Quarterly Curriculum November 2013 - January 2014

It's that time of year again where I start working on next quarters curriculum.  So I repost this quarters as a post for my records so I can move on and clean up the "Optimus Prime & Bumblebee" page (and, ultimately the "Scooby-Doo" page as well) to get it ready for next quarter.

This quarter's schedule worked out real well.  I really liked the layout, I liked not having 9 classes a day, I liked not covering everything everyday.  I almost feel like I struck gold.  I only have one (minor) complaint.

Just to give you some background, we always tackle three subjects at once.  When we covered nine subjects that meant three at a time, three times a day.  Now that we are doing seven a day I figured we could do three then four and just do two schoolwork chunks.  No, my kids were not having it.  Three is their magic number.  So, that's the one complaint.  We would do three subjects then our snack, followed by three more subjects and lunch, followed by three subjects - with lots of playtime thrown in to really break up the schedule.  Now we do three subjects then our snack, followed by three more subjects and lunch, followed by one subject... then nothing but lots of complaining because they had to stop playing just to do Spelling.

So, I'm thinking next quarter will be almost the same, but I'm going to have to figure out some nine and six subject days.  So, just a bit of tweaking, that's all.

We'll also stick to just one Concept Week a month, for the first week of the month.  I was thinking about doing Concept Weeks ever other week, but not for this quarter I think.  Maybe next one.

Anyway, here is our current schedule along with all of my observations and notes (half of which somehow got listed above).

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee:

Schoolwork Friday & Saturday, Sunday off, schoolwork on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Thursday off.

Letter Practice - Practicing handwriting, reviewing the alphabet, etc.
Days - Friday & Monday
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Number Practice - Practicing handwriting, working on counting to 100, etc.
Days - Saturday & Tuesday
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Science - Learning about different animals (broken into units) with some reading comprehension thrown into the mix.
Days - Friday & Tuesday
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Animals Grades 1-3 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 1

Spanish - Practicing Spanish vocabulary (broken into different units) and comprehension.
Days - Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Starter Spanish Grades PK-1 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 2

History/Geography - Map reading, directions, land-forms, continents, etc.
Days - Saturday & Tuesday
Textbooks - Beginning Geography Grades K-2 (Evan-Moor), Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources).
Number of Pages - 2

Art - Coloring, painting, activities in coloring books, etc.
Days - Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Cheap coloring books from the dollar store of their favorite cartoon characters, as well as cheap paint with water books.
Number of Pages - 2

Sight Words - Learning the sight words to help with solo reading.
Days - Friday & Tuesday
Textbooks - Sight Word Fun Grade 1 (School Zone).
Number or Pages - 1

Reading Comprehension - Learning to read, as well as some reading comprehension & activities with some short stories.
Days - Saturday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Listen, Read, & Learn Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - Will vary from day to day.

Logic - Same/different, patterns, opposites, mazes, dot-to-dots, word searches, crosswords, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing), generic 1st grade logic workbooks.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Math - Addition, subtraction, fractions, etc with a big emphasis on time and money.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Spectrum Math Grade 1 (Spectrum), Total Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), quite a few Addition, Subtraction, and Time & Money books from Dollar General and Target.
Number of Pages - 2

English - Learning the difference between vowels and consonants, learning how to sound words out, synonyms, antonyms, compound words, rhyming words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, sentences, punctuation marks, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing), and some English workbooks from Target & Dollar General.
Number of Pages - 2

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Total Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 1

Some final notes:

