Showing posts with label preschool. Show all posts

Thursday, September 8, 2011

2011-2012 Homeschool Curriculum

I thought I'd share what we're doing for homeschool this year, as Moses is starting kindergarten and Judah is doing some preschool stuff. Moses is 5 years 3 months and Judah is 3 1/2 exactly. Clementine is 23 months and I'm sure she'll be joining in some of the hands-on stuff!

I have a lot of Grace's curriculum left over (wasn't it just yesterday that she and I were doing kindergarten at home together!?) so I'm using a lot of that for Moses, but as I am now realizing, not all curriculum used for a prior child is a good fit for subsequent children! The great phonics/grammar program I used with Grace isn't going to work for Moses until at least next year. (I think I actually started it with Grace when she was 6, so that's perfect. Now that I think about it, how DID Grace learn to read anyway?? I think she just kind of picked it up!)

Because we're following the Charlotte Mason method, our kindergarten/preschool days will be of a more relaxed approach. The basic principles that Charlotte Mason emphasized included short lessons, lots of nature/outside time, reading lots of "living" books, and training in good habits, so that's what we're planning to do! The habits I hope to instill in these little ones this year will hopefully carry them on to be studious, industrious, lifelong learners in the future.

A couple of great resources that have helped me plan the year include The Early Years: A Charlotte Mason Preschool Handbook and this Early Years Guide from the Simply Charlotte Mason website. Here's a summary of the early years focus:

Habits, outside play, read-alouds, and Bible are most important. If you concentrate only on them, you’ll be doing just fine. Reading, copywork, and math come next as the child is ready. (Some may not be ready until they are older than five; that’s OK!) Handicrafts, art, music, and poetry are simply add-ons that will enrich your child’s atmosphere and help him feel at home with those aspects of Charlotte Mason education when he starts “school work.”

So here's the basic rundown of our school year/curriculum:

Moses (5 years)

Outdoors: Lots of free play and nature walks

Habits: Habit Training

Read Alouds: From Five in a Row, and “go-along” books

Beginning Reading: "Explode the Code” books A, B & C

Copywork: Writing on lined paper, holding pencil correctly, copywork from FIAR books

Math: Saxon Math K

Science: Projects to go along with FIAR books

Handicrafts: Projects to go along with FIAR books

Art: Displaying large prints, and games with small postcard prints from Dover Publishing

Music: Play works of great composers in background while working

Bible: Circle Time and Fighter Verses with Mama, Bible Study with Papa

(The main way that we're organizing our Five in a Row studies is through the use of lapbooks. I get all the free resources from Homeschool Share. Here's what we'd do during our week of reading "The Story About Ping" and studying China and ducks. I'll try to post pictures of ours once we've completed some.)

Judah (3.5 yrs)

Outdoors: Lots of free play and nature walks (Same as Moses)

Habits: Habit Training (Same as Moses)

Read Alouds: From Five in a Row, and “go-along” books (Same as Moses)

Beginning Reading: Learn letter names and sounds while Moses does reading lessons

Copywork: Trace upper-case letters with finger in sand, rice, or air,

dry erase markers on placemat, etc.

Math: Learning along with Moses Saxon Math K

Science: Projects to go along with FIAR books (Same as Moses)

Handicrafts: Projects to go along with FIAR books (Same as Moses)

Art: (Same as Moses)

Music: Play works of great composers in background while working (Same as Moses)

Bible: Circle Time and Fighter Verses with Mama, Bible Study with Papa (Same as Moses)

I'm excited to try homeschooling 2 kids at the same time! I've only ever taught one child before, so I'm not sure how it will go to have 3 little ones all together, and 2 of them "doing school". But I'm sure we're in for a lot of fun. =]

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Thanksgiving Preschool

Okay, so I'm waaaay behind in blogging, but if you don't mind I don't mind. Here's some pics from our Thanksgiving preschool co-op. These kids are so much fun!!

We focused on being thankful (there's lots of turkey and pilgrim crafts out there but it seemed to me thankfulness was a better emphasis). I used the verse from Psalm 100 (which we've memorized in Circle Time) that says, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His name" as our "theme" and had the kids draw some pictures of what they were thankful for.

Even though Judah's not officially preschool age yet, he and little Theia enjoy participating here and there.

The first thing Moses wrote was "BIBLE". I was so proud!! Then he wrote MOVIES (he asked me how to spell it of course) and then TOYS. Okay, well one out of three ain't bad.

Judah just scribbled on his, but Olivia and David had fun with princesses, Hercules the family dog, and monster trucks. All important things to be thankful for!

Mr. Mo Man surveying his work

I made each of the kids a little linen napkin. Since I procrastinate horribly in preparing for this co-op, I was not able to follow these instructions for hemming the edges and making mitered corners as I initially planned. Instead I just sewed a 1/2 inch around the edge of the napkins, threw them in the wash and dryer, and cleaned up the frayed edges a little for a more "rustic" (read "lazy sewer") look.

