Kindergarten Homeschool

We have been doing kindergarten at home for a month now and we are really liking it! There are a variety of reasons why we chose to homeschool Elanor this year, which I have mentioned before, but the two biggest reasons are that only full day kindergarten is available, and I want Elanor and Alice to be close (even if they are four years apart) and going to school all day would make that more difficult. I do not think we will homeschool for every year, but it will always be an option if Elanor would like to do it.

So, I wanted to explain our curriculum/schedule as it could possibly be helpful to others. 

Here is our schedule:

Monday: Journal, Reading/Writing, Art

Tuesday: Journal, Math, Music

Wednesday: Journal, Geography/History

Thursday: Journal, Science

Friday: Journal, open for field trips/play/hikes or a day do a subject we missed during the week.

Most everything also has to do with the country we are studying that month. For example, we learned about Nigeria in September and Elanor used pastels and scissors to make a really cool mask based on Nigerian masks. We also read and talked about one of Chinua Achebe's poems for reading/writing, listened to traditional Nigerian music, learned about the animals and landscapes of that country and learned basics such as the capital and flag. 

We chose the countries by trying to get a country on each continent, or close to and also learn about the US and our neighbors. Here is what we chose:

September: Nigeria

October: Canada

November: United States

December: Norway/Sweden

January: India

February: Peru

March: Great Britain

April: China

May: Mexico

June: Greece

We also chose a natural disaster to learn about each quarter (Earth quakes, Hurricanes, tornados, volcanos) and weather for the corresponding season. 

For the journal, Elanor writes the date, her name, our theme for the school year (Seek Learning), and one to three sentences about anything she would like to write and then draws a picture to go with her writing. Reading/writing we do things like read/memorize poetry, have spelling tests, and learn about how to write a story (story arch/mountain). Elanor can already read really well, so also reads during quiet time (I highly recommend "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"). For math I use the Miquon Orange math book with Cusinaire rods. Elanor loves it and it is actually a really fun math book. For geography/history, we learn about the country we are currently studying and also work on memorizing the continents. For science, so far we have learned about the water cycle and about why leaves fall from the trees--also hikes. I also use the "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know" book for some guidance and they have some fun games and projects in there as well.

Elanor is also playing on soccer team and is in Sandy High School's play, "Annie", as the orphan, Molly. I am also doing the choreography for the play. So even with homeschool, we are pretty busy and Elanor is getting plenty of socialization. It has been really great to be able to have the freedom to go on adventures, which will really be missed if Elanor does go to school next year or something.

I also believe in kids getting a lot of playtime and time outside and homeschool allows for this. So for us, it has been really great so far! However, I also think it is good for kids to learn from other people and be around a variety of children, so Elanor will go to public school at some point.

And Elanor really is a great sister and she and Alice are developing a wonderful relationship. Also, as great as homeschool has been, it has been hard too. Kids are hard, but I have created a schedule with enough flexibility, so that when something comes up, or we have a hard day, we still have time to recover and get some school done each day. Hopefully, for those that homeschool or are considering it, this has been helpful!

The Weekly Photo (s)

Yeah, I'm a bit late again and I hardly post actual posts. This blog is starting to be pretty pathetic. Oh, well. I will keep trying.

This should have been posted on September 19th:

We picked a ton of apples at my parents house and turned them into applesauce, apple crisps, apple pies, etc.

This should have been posted on September 26th:

We went camping with Tyler's family (including his parents, brother and girlfriend, and aunt, uncle and cousins). It was a lot of fun and we soaked up that last bit of summer.

Should have been posted yesterday, the 3rd:

 School in the morning--and this might be one of my favorite pictures ever.

The Weekly Photo

Hooray! I am actually posting this on a Monday!

This was taken for the 1st day of school last week. I was taking pictures of Elanor and Alice sat down and wanted to be in it. It was just too cute.

We are doing homeschool for kindergarten and I will write more on that in another post!

The Weekly Photo + a Little Rant About School

Elanor's 1st day of preschool.

This is the first year Elanor has gone to preschool. There are a variety of reasons I did not put her in earlier (too expensive, I taught her at home, and she had plenty of friends to play with already), but we decided to put her in this year because we just moved here and she needed friends, there was a close preschool with good reviews, it was inexpensive and we knew a couple kids going there. Elanor just started at the beginning of October and is loving it!

I think preschool is great and a couple hours a day, four days a week is perfect. I have been thinking and stressing about school ever since Elanor was born, because I don't know what to do! There are a lot of things I love about public school (variety of students, learn from a variety of teachers, its free, etc). However, there are a lot of things I do not like (too long of hours each day, too much homework/stress, they don't even learn all that much). School has changed so much since I went. The amount of homework and stress placed on kids, even small ones is so intense.  When one of my brothers was in school at Corbett as a freshman, he was in two AP classes, as all freshman had to at his school, and he said people would have anxiety attacks all the time over homework. It is just not necessary for school to be so intense. I do not think kids (high school, yes, but not so much that the average student has a panic attack about it) should have homework at all. If they cannot get it done the seven hours they are at school, then they do not need to do a further two hours when they get home. Kids should be able to play, have family time, etc. In other countries, such as Sweden, they have shorter days and shorter school years and yet out perform much of Europe. I love being in school and I want Elanor (and Alice) to experience that, but not in the schools we have in America. I don't really want to homeschool either. Perhaps for a year or two or whenever Elanor would want to, but I think learning in a diverse environment, such as public school is really wonderful. I basically wish Elanor could go to public school half of the day and then do homeschool as well. I am not sure it really works like that though.

