted with snowmen:) I got lots of singing practice as the kids constantly asked "sing the snowman song!" This year, I am helping both girls learn Jingle Bells. I don't think we will be able to memorize all 4 verses - the girls are having enough trouble remembering "bells on bob-tails ring". But it is a lot of fun & then next year we can sing the song with pride, knowing we memorized it the year before. This year we attempted celebrating Advent. This was really tricky, since our dinner never happens at the same time every night, & some nights it is very rushed. If we could do it over again, I think we'd have Advent at lunchtime. Another thing we did this Christmas season was attempted to study Christmas around the world. I would like to do this again next year, but start it earlier. We've had a wonderful Christmas so far, this year. This is our first Christmas in the new house. The countryside is completely covered in layers of snow. We've already spent more time sledding this winter, than we did all of last winter. And I think this will be our first truly white Christmas in years.

One thing you can't do in public school

One thing you can't do in public school (or should I call this Homeschool Sports? LOL):
DD5 has a habit of bouncing around when it comes time to read words. I give her the stack of word cards to put in to the pocket chart. Then I have her read the word cards. She usually walks to the pocket chart, then backward, then forward, then backward while reading her cards. But today, she ran around the kitchen table while reading her words. I'm not sure why she does this. And there have been attempts to stop this. But truth is, she reads the words just as well running in circles as she does standing still. Today she insisted she could read the Phonics Story while running, so I gave it to her and let her go. So she read the Phonics Story while running around the kitchen table (brilliantly, btw). My heart goes out to all the Moms out there homeschooling ADHD boys, LOL. Hats off to you!!

We finished our St. Lucia study today. DD5 dressed up in a white dress with her Lucia crown that she made. She took breakfast to Daddy in bed, like the girls do in Sweden. I had her draw a picture and tell me what we did this morning for our narration. I have to add here: art projects are really not a joyful homeschool thing for me and give me a lot of frustration. DD5, who can draw beautifully on her own, tends to do a crappy job with any suggested art projects. I tried to make it really fun for her & encouraged her to make more of her simple Lucia drawing. Usually her people are very detailed, but this Lucia was a stick figure with a triangle, no hair, and one candle on her head. If a person doesn't have hair, then I know DD5 isn't really putting an effort in (she loves to draw hair & goes into great detail with giving people curly or straight, etc.) So I gave her sparkly glitter glue pens to draw with. Lucia did get more detailed after that, but DD5 gave her a great big blob of red gel for her face. Another example of why art projects are a source of frustration for me: DD5 tends to destroy the things she makes. Lapbooking may NOT be an ideal project for us and maybe we should stick to textbooks. Sigh:( DD5 enjoys the end results of our lapbook projects - she is still playing with the one she made when she was 3 - but getting a nice completed project, and keeping it intact for the final presentation, is a real challenge for me. Reason #312 for going with a boxed curriculum.

An off day

I had an off day today. Didn't matter how I tried to be on top of things...Hopefully tomorrow will be an "on the ball" kind of day. School didn't happen. We had Storytime at the library and I was in such a hurry that I didn't have time to pack our schoolwork. We had errands to run after library. We got home around 2pm and still needed lunch. After that came a late nap. And the day is now over! I will take some time tonight to organize our school day tomorrow. I hope to accomplish our usual school schedule and learn more about St. Lucia's Day, and complete that phase of our project. My goal is to read more about St. Lucia's Day, have DD5 draw a picture, and take down a narration. I found some great books at the library to supplement our Christmas studies.

So far we have read 7 or so chapters of Charlotte's Web. Now I know why it has made so many booklists! It is a good example of a living book: the book is alive with descriptions of life on a farm. There are some beautiful descriptions of nature, as well. DD5 has enjoyed it so far and can't wait to find out how Charlotte will save Wilbur (she guessed that Charlotte would suck everyone's blood, LOL). She keeps asking if it is a "true" story. One of her main interests right now is learning what is true and what is make-believe.

St. Lucia's Day

Happy St. Lucia's Day! I decided we would learn about Christmas customs, especially Santa Claus customs, from around the world. We will learn a few different Santa Claus traditions, make some projects, and hopefully put them all into a lapbook. Today we learned about St. Lucia (historically) and St. Lucia traditions in Sweden. We identified Sweden on a map. We made a paper wreath & candle hat. I gave the girls red, orange, and yellow fingerpaint to paint on the flames of the candles. After that dries, we'll put our hat together & wear them. This is a completely non-BJU related project that I hope to carry on throughout the Christmas season. If all goes well, I'll post a picture of the finished project!

Addition, Reading, and Writing

Yesterday, we continued our addition lessons in math. The addition focuses on 1-5 storyproblems and is very repetitious in content, but keeps re-inventing it with new stories, new animals, and new manipulatives to use. We act out the story problem and then re-enact it with numbers (2+1=3). BJU has such a gentle way of presenting material that it hasn't felt tedious or forced at all. DD5 "gets" addition, but I'm plugging ahead with the daily addition lessons, because I suspect that BJU planned it that way, so that the math facts will gently make their way into memory. So far we've added pigs, beavers, squirrels, mice and string cheese blobs (LOL). Workbook pages have given us practice with adding animals, and now unifix blocks. Looks like next we will add pennies. Sometimes BJU has us set up rows of pennies and count them, and count them by tens. I like this, because it is gently introducing us to the concept of money value. It will feel natural when we get to the unit on money, because we've already counted pennies and understand the value of each penny = 1.