Then we traced each child's hand on the napkin with fabric markers (thanks to Mrs. P!) and let the kids decorate with their own drawings. This was pretty fun and something that I'm sure both moms will want to hang on to for a long time. =]

Mr. David working on his linen napkin.

Hard at work

We read some books about Thanksgiving that I had gotten from the library, and Moses and David especially were very interested in the story of the Pilgrims. Sailing on the boat, making friends with the Indians, and planting a fish with each corn seed were all details they remembered well.

Unfortunately I found it somewhat difficult to find good books about Thanksgiving! Having not previewed all the books before co-op started (refer to above comment about my procrastination), I eagerly began reading several books to the kids only to find them to be full of CRAZY stuff and then having to discard them. One book talked about the "tradition" of Thanksgiving coming from many different cultures, starting with the Greeks and Romans, and from African and Native American spiritualism... really?? I mean, I know other cultures have ways to show and celebrate thankfulness, but THANKSGIVING is a holiday directly and soley coming from the Christian Pilgrims of North America!! (And I believe Squanto and Samoset were Christians too, were they not?)

Anyway, I was disappointed (but not terribly surprised) to find several books that just talked about Thanksgiving as a time to be thankful in a very general and unspecific way and didn't really mention the role of the Christian faith in the story of the First Thanksgiving.

But there are a couple gems out there! We super duper love this book:

Three Young Pilgrims by Cheryl Harness

This book is the true story of three siblings- Mary, Remember and Bartholomew Allerton- who actually made the journey on the Mayflower with their parents, and the story is told from their perspective. It is chock-full of information about the Mayflower and all the people who sailed to the New World on her. This makes it very interesting for older kids, but the story is simple enough to engage small children too. There certainly are some sad parts (the children's mother and infant sibling die), but that is a true part of the Pilgrims' story! And the faith these amazing people had in God is clearly portrayed. All around awesome book. We own this one.

Mayflower 1620

This was a cool book as well because it uses photos of a real replica of the Mayflower and people dressed in accurate costumes. Although we didn't read every word on every page, the kids really loved the pictures.

A good one for older kids:

The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh

And two fun ones for young ones:

This First Thanksgiving Day: A Counting Story by Laura Krauss Melmed

The Very First Thanksgiving Day by Rhonda Gowler Greene

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Preschool

With Grace in school this year for the first time EVER, I am back to the basics of homeschooling. Moses is almost 4 1/2 years old and we're doing a very informal preschool together this year.

I started our homeschooling adventure with Grace in Kindergarten in 2004 when she was 5 years old. Although I loved homeschooling and being with Grace, looking back I know I was too rigid and uptight about it all. As a result, we were both burned out at the end of our first year. Neither of us enjoyed school and we were both glad to be done with it each day. I just didn't have to right ideas and attitudes about school at home. We didn't have an atmosphere of learning and I didn't foster the joy of discovery in Grace, but instead focused too much on "getting it right" and "finishing this page" so it would look like I was a good teacher and so I would "have something to show" for our homeschooling efforts.

Hopefully I've learned enough by now to avoid that with Moses. I want Moses to love learning. I want him to learn without knowing that he's "doing school." I want to follow his lead a little bit and let him "take off" with the things that really grip his imagination. And I hope my goal isn't to have a workbook full of perfectly finished pages, but a little boy who is eager each day to discover more of what the world has in store for him.

The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

We're also doing a relaxed and informal preschool co-op with my dear friend Debby. She has a Kindergartener and a preschooler, as well as a toddler and new baby, so it's both very fun and a little chaotic. We take turns teaching and hosting and have two co-ops a month. We have a "theme book", a letter and sometimes a holiday/season theme. Moses totally loves it.

So here's some of the things we've been doing, and at the bottom of this post are some resources that I rely on heavily for inspiration and encouragement. Judah, of course, also joins in on many things Moses and I are doing. After all, that's what homeschooling is about, right?!

Potato printing:

My first co-op was "T" for tree. The kids glued sticks, bark, pinecones and these little fabric leaves I got from the dollar store onto a letter 'T' printed on cardstock.

Didn't they do a great job?

(This is Judah's) =]

Then we did leaf rubbings/wax resist pictures.

These are the tops of trees waiting to be stuck onto their trunks.

(Project found here)

A trip to the apple orchard is full of fun and learning opportunities!

We've had lots of other fun learning experiences, but unfortunately Mama hasn't gotten pictures of much. Moses is totally into snakes, basic electrical wiring (I'm very serious), learning how to write all his letters, and drawing elaborate scenes and creatures. Judah is learning so much just by being around Moses, which is nice! I didn't have the experience with Grace, obviously, of a younger child just picking up stuff from the older ones.

Hopefully I'll be able to post more about our preschooling adventures this year! Here's some great resources:

Websites:

No Time for Flashcards

Preschool Daze

Preschoolers and Peace

Simply Charlotte Mason:

Early Years Guide and Early Years Book List

The Crafty Crow

Elizabeth Foss -

In the Heart of my Home

Serendipity

Articles: