Ramblings...

For history we are currently studying Ancient History *since we follow a classical approach in regards to history*, and our focus for the next couple of weeks will be on ancient Egypt. To kick off our studies we headed to an Egyptian Mummy Exhibit the local museum was hosting. *Pictures weren’t allowed inside so I don’t have any photos from the exhibit itself…just the massive poster outside the exhibit room*.

The boys loved it, despite not having one of those handy headphone sets to tell us about each piece *they only had them in Japanese*. My goal with our history lessons is to allow the boys to actually step back in time and experience the time period as much as one can in the 21st Century.

First we started with going on an archeological dig as an intro to Ancient History, then they boys got to be cave boys for a day when we entered the Stone age. Now for our Egyptian studies we will be extending our fun.

Some of the things that will be used:

History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations
Spend the Day in Ancient Egypt
Egyptology Search for teh Tomb of Osiris
Free Ancient Egypt Unit Study and Lapbook *I don’t know if we will make the lapbook, but the library list that comes with this unit study will come in very handy*
Facts and Recipes
Explore the Pyramids
A Child’s History of the World

Both History Pockets and Spend the Day have activities that will help guide our studies along with the Free Unit Study. We will also devour books I plan to scoop up at the library tomorrow morning, and enjoy some fun hands on digging/discovery items that some friends of mine told me about. All of this will be the build up to our Egyptian Festival! Which we will be doing with another homeschooling family we are very close to.

We will don handmade traditional Egyptian garments and jewelry, partake in traditional Egyptian games, and dine on traditional Egyptian food and beverages. It’s shaping up to be a great time.

I absolutely love all the wonderful things we can do since we are doing school at home! Not even the sky can limit all the wondrous possibilities we have.

Well this was our first “normal” week, and it was pretty much a success! We stuck to our schedule fairly well for the most part. There were a couple of late days due to Child #2 sleeping in or both boys enjoying an extended quiet time *I think Child #2 may have a growth spurt coming*. Other than that for our first “normal” week I can’t complain.

Here is the breakdown of what we did by subject:

Language Arts: Language Warm-Up in Harcourt Language Grade One, this included making a book about our school.

Handwriting: Week One lessons in Writing with Ease

Phonics: We had originally planned to use Saxon Phonics levels 1 and 2 for teaching phonics, then I came across the Hooked on Phonics deal I wrote about here. So that is what we have been using instead. Child #1 enjoys it more than he did his phonics lessons last year, and Child #2 enjoys listening to the CD player with his brother or having his brother read to him. They are half way through HOP First Grade, after that is finished *possibly next week*, we will move on to HOP Second Grade, and then maybe another HOP product I have been thinking about purchasing.

Math: We started Saxon 2, the first lessons are more of a review/refresher and honestly Child #1 breezes right through them, which I kind of figured he would. So starting next week I’m going to just give him the assessments and once we reach a skill he hasn’t mastered we will start our lessons from there. This will more than likely put us finishing Saxon 2 sooner than originally planned, so I will have to formulate a game plan on how to handle that. The current ideas are either starting Saxon 3 once we finish Saxon 2 or just giving him practice work, so he is starting fresh on the Grade 3 work at the start of our 3rd year instead of a half now and half after our summer break deal that may make retaining the information more difficult.

Science: We did Unit 12 in R.E.A.L Science Earth and Space. It dealt with outer space and some of the things that can be found in outer space. We did a constellation activity where we plotted a few constellations, we also talked about what makes up some of the items we can find out in space.

History: First on the docket in our history learning was to learn about the people who make our understanding of history possible: archeologists. We have an activity still planned for this weekend that will allow the boys to be archeologists for a day, which should be tons of fun. I’ll have more on that once we complete it.

Social Studies: We skipped our social studies and virtue learning this week, since the student book for our social studies text is a CD-Rom I wanted to teach Child #1 how to navigate the CD-Rom before I started actively teaching our social studies work.

