Half way there!

It’s a New Year, i cant believe it is already 2012! Being half way through the school year, I wanted to make sure we were on track, so I gave Ralph a mini evaluation. I am a little concerned that there are several things that he did correctly, but needed prompting or explaining to get through. I know what we need to work on, and I need to start making him do more on his own and figuring things out. We have plenty of time, so I’m not too concerned.
We were having a little trouble staying on track during the day, so I finally caved and made up a daily schedule. I scheduled when Ralph can go to the bathroom, when we will eat, and each activity of school so that he knows when it’s coming and doesn’t get distracted and stop to ask every 5 minutes. It has helped a lot. If he doesn’t finish his seat work in the scheduled time, it falls to homework time. So far he has finished everything on time without a problem.
This week we have begun learning subtracting with borrowing or regrouping. I was nervous to start this topic because Ralph has been having a little difficulty with simple subtraction. I think that is mainly because he just needs to memorize the facts and he hasn’t yet. He did great though! I got a free app on the iPad called Math regrouping, it’s basically just a chalk board with a math problem and they can work the problem by writing on the board then choose the correct answer on the bottom. math regrouping there is also a paid version, but so far the free version is doing just fine for us. After going through a few with the ipad, I pulled out the math cubes and showed him a visual of borrowing for the 10′s place. It is a good refresher for me to, it’s been a long time since I did math without a calculator
I also found another great math app called Splash Math 2nd Grade . My son LOVED this app. It goes through all the math concepts in the grade level as a game. There are 10 questions per level and it gives rewards and bonus points if they do well. The reward system is a really fun aquarium with crabs to play with, and you earn stuff for it as you go. The levels get progressively harder and it even has a report card system built in so that you can see their progress and what they need to work on. The only down side is that the full version is $9.99, which is a lot for an app. However, if I were going to buy a math book or a computer program for school I wouldn’t think twice about spending that. I will see how far the free version takes us. You can buy chapter add on’s for $2.99 a piece, so that is an option as well. I had Ralph use it for his homework last night and he didn’t want to stop. It has already helped him improve with place value!
We have also started cursive, we are using a Reason For Handwriting curriculum, and started in with cursive after Christmas break. He has been doing so well! He seems to enjoy it more then printing, and takes a lot more care in the way he writes. I have a app on the iPad for that as well that he likes to use, it is just tracing print and cursive letter forms, I have a stylus for the iPad and he enjoys practicing that way. There are several different ones, but we use Letter Forms
Over Christmas break Ralph read his first chapter book in his own while on a long car trip! He read the first book in the Magic Tree house series, Dinosaurs before dark. We are now reading Tonight on the Titanic. I found a website that has comprehension questions, vocabulary words, and activities for each chapter of almost every book in the Magic Treehouse series! We got this one at the library, and it sort of goes along with our study on explorers and maps. We got some books about Christopher Columbus, and Lewis and Clark and a few map books. We even made a map of Ralph’s room and the house. He wants to do the neighborhood next.

 

Ancient Egypt study

We have begun our study of ancient Egypt. I recently purchased a set of books from a nice young man who was selling door to door. They are Southwestern books. http://www.skwids.com/ I got a set of 6 Explore and Learn books about different subjects. They came with some large posters a CD-Rom that I haven’t checked out yet, and a pretty cool website. Unfortunately the website is $19.99 a month after Oct 1st, so I doubt I’ll keep that. We will try it out until then though and see if it it would be worth it. We are using the People in time and places book for history and I found the Sphinx worksheet  on Education.com and  a few hieroglyphs alphabets. There is a good one here. I had Ralph use it to write out his name in hieroglyphs! We watched the Prince of Egypt the other day and Ralph thought it was pretty funny when he saw that the nose of the Sphinx was missing after seeing them knock it off in the movie. We have talked a little bit about the “gods” they worshiped and Ralph thought they all sounded pretty silly. He told me that he only worships the really God who made everything! (Good boy!) We need to make a trip to the library to find some more books and hopefully some that he can read himself. I found a good list of books here that I am going to see if I can find! 

