Ramblings...

Prince may party like it’s 1999 but we are knee deep in planning like it’s our 2011-2012 school year! I’m very excited for this upcoming school year. We are really starting to find our homeschooling groove and what works for us as a family, and as individuals. My biggest hurdle this year, and the previous year as well, was finding a simple way to plan out our year. I’ve tried online planning methods before through Homeschool Tracker Basic. While it works for many out there it just didn’t do it for me. While I’m all for techy stuff and online goodness, it became too much of a hassle to go in and update. As well as plugging in all of our curriculum materials and our goals.


I then tried making my own lesson plan book using Donna Young printable planning pages, but the binder turned into a headache when I needed to take it with me on the go, plus having to frequently print off pages made it seem like a total waste, and just unpractical for a family with limited space, which is something we have to deal with.


Then I thought about the agenda books we had when I was in middle school. These were geared more for documenting homework assignments and paperwork that needed to be signed off, but I really liked the idea of each child having their own individual planner. So I spent a good month hunting around the net for something that would meet this need. First I tired going through sites that actually sale agenda books for schools. Sites with books I liked all had minimum purchase requirements, so as a homeschooler with only two students instead of a class of 45 I couldn’t purchase the books. Unless, I wanted to blow an obscene amount of money on something I may not even like at the end of the school year.


After knocking those off my list I hit amazon in search of agenda books/student planners that would allow for smaller purchases. I found a few but, most where religious themed with bible verses on either every page or in every daily block, way too much for our secular family. I could see ignoring a few verses every now and then, but this was overkill. The secular ones I found didn’t fit our schooling schedule since we homeschool year round (July-June), and they were geared towards the traditional schooling schedule.


I finally decided to search for a homeschool student planner just to see what it would bring up, and low and behold there is a student planner for homeschoolers called The Homeschool Student Planner. I wasn’t all gung-ho about getting it at first. I’m big on seeing what I’m going to buy, there are actually items I won’t purchase because, the website doesn’t have enough detail for my taste. So I did some searching for reviews on the product and while none actually showed off any pictures I decided to take a leap based on what I had been able to find. Factor in the money back guarantee and I felt confident in making the purchase.


I bought two planners so each child can have one, which came to $40, but considering the cost of printer ink and paper I think I’m coming out ahead compared to our previous method. I’m not having the boys fill these out themselves yet, I’m not sure when *or if* I will turn over the planning to them altogether. For now though I’m using it to plan out our school year, so we have what they each are doing in a place they can both easily access. It also helps keep both their work separate so I can be in the zone planning and working through the work for one child, then close up and move on to the next child.


The planners easily fit into T.B.M.’s book bags as well, allowing for us to school on the go, which will be very handy when we head to the states for a nearly two month visit in a couple of years. Allowing them both to do their work while we are either in a plane or a car, ensuring we meet our schooling goals while getting in plenty of time with family and friends, while limiting the amount of stuff we have to lug around the planet.


The planner breaks the year down by quarters which I really like since I set our goals by quarters (seasons), so this flows right into what we are already doing. I can also write in the dates, and while I did that this year I don’t foresee me doing it next year. I realized after filling in the dates and nearly the first quarter lessons when it hit me that I have to work in the breaks as well. So for this year I’m going to finish out the planning, and then when we take our breaks I’ll push back the work for that time period and pick it up when we resume.


Next year though I’m going to fill in the day of school on the left hand margin (first, second….etc. day of school) and then fill in the week of school when we get to it along the top. This will allow us to take our breaks as needed and then pick back up without any erasing in the planner on my end. :) The only negative with the planner so far is that the quarters are a typical nine weeks long, and our quarters are 13 weeks, but each planner comes with extra pages that I can make copies of to use so I can print out enough to cover the whole school year. I’ll just staple them together and paperclip the bundle to the quarter they belong with. This will still allow me to have all the items right there at hand, instead of pulling planning papers out of every nook and cranny in our home.


Each quarter also has an envelope to store paperwork, I’m not sure if we will use this feature this school year, but I can see using it when we have to do some carschooling, because it will allow everything to stay safely put away. I’m hoping this planning method pans out better than the previous ones; I have a good feeling about it since I don’t dread doing the planning, unlike when I was planning before. Here’s hoping!


So what are you using for your planning purposes?

I’m always on the look out for something I can use in our schooling or to organize our day/lives. The other day while getting my holiday shopping done I peeked over at the discounted/clearance section in our base exchange. I found this for 2$!:




It features magnets on the back…




And yes it does actually stay stuck to the fridge…




I bought two, since each packet features 52 pages I now have two years worth for only 4$. I’ve been mulling over the best way to use it. I’m thinking since each day features five blocks I’ll use the 1st, 3rd, and 5th blocks for menu planning. This way while I’m getting out plates, cups, and utensils out I can glance right over and see what I had planned to make for that day. The 2nd and 4th blocks will be used for me to see what hands on items I had planned. For instance on the day we make our volcano I’ll have that in the 4th block since it will take place after lunch.