Art: We covered Lesson One in Artistic Pursuits, I still need to head to our local arts and crafts store so I can purchase a sketch pad for both boys to use as well as some other items I either don't have on hand or I do and don't want them to get destoryed *because they are for my own personal artwork and yes mommy needs some things to herself*.

Japanese Studies: For Japanese studies we headed off base to grocery shop and run errands. While out and about both boys had an opportunity to use Japanese and we acquired some new foods to try as well.

Child #2: Enjoyed playing with his toys, coloring, and even did some letter tracing *because he wanted to “do school” too*. Next week we will start using his learning poster again, and I’ll probably purchase him some preschool workbooks this weekend so he has more to do since he is eager to do work like his brother.

Overall it was a really great week and we are all looking forward to the rest of this school year.

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.*

I’ve made some revisions to our homeschooling schedule *which I figured I would probably do after I had some time to mull it and or school plans over*. The boys are usually up at 7am so I’m going to make use of that time in-between when they wake up and breakfast. Also our math work includes a morning meeting, and we also are going to start various other items that can be done during the time we do our morning meeting. So those things will take place at the dining room table after breakfast and then we will go right into outdoor time.

I figured this would allow our day to flow a little easier, since we wouldn’t have to be constantly going up and down the stairs. With this schedule we will start our days downstairs and then move upstairs to the classroom when it’s time to get into the heavy things for the day. Then we will head back downstairs to finish out our “school” day.

On Fridays our day will more than likely be spent at the dining room table, so we can get out the door right after our Japanese studies, and head to our enrichment activity for that day. I’m leaning towards our Sex Ed being very informal. More likely done while the boys eat their snack on the couch. That way they are more relaxed and we can have discussions instead of me just telling them things.

I’m also changing our start date. I had planned to wait until September, but honestly we are all eager to get started with all the awesome supplies we have now. The Spouse has also had some work things come up, which will impact some plans we had for the fall. So we are just going to start early, and take our planned fall break when things fall into place to allow it.

July will mark the start of our new “school” year. It will be more of a run through though. I’m not expecting the first few days *or even weeks* to be smooth. So I’m not shooting to have this schedule down as part of our routine until August. By that point I want our day to run as smoothly as possible, with our schedule being a natural part of our day.

We are the type of people who need schedules and routines, so hopefully this one will make life a lot easier.

Weekly Schedule *Monday-Thursday*

7am: Get up and get dressed

730am: Eat Breakfast

8am: Morning Meeting (Math meeting book, Science notebook, Weekly poem, Weekly virtue)

830am: Outdoor time

9am: Handwriting, Language Arts, and Daily Reader

10am: Break

1130am: Lunch

12pm: Quiet Time

130pm: Art/Music and Snack

2pm: Math/Science

230pm: History & Geography/Social Studies

3pm: Done


Weekly Schedule *Friday*

7am: Get up and get dressed

730am: Eat Breakfast

8am: Morning Meeting (Math meeting book, Science notebook, Weekly poem, Weekly virtue)

830am: Language Arts

9am: Japanese Studies

930am: Enrichment/Field Trip/Free Play

12pm: Lunch

1230pm: Quiet Time

130pm: Sexual Education and Snack

2pm: Done


For those curious about the Sex Ed materials we will be using you can click HERE. I’m also hoping to have the Waldorf post up by the end of the week. It will mark the fifth post in the Method to the Madness series. Only three more post after that and then we will unveil what method to our madness we will use.

I found out about Freely Educate through the same source I found the Free DVD and Educators Guide deal. Freely Educate exist solely for the purpose of helping homeschoolers and educators find freebies. Their archives date back as far as May of 2008, and they post nearly everyday so there are plenty of FREEBIES to be had. Yes freebies, it includes my favorite word FREE!! They even do giveaways, so frequent them often, I sure plan too!

This FREE DVD was brought to my attention through the UU Homeschoolers Yahoo Group.