 

 

Medieval Times

We have just finished up our unit on Medieval Times. We read Robin Hood, and made a little green hat and of course he already has a bow and arrow-doesn’t every little boy?! We studied all about knights and castles. Ralph’s favorite part was learning about the weapons, of course. He designed and made his own coat of ams on a shield. I got a lot of great resources from www.homeschoolshare.com especially this Robin Hood Unit We are now jumping back in time to Ancient Egypt, and from there we will try to go through history in order!

 

First day of second grade

Today Ralphie started second grade. I haven’t been able to order all of our curriculum yet, so we are making due with what we have. We found some good books about knights and castles to look through and made a cardboard castle. We are also reading Robin Hood. He is reading to me from an easy reader version and I am reading the illustrated classic to him.
We read about solids liquids and gasses and then turned solid to liquid by melting crayons. That was art and science!
Ralph is learning the elements that make a story, today we talked about the setting and he drew a picture and wrote some descriptive words about his “Dinosaur Island!”
I was expecting the math curriculum to arrive today, but it hasn’t shown up yet. So, we did a math speed drill and counted by 2′s 10′s and 100′s and did a few word problems.
I do have his writing, spelling, and phonics curriculums so we’ve got that covered. Over all it was a pretty good first day of school. I need to go over the rules again- I need to figure out exactly what those need to be.

No toys out during school is a biggie. He alway wants to have one sitting out where he can see it. “I promise I won’t play with it!” That just never ends well.

Do everything without complaining and arguing!

Sit up and pay attention! -how do I get him to do this? I don’t know. He is so easily distracted and starts climbing all over the chairs. He doesnt need to be still for everything, but honestly 5 minutes would be great!

I think if I make a list and put then up it will help. Put that on the to-do list along with a million other things!

 

Back to school

Is it possible that summer is over already! It flew by this year. Mo son has been doing a summer bridge book that has helped him transition from 1st to 2nd grade. I have spent the last few weeks frantically trying to get ready for the start of the school year… Researching curriculum, methods of homeschooling, activities and more. Today I stumbled across a fun website called DreamBox Learning it is a website full of math games for K-3. I signed Ralph up for a free trial. The subscription is $12.95 a month or $59.95 for 6 months. So far Ralph is liking it a lot. He spent quite a while playing on it today, and I received a few emails updating me on his progress and what he was doing and learning. I’ll have to sit down with him tomorrow and see what it really involves and how much actual learning is going on.
I am doing a less traditional approach to curriculum this year. I have a sort of hodgepodge of different things. I chose RightStart Math which is a very hands on approach. It uses the Abacus to provide a visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experience and involves a lot of games and manipulatives. I am excited, I haven’t ordered the curriculum yet, but I hope to write several reviews of it throughout the year. They also have an app in the app store that I need to take a look at.
I received an incorrect shipment from A Beka last year that contained second grade Spelling and Poetry, and Letters and Sounds, so yeah! Free Language arts program! My son and I are familiar with the curriculum and I think it will be great. I also purchases Word Fun, which is a really well illustrated book that teaches about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. We read a little bit of it today and my son loved it. Very entertaining and educational at the same time…score!
I purchased Reason for Handwriting transition level that will take Ralphie from print to cursive, as well as a book called writers toolbox that has some great resources for learning to write letters, stories, and more. It is a very cute and colorful book and I hope it will inspire my son to come up with some creative stories of his own.

For science I am getting a DVD from Sonlight Curriculum called Discover and Do, as well as a kit to do science experiments. We will supplement that with library books, videos, and Internet resources to research different topics throughout the year.
History will be similar, I’m starting with The Usborne Time Traveler, but will supplement from the library and Internet to research different time periods.

For reading I am going to use library books, mostly the leveled readers. Our library has a whole room for just those books with a section for each level! It will save me a ton of money not buying all the readers.

Most importantly, Bible, something I was not consistent enough with last year. We will start each day with Day by Day Devotions and will be memorizing verses each week. Hopefully we will be finding a home church soon and getting some much needed Bible knowledge from there as well.

He will also be taking piano, possibly guitar (if he can convince daddy to teach him), and hopefully get involved in a sports team. I will again be in search of high tech ways to teach using the iPad and computer.