• Why the schedule shake-up?  We don't want this to be boring, here.  Homeschooling is supposed to be fun - not stagnant and boring - and varying the schedule helps keep it that way.
• No more quizzes, book reports, or Quiz Days; Wednesdays will now be a regular schoolwork day.  This stuff may all come back, it may never come back, or maybe part of it will come back - who knows.  I wrote up the schedule deciding that we needed a break from this stuff and didn't tell my kids.  Then on our second to last Quiz Day Bumblebee had a freak out because he "doesn't want to do quizzes anymore."  I was surprised - he usually gets 100% (which just goes to show that he really didn't need it anymore) and the quizzes don't stress him out or anything.  So I told him he only had 2 more days of quizzes then we would be done.  He was relived, and I was glad I had already decided to drop them.
• The first week of each month will just be our "core" subjects (Logic, Math, English & Spelling) and our Concept Week.  Trying to tackle "core" classes, "secondary" classes, and a Concept Week all in one week was too much.  When they were in kindergarten it was no big deal to add on a Concept Week since they only had 4 subjects a day, so every day was a half day and asking them to do a little extra was no big deal.  But we have 12 subjects (granted, not all are covered everyday), and tacking on an extra class with a book and a project was too much. 
• Still no gym class!  Football is going on right now, they are still worried about catching butterflies and beetles in the backyard, and once our obligatory one day of snow comes along they'll be out there making snowballs.  No gym class, just fresh air.
• I came to a decision about mythology during our last Concept Week (Ancient Egypt).  The last thing we need is class #13, so instead we'll just tackle some mythology each quarter in one of our Concept Weeks.  I'm thinking Norse mythology this class.  We'll see.
• I'll start doing one-on-one time to help Optimus Prime & Bumblebee out with learning how to read and anything else that they need help with.  I wanted to start it last quarter but our schedule was too packed.  That's another part of the reason for our current slim-down.

Scooby-Doo:

Scooby Doo isn't preschool age yet, but he loves watching his older brothers do their schoolwork, and he likes to feel involved so I decided to start doing schoolwork fairly regularly with him.  When Optimus Prime & Bumblebee were three we did one page (front and back) of schoolwork everyday.  Since Scooby Doo isn't three yet I'm not going to go with such a set schedule but I do have some rough goals for us to work towards (but not necessarily meet).

• We'll keep doing "Colors & Shapes" workbooks.  We have a rough goal of one page (front and back) everyday.
• We're going to start some "Alphabet" workbooks with the same rough goal of one page (front and back) everyday.  We'll also work on him learning his alphabet song.
• The other day he surprised me by counting to 11.  I was surprised since numbers is something we've never really worked on before.  He further surprised me by pointing to the correct numbers as he was counting.  That might of been a coincidence, but it might not.  I had already decided to do the alphabet with him, and had unpacked those workbooks instead of numbers, so I went through a big internal debate over what to do.  I didn't want to do numbers and letters at the same time when we were already working on getting our colors down (and shapes too, as a secondary goal) so should I repack the alphabet workbooks and pull out the numbers ones?  In the end I decided to stick with the initial plan of working on our alphabet, but we'll also work on counting to twelve everyday.  Then thirteen, then fourteen, etc.
• We'll keep coloring in our coloring books.  Some days he love it, some days he doesn't.  But like I said, these are rough goals.
• Doing three board books with him a day was a big success.  He loved getting read books his level instead of books like The Berenstain Bears all the time, and he loved the "us time."  But lately he's been bringing me harder and harder books to read to him.  Books like Dr. Seuss, Scooby-Doo Readers, The Berenstain Bears, etc. so I'm thinking our new goal will be to read one of those a day instead.

*all page number refer to the front and back of one page.  Example, 1 page means the front and back of one page, 1/2 page means just the front (or just the back) of a page, etc.

Two Week Review: December 6 - 19

(This post is a little late because Christmas for us (or rather Yule) falls on the 21st.  So you can imagine I wasn't in much of a rush to get this post up since I was too busy getting ready, wrapping presents, planning the menu, etc.  All that's done with, however, and the tree is probably coming down today so I decided it was time to catch up on my blogs, so here is this post - up a bit late.)

I'll start with Scooby-Doo since that's what I always do.  These two weeks were the exact same as the last two weeks.  Scooby-Doo really wasn't interested in anything other than reading.  He's also been refusing to count to ten for me with is irritating since I know he knows how to.  He still loves reading books, though, so we've been doing just fine on that front.  I'm thinking we'll take the next two weeks off...  Between Yule, traveling for Christmas, my husbands two week vacation from work, the housework I've been slacking on lately, and Scooby-Doo's current disinterest I think we could use a break.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee have been doing good.  We did Scooby-Doo and Thomas & Friends magazines again for both Handwriting and Reading Comprehension.  We have a stack of them to go through, but we are running out.  Soon we'll have to go back to regular Handwriting and Reading Comprehension sheets.  They loved Science like always.  We finished up Australia and we'll start Africa next week.

Art & Sight Words were the same as always.  In Spanish we learned about the family names & body parts.  None of it really stuck with them.  I'm beginning to think we need to start doing something new with Spanish.

