Saturday, August 27, 2011

At the Lake

Today we went to watch the 3rd Annual Cardboard Regatta at Lake Arcadia. The kids were tired from our late night, but they had fun! We stopped at my parents house for a nap, and then some swimming and dinner. Here are some pictures from our morning at the lake.









In the last few pictures, the kiddos are sitting on the cardboard boat. They have a race between all the boats followed by a demolition derby, the point is to sink everyone else! The Crocness Monster never sank! It was hot, but it was great!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Our "Not Back to School Day" Celebration

If Aidan were attending public school, he would have started Kindergarten today. We, however, started First Grade 3 weeks ago. He has some friends that started school today and will have more friends start school next week. The first day of school is a BIG deal. I wanted our "not back to school day" to be a big deal for Aidan, too. So we went BOWLING! Aidan has wanted to go "real" bowling (we play on Wii sports) for a while. He was so excited. Here are a few pictures of our family bowling trip today. (I forgot my camera, so all the pictures are from my phone, they may be a little fuzzy.)


Aidan tried the bowling track and did not like it, he decided to bowl like Mommy and Daddy instead. He did a great job!



Lilly, however, did very well with the track! With a little help, she had a pretty good score.

I think this is a tradition we might keep every year. It was fun to take a break from school on the day everyone else went back. We had the bowling alley to ourselves. I don't know that we will bowl every year; but we have a fun family day.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Week 1 of First Grade and PreSchool!

This week was great! We completed everything that was planned! Tomorrow we celebrate with swimming and a sleepover!

Aidan worked through the Introduction and Chapter 1 of The Story of the World Vol 1: Ancient Times. He loved it! Everyday he wanted to do more. We started his lapbook and plan to do an archeological dig in our backyard this weekend. He flew through his math and English Grammar. After our first day we switched to Rod and Staff English 2. We are much happier now! In science we started learning about taxonomy.

Lilly has mastered the letter A! She LOVES to "do school." We spend time each day on our letter and the sound it makes. We practiced the number 1 and drawing squares. Her favorite part was reciting "Hey Diddle Diddle." This is one of her favorite nursery rhymes!


I worked on getting the last of our supplies together - I laminated all of our history timeline cards today! When I came home, Jonathan and the kids had washed the windows!! I have a beautiful view of our garden now...although there is not much growing right now. It was a wonderful surprise.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Back to School - First Grade and PreSchool!


Last year we decided to homeschool Aidan for a number of reasons:

  • He was ready for kindergarten; but he could not begin kindergarten because he missed the birthday cut off by a couple of weeks.
  • He wanted to homeschool.
  • It works really well with our crazy schedule! 
  • And – it means I get that much more time with my favorite little boy.

We did not use a structured curriculum for Kindergarten. I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know. I purchased a few math and phonics books from various stores and everything else came from the library. We worked every day; we covered math, reading, spelling, science, geography, and history. I kept telling myself that if I failed at homeschooling, there was no loss, he could just start Kindergarten in public school this year and he would not be behind.

I gave him the CATe test in April (the first grade test because when I looked at what was covered, we had done everything on that test!) He scored in Stanine 7, 8, and 9 on everything except computation (he scored in Stanine 5). That put him average with a first grade student for computation, and above average on math concepts and reading comprehension. Seeing his progress and how easy it was to accomplish so much with Aidan convinced me that I really  CAN do this.

After much thought, research, and some placement testing this is what will be doing this year!

Singapore Math 2A & 2B with the Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems
The Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient Times by Susan Wise Bauer
Real Science 4 Kids, Biology Pre-Level 1
Shurley English Level 1 (although after looking it over and trying it today, we may switch to Rod and Staff Grade 2.)
Spelling Plus and Dictation by Susan Anthony
Classical Conversations Foundations, Cycle 1 (at home)
What Your First Grader Should Know by E.D. Hirsch, Jr (for Literature, Geography and a little extra history reading)




We started everything except Classical Conversations today, we will start that in September. History and Science are on alternating days so we did history today and we will do science tomorrow!

Now for my Lilly! She wanted to start school with her Bubby, so I am using the Letter of the Week Curriculum by Brightly Beaming Resources. This week we learn the letter A, the number 1, we study squares, the theme is cow, and the vocabulary word is calf. 




We colored a printout of the letter A, practiced writing it on the board, and said its sound. We looked at pictures of a cow and calves, and we practiced the number 1.

Over all a successful first day! It was a little rough getting Aidan going, but we finished what was on our lesson plan (and then some). Now we are lounging in the house, avoiding the heat!