Much of what we choose to do will be based on where we live at the time, the teachers at the school and how much I am able to help out at school (my mom did a ton at our school growing up). What do you do/plan to do? Thoughts, please?

Memorizing

Elanor is quite good at memorizing and also seems to enjoy it as well. So, I decided to have her memorize one poem, one Shakespeare speech and one scripture. So far she has done the poem and Shakespeare. We are doing it for "school" but also we have been a bit behind in school ever since having Alice, but I am still trying to do it often. 

Here are two videos of Elanor, the first is "At the Sea-side" by Robert Louis Stevenson and the second is one of Puck's lines from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

The Weekly Photo

I know it is Friday and not Monday, but hey, here is a picture from last week:

Elanor loves picking flowers so I decided we would make a flower journal. We picked flowers, I took a picture of the flower, she drew it in her book and we learned a little something about each flower. She loved it and we have many more pages to fill!

The Weekly Photo

Elanor is so excited we finally finished all of the letters!

We have been working on learning all of the letters since last year, and we did take a break during the summer, but it took awhile! However, we finished last week and hopefully, we will be moving on to bigger and better things like reading soon!

The Weekly Photo

Yes, I know you all have already seen this picture, but last week was rather uneventful and few pictures were taken. Tyler has the car most days and between clinicals, classes and work he is busy for over 80 hours a week. Poor guy. It is taking a toll on all of us and Elanor and I miss him! Also, the air quality has been so poor lately that we hardly go outside. Elanor has been acting up more than usual and I think it is a combination of being cooped up, not seeing Tyler enough and seeing a little too much of me. So far,  three is a lot more difficult than two. She does really love doing school and it has been the highlight of everyday!

Preschool at Home

I am not opposed to preschool or public school, but I am opposed to making school boring and forcing kids to "learn".  Plus, Elanor only recently turned three. I am a big believer in play and developing imagination. I think kids should spend more time playing, exploring and reading/being read to than sitting down and completing work sheets. We read a lot of books in our house and have read to Elanor since birth and that right there has taught her more than many public schools ever could---to love books. 

I wanted to start doing some sort of school with Elanor (back in the fall), but also I did not want to put her in preschool (too expensive) and I also wanted it to be pretty laid back. I do not want to force her into "school", because I want her to love it and not think of it as a chore. I looked at several different blogs on this subject and I liked a lot of the ideas on the blog Mud Hut Mama. So, this fall we started doing "school". Sometimes is was two or three times a week and sometimes only once or not at all. If she did not want to do it, we didn't (she was only two after all). We started by learning some letters. I would cut out the letter and she would glue it on the paper and then we would decorate the letter. I chose to learn lower case letters first since that is what we mostly use and see. I copied several of the Mud Hut Mama's ideas but also have done several of my own.

We went on a "nature walk" (rather the alley behind our house which is rather wild and overgrown) and made this bracelet (which was on the Mud Hut Mama blog). Elanor had a lot of fun finding and sticking things to it.

 We have also practiced counting things, in this case beans:

Here Elanor is with everything we could find around our house that started with the letter "b":

Boot, bear, book, blue pen, battery, bank, butter, blanket.

 Elanor with all the letters we have done thus far.

We have not done them in alphabetical order (she already knows the "abc song"). I started with the first three letters from the blog and then just did whatever one we felt like. Many of the letters we learned because they are in her name. Elanor can now spell her name out loud and can write it (mostly).

Each letter is something that starts with that letter. For example, "p" for princess and "l" for lollipop. I also made up a song using the tune to "C is for Cookie" that helps her to know her letter and what it stands for. For example it starts out, ""O" is for octopus that swims in the sea, "g" is for glitter that looks pretty on me (she wanted that one), "d" is for door and doggie (there is a dog inside the door in the picture), "S" is for snake, ss-ss-ssss". It goes on, but you get the idea! We have also practiced writing the letters and learning their sounds. Elanor remembers more than I expected her to and is loving it. We also have some letter and number puzzles we do for school as well.

Again, this is super laid back, we spend an hour to less on it at a time and we only do it when she wants (she does often ask to do school because she likes it so much).

It has been fun and Elanor keeps telling me she wants to learn how to read (but she still does not know all of her letters yet!). I love that she loves to learn (one of my favorite things to do) but I still think that learning through play, reading, exploring and helping around the house (doing dishes, folding clothes, helping me bake) are still the best ways for toddlers/preschool age kids to learn.

I love the Swedish preschool system (they don't even start formal education until seven--a much better age in my opinion), watch this video about it here:

It is 30 minutes, but worth it!