In Language Arts, we learned _uff words. DD5 has caught on to the idea that if 2 letters are the same, you only make that sound once. Also, possessives were introduced (Kim, hat, Kim's hat). That lesson seemed a little tricky, but I think she caught on by the end. DD5 is reading well - still very slow, but it isn't as painful. I really like BJU's workbook pages: they offer a good amount of reading practice, but not an overwhelming amount. There is handwriting practice, but again, not a huge amount. I've talked to one person that felt BJU didn't offer enough handwriting practice. I've wondered this too, at times. I purchased the separate writing workbook for kindergarten (it doesn't come with the core program), but haven't used it yet. I could use it and it would be plenty of practice, if I felt we needed it. I figure that we will do a lot more handwriting in 1st grade. A lot of handwriting gets tedious, so I'm glad that there isn't a large amount in BJU K5. Overall, I'm happy with the balance of handwriting, reading practice, and workbook exercises.

I keep trying to find a better curriculum for us next year. I always envisioned us as being like a Sonlight family, with very little workbook practice, no textbooks, and lots of living books. Every time I compare curriculums, I still feel that BJU is right for us. I didn't plan on being a school-at-home boxed textbook kind of mom. And I still have high hopes to break that mold next year for History and Science. But I really feel that for Math and Language Arts, BJU has what my dd needs. I'm not happy with the price of the program for next year, so I'm still curriculum shopping or trying to find a cheaper way to use BJU's program for 1st grade.

Literature: we are making another attempt to read Charlotte's Web. We've made 2 attempts already that just didn't work. It was too long of a chapter book. But DD5 expressed interest in reading it, and we read Chapter 1 at bedtime last night. So far, so good. If it doesn't work for us yet, then we will go back to reading smaller chapter books. Mr. Popper's Penguins and My Father's Dragon were perfect first chapter books. DD3 really likes Richard Scarry books right now. Both girls are enjoying them. I always thought the details were too tiny and some of the details too lengthy. In other words, I always thought Richard Scarry books were pretty dull and tedious, LOL. But the girls are enjoying them and I think such exercises in tedious book reading stretches their attention span. I know it is stretching MY attention span...LOL.

story writing

DD5 wrote a story the other day. It started by her asking me questions about words (what word has 3 o's? What word has 3 m's?) I came up with zoologist and mommy. She decided to turn it in to a story. So she connected my words with her own words, and this is what the story said:

my mommy is a zoologist.

Then she decided she needed a title, so we came up with "My Mommy". She wrote this at the top of the page. She was really in a writing mood yesterday, because then I had to painstakingly dictate each letter to "the christmas bells" for her to write.

Yesterday was a productive day for school. We did addition story problems in math. DD3 saw us acting out the addition story using pigs manipulatives and the barnyard mat. So then she wanted to play with the pigs too, and we worked on counting. The pigs got a little crazy because 2 of them ate apples from the tree and yet another pig jumped off of the barn and decided to fly. Gives new meaning to "when pigs fly". DD3's temp came down yesterday - she was fine until 2pm when it went up to 101. She was fine after some tylenol. It didn't climb much at all until bedtime, when it was 99.6. I gave her medicine anyway, since I know it tends to climb after she's been asleep for awhile. She slept through the night without any wake up calls. I have a dr appt scheduled for her this morning, but I think I will cancel it.

btw, I'm not really a zoologist;)

sick days...

DD3 is sick. She has had a fever, headache, achy throat, & stuffy nose. But on tylenol, she runs around & plays like the best of them. "Preschool" has been 1 am baths everynight, with different size cups that she uses to pour water back and forth (early lessons in measurement). And it is storytime after that, with a lot of counting and abcs. I was amazed at 1:30am last night that she knew Dr. Seuss's abc's so well. Her favorite verse is when papa is in the pail, LOL. Our nights have been rough, so I'm exhausted.

DD5 is keeping up with her schoolwork, but mostly by packing things up and taking them in the car. Seems like I've had a lot of errands to run lately. I might try re-arranging our lessons so that I spend some time introducing the lesson and then give her independent work time on workbook pages. My only complaint so far about BJU is how much teacher time is involved in the lessons. I would like to find a way to keep lessons flowing while I work on other things at the same time. Like, if I could have her read her words aloud while I do dishes, or other housework, that would be great. It would be nice to do double duty & get a little more done in our day.

Last night, I stayed up watching movies with my husband. While watching movies, I cut out all the BJU word cards & arranged them nicely in 2 cardfile boxes. This should make lesson planning a little easier, since I won't have to cut the words as I go along. I should've taken 1 week before starting lessons and organized all the material (i.e., cut out all the word cards, puppets, etc.) It makes it much nicer to have it already done and organized and easy to find. I will know what to do for next year!

homeschool in the car

We've had a busy, on-the-go week. Now that we live in the country, every errand takes us 30 mins away from home. So naturally, we try to combine errands and make one full day of it. This week, we had 2 full errand running days and as much as I wanted to avoid them - they had to happen. We skipped school on Monday - my intentions were to do school when we got home, but it seems impossible to do school in the afternoons, especially when everyone is tired from being out all day. Wednesday was our 2nd errand day this week. So we brought school with us! I took a clipboard, workbook pages, and twistable crayons (great for travel, I found out!) I spent a little time between each stop explaining the page. DD5 loved doing workbook pages in the car and kept asking for the next page. DD3 kept complaining that she wanted a workbook page in the car. I will need to bring a clipboard and paper for her next errand day! Between workbook pages in the car and a surprise run to McD's, we had a great outting. And now I'm not as opposed to having those full days out of the house.