Geography overlapped with Science these last two weeks.  Our last unit in Geography covered different animals that lived on the seven continents, why they lived in certain environments, etc.  Some of it was review, some of it was not since we haven't gotten to those continents in Science yet.  We started (and finished) a new logic book.  It was called Path Quest and frankly it was a complete waste of time even though it said it was for grades 1 & 2.  However, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee enjoyed it even though there was virtually no work involved in it at all.

For Math we did counting by fives & tens followed by shapes & fractions for the whole two weeks.  I did (FINALLY) have some one-on-one time with Optimus Prime where we reviewed counting by tens until he got it down.  Bumblebee can count by ten just fine and he's okay with counting by fives, but Optimus Prime is at a loss with both.  So Optimus Prime & I focused on counting by tens until he got it down.  Next two weeks we'll all focus on counting by fives (like I said, Bumblebee could use some help there too).

We finished up our old English book and started a new one.  This one was largely rhyming words. page after page of writing words that end in -ox, followed by a word search with words that end in -ox, followed by words that ended in -ed, followed by a word search for words that end in -ed, etc.  It was unbelievably boring but it did help them to understand rhyming words better.  Next week we start a new book.  Lastly is Spelling, where we learned about the 5 senses and weather words.

All in all, a good two weeks!

Two Week Review: November 22 - December 5

So, just to let you know we are completely back on schedule.  We made up our couple of days by tacking on an extra subject here and there and now everything's (more or less) fine.

Why "more or less?"  Scooby-Doo has refused to do schoolwork.  Part of me's like "No biggie" another part of me is like "But I want to do the schoolwork with him" and the last part of me is like "Awwww, he says 'no' so cute!!!"  So, my response has been to go ahead and do it with him next to me, and if he joins in great, if he doesn't it's no big deal.  So we sit at the table.  I read the page's to him.  "Look, the flower is yellow!  Can you find the other yellow things on this page?"  Sometimes he joins in with me but usually he just giggles at the sight of me doing his schoolwork for him.  Sometimes I give him the marker but he always just throws it.  I'm pushing on to see if this is just a phase.  He doesn't have to actually start pre-k for another year and a half.  We only started workbooks because he was jealous of his big brothers.  We'll see what happens.  If we stop, we stop.  Like I said, no biggie.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee caught up pretty quick.  It's easy when you slip in an extra page or two here and there, and an extra subject each day.

They enjoyed their Ancient Greece mythology unit (post soon!).  They already knew a little bit so they had fun expanding on their knowledge.  As for everything else, for once I have absolutely zero to talk about.

I know I've mentioned before that we have subscriptions to both Scooby-Doo and Thomas & Friends magazines, but I don't know if I mentioned that we also have a subscription to Friends magazine (all by the same company).  So for Handwriting & Reading Comprehension we did a couple of Friends magazines.

In Science we are still doing Australia.  In Spanish we FINALLY finished our Spanish alphabet.  I can't wait to start something new next week.  In Geography we covered half the continents.  They enjoyed Sight Words, like always.  They were lukewarm towards Art.  I'm thinking Art once a week next quarter, with lots of painting, clay, and plaster molds...

Logic was the same, Math was the same (addition and subtraction), for English we are almost done with our book (next week we finish it up).  I'm going to miss this English book, it was nice and different.  Lately we've been reading short stories and poems and they have to give the story or poem a name and say what they think the main point of it was.  No capital letters, no periods, no sentence structure, no long or short vowels (which to be completely honest sound exactly the same to me half the time), etc.  Also, Spelling (Numbers & Verbs these two weeks) is the same as always.  (Side note - it came to my attention the other day that I only posted 12 Spelling units for this quarter when there are 13 weeks.  I have no idea how this happened, and I'm going to fix this in the next couple of days.)

Lastly, there was nothing to have one-on-one time for, again.  Like I said, absolutely zero to talk about.

Two Week Review: November 8 - 21

This Two Week Review is up late because I got sick during these two weeks and we fell a couple of days behind.  This was followed by Thanksgiving, decorating for Yule, and trying to catch up and not fall further behind.  So, it's been a crazy 3 1/2 weeks, so here is my belated post about the first two of them:

Scooby-Doo is doing fine.  He's counting good, when he feels like it.  He won't say the names of the shapes or colors, but he does recognize the shapes.  I think he might recognize his colors too, but I'm not sure.  He's starting to sort of pick up on his letters.  I caught him with his letters schoolwork book pointing to random letters while saying a different letters name.  So that's progress, I guess.  He's falling out of love with coloring.  He's still crazy about stickers but he'd rather put them all over himself than a piece of paper.  Reading has become his new favorite "subject" (for lack of a better word).  He still likes his workbooks, but he'd rather curl up on the couch with me and read.  I'd rather do that too!  We're currently behind three days since I got sick for three days, but we should catch up soon.

Now onto Optimus Prime & Bumblebee.

We did some fun stuff for Handwriting & Reading Comprehension to take a break from our normal schedule.  I think I mentioned before that they have subscriptions to Scooby-Doo and Thomas & Friends magazines.  So we did the activities and stories in some issues.  It was a nice break.  I think I might do that again for the next Two Week period.

In Science we finished up the South America unit and moved on to Australia.  In Spanish we are still learning the abc's (the Spanish version, obviously).  We should be finishing that next week.  I'll be glad, and I think they will be glad to.  It was a pretty boring unit and the whole thing looked like some preschool abc pages.

In Geography we finished up our Landforms unit and moved onto Oceans & Continents.  Also, apparently we (meaning the U.S.) can't seem to decide how many oceans our planet has.  I know that technically it's just one big ocean, but when I was in grade school I learned that there are five - Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, Indian, & Arctic.  (Side note - it always seemed silly to me that the Pacific got a North & South but the Atlantic didn't.)

When I got to high school (and later on in college) I was told it was four oceans - Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, & Arctic.  This made more sense to me (see side note above), though I was always confused why I learned differently in grade school.

So, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's geography workbook names five oceans - Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern.  I have never heard of the "Southern" Ocean before now.  It is apparently the ocean around Antarctica.  This makes since.  The arctic has it's own ocean, why shouldn't the antarctic.  Why it's not called the Antarctic Ocean confuses me but Southern makes sense too.  What I'm really baffled about, though, is why we can't seem to decide how many oceans we actually have.  Just decide already!  It's not like new oceans are discovered daily here.  We know what the damn planet looks like.  Just decide.  Anyway, that's the end of my rant.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee are finally at the point where they don't want to do coloring books anymore.  They have never been big on coloring books.  Sometimes they bore them, sometimes they don't.  When first grade rolled around I tried buying more age appropriate Coloring & Activity books instead of just straight coloring books - both to shake things up a bit and to help them learn how to do easy word search and crossword puzzles.  However, they've reached the point where they are no longer interested at all.  So we'll finish up this quarter the way it is written (I don't feel like rewriting the whole schedule to drop 16 days of coloring, plus I just bought them some new Santa coloring books for December) but next quarter we'll have to start doing art projects instead, I think.

They like doing a special Sight Words "class."  I really just view it as an easy extension of Spelling.  They are still (thankfully) in love with the Spelling class.  Two pages seems to be the answer to get them to do it.  Logic is a favorite, like always.  We're almost done with our current Logic book.  I'll be glad when we are, it's more kindergarten level than 1st grade.

In Math we've been reviewing time & money like crazy.  They have the basics down, but when we try to move beyond that they start getting confused.  We did all kindergarten time & money sheets for the whole two weeks.  It was a nice review before we get back to regular math.  Next week we start up regular math again, which we'll do for a few weeks, then we'll go back and do some more time & money.

We finished up our English book and will start a new one next week.  The next English book is more of a throw back to the basics, which will be nice.  I'm sick of sentence structure, capitalizing letters, periods, and question marks - and I'm sure my kids are too.

That is pretty much it for these two weeks (well, 1 1/2).  Oh, I forgot.  We were going to start doing some one-on-one time, but there was nothing to do it on!  I figured we'd spend it going over time & money, but since we did kindergarten sheets they pretty much got everything right.  There was nothing at all that they needed help on.  So I guess we'll try again next week.

Concept Week #7: Yule & Christmas

This is going to be a short post because there is honestly not much to say.

This Concept Week was pretty easy.  The point of it was to do some fun Yule/Christmas/winter activities and to learn how other countries celebrate their December (sometimes January) holiday.  It was neat to learn about other versions of Christmas (in the Netherlands it's called Sinterklaas after Santa), what they believe in those countries and how they celebrate.  For instance, in some countries Jesus or the Wise Men leave the presents, in others elves or Santa do.  Then other countries have their own mythical person - like Russia where Grandfather Frost & the Snow Maiden leave the gifts and sometimes have to fight Baba Yaga as she tries to steal them!  As far as bad kids go they don't all get coal - in some countries (like Germany) they get sticks!  Some countries the holiday will last for one day, in others it will last for weeks.  Some countries the holiday is religious, others secular, others a combination.

After we read all about these countries we compared them to how we celebrate.  We talked about how every culture has their own traditions and beliefs and how different families within the same culture will even believe or practice different things.

For our book we read The Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear by Stan & Jan Berenstain (of course it was a Berenstain Bears book!) and for our activity we wrote our letters to Santa.

In the end we picked up some new traditions that my kids want to try out this year.  One they really want to do is a Russian tradition where they make 12 dishes for Christmas Eve dinner to represent the 12 Apostles.  I told them that we will have to figure out something similar for us to do.

If you are interested in the country worksheets they came from education.com (of course!).  Just look up First Grade Christmas worksheets and you'll find them no problem.  Hopefully it will give you some idea to add to your own tradition.  After Yule I'll post about all the new traditions we tried out this year and how they worked out.

Two Week Review: October 25 - November 7

Sorry this post is so late.  My grandmother came & visited while this post was going on.  I like it when she visits, I know my kids get excited when great-grandma comes, but for some reason everything goes sideways when she is here.  Some how, no matter how much I try, every plan I make seems to fly right out the window.  I don't know what it is, we just cannot stay on schedule when she is here.  We'll even get ahead of schedule before she comes and by the time she leaves we are either barely staying on schedule or have fallen ridiculously far behind.  I just do not understand.

Enough about that (for now).

Remember how last post I mentioned that Scooby-Doo can not only count to 11 but also point to the correct numbers while doing it?  And remember how I said I wasn't sure if that was just a coincidence or if he really recognized his numbers?  Well, I have my answer, he actually recognizes his numbers!

First, my aunt mailed a foam clock to my kids to help Optimus Prime and Bumblebee learn to tell time.  Scooby-Doo saw it, stole it, and walked around the house for two days straight pointing to all of the correct numbers and reading them off.  Then, we went to the book store, hit up the kids section, and were wandering through the aisles when he saw the spine of a random chapter book that had a tiny #2 on it (because it was book 2 in a series).  He pointed to the book and started saying "Two!  Two!  Two!" over and over again until I walked over to see what he was talking about.  Once he saw that I was paying attention he said "Two!" one last time, gave me a big grin, and ran off in another direction.

I'm almost sad we're doing letters instead of numbers.

With Optimus Prime & Bumblebee nothing new is going on.  Like I said up above, there was chaos but other than that nothing new.  Despite the chaos we finished up their 1st quarter schedule in record time!  They wanted it over badly, especially when I told them next quarter the work load was lighter.  I'm not going to bother you with the details... okay, I threw out the old schedule with all my notes scribbled on it before I thought to copy them onto this post.

We started 2nd quarter the first week of November.  It was our Concept Week as well, so we only had Math, English, Spelling & Logic.

They loved Logic (of course).  For once they loved Spelling!  They were glad to just do some nice, easy colors sheets.  They are also seriously rejoicing the lack of Spelling quizzes (still).

Math we have FINALLY moved onto some easier stuff.  We're done with adding and subtracting up to 18.  They weren't ready for that yet.  We are now onto greater than/less than, rulers, above/below, number patterns, etc.  Their book is almost finished, middle of next week we'll be starting a new one.  English is the same as always.  Right now it's focusing on sentence structure - capital letters, periods, question marks, exclamation points, etc.

Our Concept Week was Winter Holidays/Christmas.  I'll try to get that post up in the next few days.  They loved it, so I'm glad we did it.  No one-on-one time, I'll save that for a regular schoolwork week.

That's pretty much all I can think of right now.  New update in two weeks.

Concept Week #6: Ancient Egypt

Prepare yourself for lots of pictures!

Like this one.

We were supposed to do Outer Space, but Optimus Prime begged, begged, begged, and BEGGED to do Ancient Egypt instead.  We have (well, had now) a neat kit to make your own pyramids and he's been itching to do it for months.  So, I took pity on him and we did Ancient Egypt.

The kit (pictured above, titled "Amazing Pyramids Art & History Kit" said aged 10 & up, but honestly so long as you are willing to mix the plaster there is no reason for it to be that age range) my mom got for me and my husband YEARS ago, long before our boys were born, on clearance at some store and for some reason we never got around to doing it.  It lived in two previous states with us, collecting dust, so I was more than happy to bust it out and make some pyramids.  That solved the project part of our unit, and for worksheets I went to education.com (would I go anywhere else?) and printed some up about the Ancient Egyptian gods, the pyramids, the lighthouses, the mummies, the Pharaohs... I think you see where this is going.  I was left worrying about the book, but luck was with me, there was a book inside of the kit that had the instructions in it as well as some short stories (seven, to be exact) about how they believed the pyramids were built told from the point of views of the Pharaohs, the chief builders, the priests, and the princes.  So we had a story book in the end.

There was a neat set up with a map and a bunch of plastic pyramids to set up on the map to see where everything was and what size things were in relation to each other.  The plaster was for three of the pyramids, but there was so much extra that we made quite a few more with the plastic pyramids for the map.  After everything dried we painted the plaster pyramids and the plastic ones and set them all up on the map.

Scooby-Doo even got in on this project and happily helped paint some of the pyramids.

It was definitely a very fun project.

1st Grade Spelling Units #14-26

This time around for Spelling I decided to do something different.  They have two workbooks that have pages in them specifically geared towards spelling and vocabulary so I decided that we would do those this quarter - and take a break from spelling quizzes - and then next quarter we'll see about upping their vocab list.  I also decided to do some Sight Words with them, so we now have a "class" dedicated to that.  Some of the sight words we already did but I figure that is no big deal, it'll be review.

So we will work on their spelling words five days a week and their sight words two days a week (a new sight word each day).  Here are the lists for those two subjects.

Spelling (words in parentheses are ones that we have already done):

Unit #14 - Colors & Food
orange
yellow
brown
(green)
(red)
(blue)
bread
cookie
apple
(cake)
(milk)
(egg)

Unit #15 - Vehicles
car
truck
train
bike
plane

Unit #16 - Clothes
shirt
pants
jacket
socks
shoes
dress
hat

Unit #17 - Numbers
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten

Unit #18 - Verbs
sleep
run
make
ride
play
stop

Unit #19 - 5 Senses
taste
touch
small
hear
(see)

Unit #20 - Weather Words
sun
rain
water
wet
hot
snow

Unit #21 - Nature
tree
grass
flower
pond
sand
sky

Unit #22 - Body Parts
head
arms
legs
feet
hands

Unit #23 - Opposites
old
new
big
little
lost
found

Unit #24 - Verbs Part 2
paint
catch
color
eat
grow
fly

Unit #25 - People Words
man
woman
people
children
they
(boy)
(girl)
(he)
(she)

Unit #26 - Days of the Week*
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

Sight Words (broken up by week):

all
and

at
big

can
come

down
fun

go
had

he
her

it
in

like
little

look
make

me
on
play

* Note - This post originally did not contain Spelling Unit #26.  I had miscounted the weeks and thought that there were only 12 weeks to this quarter.

Two Week Review: October 11 - 24

Big news for Scooby-Doo, but not much for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee.

Scooby-Doo knows how to count to 11.  I had no idea that he knew his numbers.  He has never said a single number to me ever, then out of nowhere I can hear him counting.  I was stunned.  Then, I was even more stunned when he pointed to the correct numbers in his brother's schoolwork and counted them out.  I'm not sure if he actually recognized his numbers, though, or if was just a coincidence.  Anyway, counting out loud was a source of great amusement to him for about three days, and now he refuses to say any number at all.  Sigh.

This led to a big debate over what to do with next quarter's schedule.  I had already written it up to do Colors & Shapes as well as the Alphabet with him.  I debated for a few days about tossing our Alphabet schedule and writing up a numbers one instead, but I decided he knows how to count, it's time to focus on his abc's.

As for his Colors and Shapes schoolwork, it's the same as always.  Even if it wasn't the same nothing I have to say could top him counting (in my book, at least).

Meanwhile, I have nothing super exciting to report for Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.  We did our Ancient Egypt Concept Week (I know Outer Space was on the schedule, but Optimus Prime begged to do Ancient Egypt instead - we'll do Outer Space next quarter) and that post will go up as soon as I have the time to do it.

Handwriting was the same as always.  I'm thinking about dropping it soon.  Not next quarter, we still have a bunch of pages in their old kindergarten workbooks that we never got around too, but as soon as those workbooks are finished up we're dropping the class.

