Ramblings...

Are you looking for a great way to get the kids reading during the summer? Than head to your local library and checkout their summer reading program(s). We are taking part in two summer reading programs this year. One requires the boys to read at least five books a week, after reading our five books we take the booklist to the library, they sign it off, and give both of the boys a free coupon for ice cream! Of course ice cream is a big hit during the summer. There will also be a huge party at the end of the program.

The second program we are taking part gave the boys cards with pictures on them that they must color in after 30minutes of reading, each card equals five hours and they must complete five cards during the program. After they complete each card we take it into the library and receive a prize. At the end of the program there are other prizes to be won as well. Basically these treats and prizes give a great incentive for children to read, especially with the call of the outdoors/TV/video games/ect. constantly screaming their names during the summer. They are really great for us, because of where we live by around 10am it is far too hot to spend time out and about unless you are at a beach or pool. Thanks to these programs I can easily lure the boys to a stack of good books, instead of losing them to the TV and video games that are so flashy and welcoming on a hot summer‘s day.

So if you haven’t checked out the summer reading program(s) at your local library head over and see what they have to offer. You may even discover a homeschooling program as well!

Ah…my poor blog it has been a while. So what have we been up to? Well we have started our first lapbook in honor of the 4th of July. Our first lapbook *while still a work in progress due to all the fun we have had this weekend* will feature 3 mini-books. The 3 books will be symbols of the 4th of July *which we have already completed*, a timeline of some of the events that lead up to the 4th of July, and lastly a book with information on the five writers of the Declaration of Independence.

We did learn that mini-books can take some time *the first one took us about 2 hours* so they should be planned for accordingly. Other than that they are a fun way to incorporate interactive learning into your homeschooling.

This week *today actually* we attempted to start our first day of schooling for the 2010-2011 school year, but due to The Spouse being off for a four day weekend things didn’t pan out as planned. Honestly though this isn’t a bad thing, given The Spouse’s job we are just happy to have him in the country and not having to work on a holiday *like almost every holiday for the past…well…its been a while*, so we will just start adding a subject here and there, and then Monday get right into our full day schedule. The goal is to be completely on our school schedule by the end of the month.

Here’s to all of our new learning!

The forth of July is quickly approaching and regardless if you are taking a break by the pool or knee deep in homeschooling I have a deal for you! They Signed For Us is a FREE e-book that covers the struggles the signers of the Declaration of Independence faced as well as what life was like for them after they signed the document. What is really neat is that each chapter starts with a few of the signatures from the document with the name and state of the individual next to the signature. If you think that is cool, it gets even better, at the end of the e-book they have the Declaration of Independence. So once you gobble up this e-book you can read the document that started our country. Once again this is a FREE resource, so start your printers and Enjoy!

*For more FREE resources check out Free K-12 Education.*

We brought in the summer with some fellow homeschoolers by having a planting party. We gathered our soil, rocks, planters, seeds, and enjoyed plenty of sunshine while we planted away. The boys and I planted carrots, bok choy, and a few other vegetables. I also got them sunflower seeds, since we discussed sunflowers about a month or so ago, I thought it would be great if they grew their own. After having our skin kissed by the sun and getting covered in dirt, we all retreated in doors for an impromptu play date.

It was a great way to kick off the summer and start our vegetable garden. Hopefully our seeds will sprout into something yummy and beautiful, until then we have a wonderfully hot summer to enjoy *thank goodness for a pool!*

So how did you and yours welcome summer?

So we have come to the end of our first full “official” year of homeschooling. Since our last post on our weekly plans we have finished up the Saxon Math 1 materials, which marked the end of our formal “regular school” lessons. We are still doing school, just not as intensely.

We’ve gone over some of the lessons in First Language Lessons, we are currently memorizing the first poem, and Child #1 has almost completely learned it.

We took a few days off from schooling just to enjoy a break and have some none school fun.

We picked back up today with six spelling test! Child #1 did amazingly well with them just by sounding out the words. The test were taken from the first grade spelling list on THIS website, which I found thanks to my friend Wendy over at Athena Academy. The list are easy to use and allow us to pick and choose which ones to use based on where we are phonically.

Speaking of phonics, we also started our one phonics lesson a day right before our short little break. We are using Saxon Phonics 1, and we had already been using it at the start of our term back in September. We stopped using it because Child #1 had already learned a lot of the material previously and I thought it would be best if we just focused on applying those concepts to actually reading. This way we were doing more than just a dry and sometimes boring formal lesson.

That made our work load a lot easier and Child #1 has done very well with his reading. Now we are using these lessons to teach phonics concepts that may be a little more difficult *mostly for the ease of spelling in the following year since he can, almost/always, figure out the words while reading on his own*. Saxon Phonics deals with actually learning spelling rules, so my hope is that spelling complex words will be a breeze once the boys have mastered the “rules” of the game so to speak.

For the rest of the week we are going to continue chugging along through First Language Lessons, Saxon Phonics 1, and hopefully *weather pending* we will enjoy a field trip as well.

We will work in some Math and Science starting next week, once I figure out exactly what those lessons will encompass and how we are going to work them in. I’m not shooting for anything formal outside of our phonics work, but I want to keep the material fresh so when we move back into the intense phase of schooling things flow smoothly.

Homeschooling poses its challenges we have learned that over the year, but the challenges bring with them a lot of enlightenment as well.