So, I picked my curriculum, joined a homeschool group, sent my letter of intent to the school board, and prayed a lot! I think we are ready for the school year to begin! I don’t have each moment of the day planned out, but I know I wouldn’t stick to it even if I did(not with two little terrors..I mean princesses running aroun:-)). We will fall into a routine that works and go from there. I need to remember to keep records for the review at the end of the year, and figure out how I will have Ralphie evaluated, but there is loads of time for that, right!? Happy Homeschooling!!

 

Using “printables” on the iPad

I grabbed a free printable fraction work sheet from super teacher worksheet. I opened the link on my iPad and saved it by pushing the power button and home button at the same time. Then I opened the picture in Adobe Ideas, a free app for drawing and photo editing. From there my son could fill in the answers and color in sections of the fraction. He had fun making the answer the same color as the colors in each shape. There may be other apps that you could do this same thing,this was just one I already had.

I also found that pdf-notes free works great.

 

Free Printable Worksheets

There are so many websites with free printable materials that are great for homeschool. Here are a few that I really like.

TLS Books is a free site with a lot of great and high quality printable worksheets and activities for all grade levels and subjects.

Education.com is free, but you have to become a member to download the worksheets. There are a lot of other resources on the site as well including educational activities for each grade level.

Super Teacher Worsheets is another great free resources full of printable worksheets for all grade levels.

Crayola is a great site for exploring art projects to do with the kiddos. It has everything from printable coloring pages to lesson plans. You may need to buy some art supplies, but the kids will have a blast.

Starfall and the Starfall Download Center have amazing learning games and videos as well as printable books and worksheets for your preschool-2nd graders, and it’s all free! They have new area called More Starfall which requires a paid membership. It includes K-2 Math, a Talking Library, and songs, rhymes and phonics. They also have iPhone/Ipod touch apps available.

 

Great iPad/iPhone app finds

Here are two great apps that we use everyday in homeschooling. We are using them in first grade, but they could be great tool for any grade.

FlashToPass is a great app for math drills. It is simple but more fun then writing or flashcards. We use the free version and it works great. My son is starting to remember his addition facts because of the repetition. We have only done the addition levels 1 and 2 so far. I set the time limit at about 5 minutes so that it is still a challenge but he can finish in time if he doesn’t allow himself to get distracted.

Study Words is a good one for spelling words. I enter in my son’s spelling list and the app can speak the words as he traces the letters, puts the letters in the correct order, or plays memory. It has been very helpful. It costs $.99

 

Starting out in homeschool

Before officially starting homeschool, my son learned all his letter names and sounds using the Leap Frog Letter factory DVD and Starfall. They are both amazing resources that I highly recommend. I tried using a preschool curriculum, but it just didn’t work out for us. Having a newborn and a 1 year old I wasn’t able to be consistent enough with it. We ended up using the Hooked on Phonics Preschool Super Workbook and playing learning games together. I would throw several different color balls and ask him to “fetch” a certain color. I wrote numbers on Easter eggs and hide them and he had to say the number on each egg he found. Silly little things that he loved and wanted to keep doing all day. I got a library card and started making fun trips to the Library for story time or just to find fun books to read. I think Preschool learning really just needs to be fun time that you spend interacting with your child. They pick up everything so quickly! Now I am doing a little preK work with my 3 year old daughter. She has watched the Leap Frog DVDs and loves playing games on Mommy’s iPad. There are so many great resources on the web, and now with our smartphones and an iPad there is nothing that can’t be found for homeschooling if you are willing to look. My plan is to find all those great educational websites and apps and share them with you. So stay tuned!

 

Who we are

I am a stay home mother of three adorable, high energy, lovable, crazy children ages 2,3, and 6. I was home schooled from third grade thru high school. I started dual enrolling at the community college when I was 15 and graduated with my AA just after my 18th birthday. My husband is a technology guru, master of all things computer and network related. We are both musicians, which is how we met. Way back in the 90′s he was leading worship in my youth group band and I was playing the keys (aww). We got married in 2003 and have been making beautiful music together ever since!