This is taken directly from the Journey To The Stars website:

Educators and parents: Are you ready to take your students on a Journey to the Stars? The American Museum of Natural History and NASA have joined forces to produce a planetarium show about the amazing variety of stars that dot our cosmos--exploding stars, giant stars, dwarf stars, neutron stars, even our own star! But you don't have to go to a planetarium to experience this mind-blowing journey. NASA will send you a DVD and Educator's Guide, for free!


Yes ladies and gentlemen that is right a DVD and Educator’s Guide for FREE! For those military families living overseas you too can enjoy this offer as well! That’s right they ship to APOs/FPOs! So go on and order yourself one *or get multiple copies for your homeschool group or co-op, yes they even allow you to ask for more than one copy!*. It’s like Christmas in June!

I am extremely excited about this, being that I am:
1) A science geek and
2) A lover of the word FREE in relation to items I need/want.

I can’t wait for our copy to get here and I’m sure you will get just as much use out of it as I know we will.

So order away and enjoy your journey to the stars with your homeschooler!

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.

We accomplished a lot this week, but did not get everything that was planned done, such is the life of a homeschooler. Things don’t always get finished when you planned, but we are able to get to them the following week. On Thursday we enjoyed having The Spouse home with us, so we didn’t do any school that day, which put us behind in some of our lessons. On Friday we started to experience the rain that never seemed to end, which prevented us from going out and finding something to explore. Instead of exploring the outdoors, we explored books inside the comfort of our warm home. One of the books we enjoyed was Ten Apples Up On Top!, which Child #1 read to all of us while we enjoyed a snack. It is always so wonderful to hear him read, he is getting even better at it with each passing day.

Now onto our upcoming week:

Monday: Lesson 4 in First Language Lessons
Three lessons in Saxon Math 1
Continued talk on Dinosaurs


Tuesday: Lesson 5 in First Language Lessons
Three lessons in Saxon Math 1 *this will bring us up to date so we can finish up our “school year” when we originally planned, allowing us a much needed break.
Discuss Modern Mythology *when I say modern mythology I mean the mythology of present day religions*.


Wednesday: Lesson 6 in First Language Lessons
Two math lessons in Saxon Math 1
Play Date
Finish up our discussions on Dinosaurs


Thursday: Lesson 7 in First Language Lessons
Two math lessons in Saxon Math 1
Finish up our discussion on Mythology *books we are currently reading will be read until we have finished them*.

Friday: Two math lessons from Saxon Math 1
Possible Field Trip

Our week has been fairly productive. We have covered the first three lessons in First Language Lessons, with me changing up a few of the sentences in the book. It discusses common nouns in the third lesson, it makes the point of mentioning a family is a mother and a father. I took the time to state that families come in different combinations, some kids have two moms, some have two fathers, and so on. Those kids are still brothers and sisters, their family just looks different than ours. Aside from making that one little change the lessons have been quick and easy. The boys both took part in the second lesson on illustrating the poem we read, and they really enjoyed it. It also tied into the Science lessons we did the week before on butterflies.

We got through six lessons of math as well. For now we are covering addition and subtraction, as well as money *identifying pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollars, along with their worth…quarters aren’t included in the lessons but we have covered those on our own*. There is also some time telling to the hour and the half hour. Lastly we have done some measuring with a ruler *more will be done at the end of the week*.

Our mythology reading is coming from THIS book. We will also tackle reading Say Cheese Medusa and Stop That Bull, Theseus both from Myth-O-Mania. These books should offer a fun alternative to learning about myths versus the usual text that is rather boring in the eyes of a small child.

For Science so far we have watched Dinosaurs Alive, as well as read The Big Noisy Book of Dinosaurs and watched the accompanying DVD.

Aside from the general subjects we also enjoyed a nature walk, some time playing soccer at a nearby field, and some park fun. So far things have gone really well and the rest of the week is looking like it will end on a very lovely note.