On Mondays since that is the day we do our homeschool co-op stuff I’ll write down some things I need to do before we go out the door in the 2nd block. That way I have what I need when we leave out the door after breakfast.

I’ll probably head back to the exchange this weekend to see if they have anymore left. These seem like they will prove to be very useful to us. Especially, next year since our science stuff will involve tons of experiments, but I’ll have more on that later.

So according to our place value chart we are currently on day 32 of our current school year. We only put a straw in it on the days we actually do school *granted we are learning everyday, there is a difference on school days*.

How has it been going? Fairly well I would say, have I been keeping track of the lesson plans I made though…no. In fact *grabs lesson planning notebook* THIS is the first time since about the end of our first week that I have actually looked at this. I know, For Shame!, but I just haven’t got into the habit of checking plans.

We are still fairly new at this formal school thing. We started this school year *only our second year!* in July, but I had made my lesson plans to start in September, so things are slightly off, but I think we are doing pretty well. Obviously we aren’t behind my original plans, which is always nice. Considering when we started we do need to pick up the slack on some of the things we have been falling behind on.

I had also originally planned about a three week break at about our 20th day mark, but that was due to a family vacation we were trying to plan, which was part of the reason I went ahead and started us back in July. Along with having the materials, it being too hot to do much else, and I really just wanted to get it all underway. Anyways, things have changed so I don’t know when we will be taking our break, but suffice it to say by the time we do get to our three week break things will be going very well *I hope*.

So here is where we *should* stand: At our 30 day mark according to my lesson plans we should be on spelling list number six, week six in our daily handwriting lessons, chapter six in language arts, history studies should be on Ancient Egypt, lesson #24 in math, and for our science studies we should be learning about Earth’s atmosphere.

Here is where we *actually* stand:

We are on Spelling List #3 because when I gave Child#1 the other two test he flew through them so I decided to devote that time to allowing him to just play, and I would quiz him randomly on words from the word lists I have created until after the holiday season when the words on the lists start to get more difficult.

Daily Handwriting has been sporadic, I found a handwriting workbook at the bookstore on base and thought that would be better for now. It is something Child#1 can do independently which gives me time to work with Child#2. Once Child #1 goes through that workbook then we will start back up with the handwriting lessons from Writing With Ease.

We are only on Chapter #3 in our Language Arts curriculum, since when I came across the HOP deal I decided to incorporate that into our schooling. So the goal has been one week HOP, one week Language Arts. It doesn’t always work that way since we should be on Chapter #4 if we really did stick to the switching, but if Child #1 is really getting into the HOP lessons I’ll let him keep going for another week. His reading has gotten even better so it’s worth being off on our Language Arts work.

As for History we are tackling Ancient Egypt so we are pretty much on point for that, and we have lots planned for this subject, so it may push us a little behind. As far as I‘m concerned though the fun we will have will be worth it.

With Math we are on about lesson #20, so we are a few lessons off, but we haven’t been doing math lessons on the days when we originally planned. Mostly because we have been slacking, still moving from summer mode to full on school mode, still getting our homeschooling bearings *which is another reason why I wanted to start early*.

Lastly Science, we are still on the solar system, but will be moving to Earth studies very soon. So not really off too much on that one. Especially since Child #1 *and even Child #2* knows the solar system very well, I think it’s worth the extra time we’ve taken.

*I didn’t mention Social Studies because I have thrown our formal text on that out the window for now, I will wait another year or so on that one, and focus more on life lessons, current events, and tying into historical time periods for now*.

Other things that have found themselves temporarily thrown out *aside from the Social Studies text*:

Our art curriculum has found itself neglected since it wasn’t jiving with us. It is a great curriculum and I look forward to using it, but right now the boys aren’t ready for it. It is far more enjoyable to allow them to do the art that falls inline with our History work, instead of doing formal art lessons. So right now art is just fun coloring, History linked, and random crafts. Maybe next year *or possibly the year after that* we will pull out the art curriculum and use it full-time.

Our Japanese cultural learning is coming along great, especially with the addition of a new weekly activity, that should really help immerse us even more. The language learning needs more work, but we have some plans being laid to make fluency happen *and I can‘t wait until we are fluent in the language trust me!*.

I also came across an item online that will help keep us on track, but I’ll share more on it when it arrives.

Well I think that is about it! Our first 32 days haven’t been easy, but they haven’t been too difficult. Homeschooling is definitely a process, it will take some time to learn our rhythm.

I’ve also made a change as far as how often we will do school, instead of following a traditional calendar like I had originally planned we will do year round schooling. It just seems to make more sense to us, and works with our hectic lifestyle. I still haven’t figured out how we will do breaks, how often, that sort of thing. But I’ll share more on where I’m going with it later *when I actually figure it out*.

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.

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!

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

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