So what is on tap for this week? Here is a quick run through of our plans.

Monday: Two math lessons from Saxon Math 1
Lesson 1 in First Language Lessons For The Well-Trained Mind (Vol.1 Level 1)
Greek and Roman Mythology using books from the library that I will share later and online resources.

I picked First Language Lessons up from the BX a few days ago. Just on a quick glance the lessons seemed easy to implement into our day. We are heading to the end of our first full year of home schooling, so I don’t want to take on anything to heavy, but I still want the boys to continue learning through the summer. First Language Lessons will allow us to spend a few minutes everyday tackling one of their 100 lessons, which will get their feet wet before getting heavy into Language Arts lessons when we start back up in September.


Tuesday: Two math lessons from Saxon Math 1
Lesson 2 in First Language Lessons
Dinosaurs using materials from Enchanted Learning and supplies currently on hand.


Wednesday: Two math lessons from Saxon Math 1
Lesson 3 in First Language Lessons
Modern Day Mythology using internet resources and books currently on hand


Thursday: Two math lessons from Saxon Math 1
Lesson 4 in First Language Lessons
Continue discussion on Dinosaurs, with hands on activity

Friday: Two math lessons from Saxon Math 1
Field Trip To Be Determined

…to go over plans and supplies and see what I want to add and what I want to continue using. We haven’t hit the one year mark yet, so I think we are doing good with getting through our first official year of home schooling. There are things I want to change. Right now we are focusing on Phonics and Math more than anything else, and some days we may just watch an educational video, do flash cards, and goof off. Which I am allowing partly because Child #1 is already ahead of where they say he should be, and because Child #2 actually listens to Child #1 and picks up the things he tells him. Come September though I want to have worked out some of the major kinks (mostly getting me to bed at a decent hour so I can get up at 7am and get our day going, and get through all our lessons), and be serious about this. With The Spouse on board he expects certain things to get done now and that accountability on everyone’s part will be awesome and needed at times. Anyways here you go…

Homeschool Revision:

Phonics: Saxon Phonics 2
Language Arts: Harcourt Language Grade 1
Handwriting: Writing With Ease Level One Workbook

Math: Saxon Math 2

Science: R.E.A.L Science Level One: Life, Earth and Space, and Chemistry
Science: Houghton Mifflin Science Grade 1

Social Studies: Harcourt Horizons
History: History Odyssey Level One: Ancient, Middle Ages, Early Modern, Modern Times
History: A Little History Of The World

Art: Artistic Pursuits Book One Grades K-3

Music: Guitar Lessons

Physical Education: Karate

Japanese Studies: Teach Me Japanese, Teach Me More Japanese (the second part of the Teach Me series), plus other books on Japan

Sexual Education: OWL (Our Whole Lives) Grade K-1

Religious Education: Various UU materials and open honest discussion with the boys. This will be a more in depth subject with actual materials when they are older.

Virtues: The Virtues Project has info on teaching virtues to kids and that is where I got the idea to include a virtue for every week that we would discuss and go over. You can click here, here, and here to find out what items we will use. Aside from those we will also use fables and other stories that demonstrate the various virtues.

History twice a week, Social Studies twice a week. Covering two lessons a week in each subject.
Art twice a week covering one lesson a week. First part of the lesson will be the teaching part (on Monday), second part of the lesson will be the activity that ties into the lesson(on Wednesday). Some weeks if there is a holiday coming up Art will be based on that holiday and not come from our curriculum book.
After Grade 2 we won’t be using a phonics curriculum it will be strictly Language Arts.
Saxon Math works for us and it is easy to use. It also goes all the way up to High School Math (Algebra 1 and 2, Advanced Mathematics, Calculus, and Geometry).
We will have other materials and books to supplement these things, these will just act as our foundation for each school year.
Japanese Studies will change when we PCS, it will then become the study of whatever country we end up at, unless we end up back in the US then I’ll figure it out from there. Hahahaha.



Phonics and Handwriting: Monday- Thursday
Language Arts: Monday-Friday
Math: Monday and Wednesday
Science: Tuesday and Thursday
Social Studies and Weekly Virtue: Monday and Wednesday
History and Geography: Tuesdays and Thursdays
Art: Monday And Wednesday
Music: An hour with an instructor and 30 minutes of practice at home on non lesson days
Physical Education: One hour twice a week and then 30 minutes of practice at home on non lesson days
Japanese Studies: Fridays
Sexual Education: Fridays
Religious Education: Two Sundays a month

Ok here is our schedule time wise:
730am: Breakfast
8am: Get ready for the day
830am: Outdoor time (weather pending, if it is too hot or raining then we will stay inside and play)
9am: Phonics, Handwriting, and Language Arts
10am: Break
1130am: Lunch
12pm: Quiet Time
130pm: Art and Snack
2pm: Math/Science
230pm: History& Geography/Social Studies & Weekly Virtue
3pm: We Are Done!!

So it looks like our “school” day breaks up to about 2 ½ hours, 3 ½ if you add in the hour of practice that will take place at home (but that will only be on days when there are no lessons to attend). I think that is plenty and honestly some days we will probably get done with our work sooner than what I plan. But we do need a plan we can adhere to rather closely. I had made one at the end of 2008 and it was similar to this, but this seems far more doable and allows for plenty of none “school” time. This of course is just the Monday-Thursday plan.

Fridays will go like this:
730am: Breakfast
8am: Get ready for the day
830am: Language Arts
9am: Japanese Studies
930am: Head out for our Enrichment (the way things are going it looks like it will be either an ASL class or something to do with Japanese culture *either a craft or a field trip of some sort*)
12pm: Lunch *either with our friends or back at home, just depends on how the day goes and what we did that day*
1230pm: Quiet Time
130pm: Sexual Education and Snack
2pm: We Are Done!! Until Monday!!


I know folks will look at this and go “It’s so structured and school like”, and you know what that’s right it is. And there is a reason for that! We need structure in our home. We are the kind of folks who if we don’t have a schedule or a plan then chances are nothing will happen. We will sit back and chill, enjoy some movies, and surf the net. And while these things are great to do (I LOVE our lazy Sundays, and how we randomly clean the house while enjoying movies, and burst of excited playing), there are other things that need to be done. Our home school is school/academic focused because the main reason, the first and foremost reason, I ever even thought about teaching the boys was because of education. I care deeply about educating my children and don’t want to trust anyone else with something as important as my children’s education and minds.

I get that the unschooled thing works for some folks, but it doesn’t work for me. I’m all good with it at the age Child #2 is. It makes total sense to me at his age, but for Child #1 it doesn’t. He is at the point where we need to have things ironed out, planned, and structured so things get accomplished. Especially with the whole host of things life can throw our way I want us to have a plan in place so we can easily get back to our routine when duty calls, or someone gets sick, and so forth. We’ve had a lot of crazy things happen this first year of “active” home schooling and the one thing it has shown me is how unbelievably important a routine/schedule is to our schooling. We need this in order to handle the things that will get thrown our way.

For those wanting to know what grade we will be doing next year it will be more of a 1st/2nd grade thing. As for Child #2 he will keep working on the Preschool curriculum I found online, and going along for the ride. He is already saying the alphabet with a few missed letters (but he is only 2!) and he is counting to 10 for the most part with a few missed numbers like with his alphabet. He is also able to point out the parts of his face/head, and a few other body parts as well. So I’m pretty confident that he will do well this upcoming “school” year with the preschool work. I don’t foresee me starting Kindergarten work with him when he is four like I did with Child #1 (not any sit down work anyways), but time will tell. We will just take it day by day.


I think that is pretty much it. I know this is kind of long and rather sporadic, but I’m using this as a place to work out details. You all just get to witness the process LOL. So until my next set of ramblings folks…insert witty comment here.