Spanish we finished up our Shapes and moved on to the Spanish alphabet, which is just pages of practicing letters (in Spanish, honest).  More handwriting, sigh.

Science is onto Central and South American animals.  Geography is still landforms.  Logic and Art are the same as always.

We finished up our English book and are onto another one.  I'm loving the new English book because it deals with very simple and basic sentences, which means they usually get to read the sentences out loud to practice their reading and sounding out words.

We got through Math okay.  Optimus Prime panicked, just like I said he would.  Next week it gets even harder when they have to add to totals greater then 10 and subtract from numbers greater than 10.  That means no fingers for help.  I don't think either one of them are ready but we'll do them anyway.

Spelling was the same as always and for Reading we did the short story "The Magic Fish" and had some reading comprehension pages to go along with it.

Looking forward to starting our new quarter soon.

1st Grade Reading List Part 2 & Book Reports

So my reading plan for last quarter was a bit of a success.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee learned quite a few words and picked up on a ton of sight words that we didn't cover.  They do a decent job of reading Level 1 books on their own.  They still need help, they aren't quite there yet, but I feel like we are making real progress so I'm happy.  Hopefully they will have Level 1 books down on their own by the end of this next quarter, but I'm not going to push.  I want them to enjoy reading, not find it stressful.

Since we're making progress, and to avoid boredom, I decided to make some changes in our Reading/Reading Comprehension schedule and to our book goals.

First, for the next quarter we will just be doing Reading Comprehension.  I have a bunch of one page worksheets with simple sentences in a paragraph that you read and answer questions about.  We'll be doing those, where they can practice their reading with help from me and each other.  We'll also work on our large Reading Comprehension workbook.

For our individual book goal we won't have one.  I'll work on the Level 1 books with them in our one-on-one time, but it won't be strictly limited to that. I'm trying to make this upcoming quarter easier than our last one.  There are a bunch of holidays - Halloween (the day before the quarter starts), Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's - a bunch of sugar, relatives, traveling, big meals, baking, excitement, decorating, and shopping.  We'll work on reading in our one-on-one time (as well as whenever they want to of course!), and we'll keep working on Level 1 books together, but I'm not going to force a goal on them, not with everything else going on.

We're also going to drop the Book Reports for this quarter.  I'd like to bring them back next quarter, but we'll see.  They did like doing them, but it was too much writing for them - especially when I had to spell most of the stuff out.

One thing that is not changing, however, is our family book goal.  And here it is:

• Clue Jr: The Case of the Secret Message
• Clue Jr: The Case of the Stolen Jewel
• Clue Jr: The Case of the Chocolate Fingerprints
• The Magic School Bus: The Truth About Bats
• The Magic School Bus: The Search for the Missing Bones
• The Magic School Bus: The Wild Whale Watch
• Pokemon Junior: A Pokemon Snow-Down
• Pokemon Junior: Snorlax Takes a Stand
• Pokemon Junior: Bellossom's Big Battle
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Television Monster
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Living Doll
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Batty Vampire
• Scooby-Doo's Super Case Book 2

We're going to start some new series, which I'm excited about!

Quarterly Curriculum August-October 2013

I completely forgot to post this after I was finally done updating (back in September) so now I'm stuck posting it today since I want to start updating the Optimus Prime & Bumblebee and Scooby-Doo pages.

First, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's curriculum for the past thee months:

School on Friday & Saturday, off on Sunday, school on Monday & Tuesday, weekly quizzes and review on Wednesday, off on Thursday.

Letter Practice - Practicing handwriting, reviewing the alphabet, etc.
Days - Friday & Monday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic letters and/or words workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Number Practice - Practicing handwriting, working on counting to 100, etc.
Days - Saturday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic numbers workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Spanish - Practicing Spanish vocabulary (broken into different units) and comprehension.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Starter Spanish Grades PK-1 (American Education Publishing)
Number of Pages - 2

Science - Learning about different animals (broken into units) with some reading comprehension thrown into the mix.
Days - Friday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Animals Grades 1-3 (American Education Publishing)
Number of Pages - 1

English - Learning the difference between vowels and consonants, learning how to sound words out, synonyms, antonyms, compound words, rhyming words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, sentences, punctuation marks, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - English Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Total Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources)
Number of Pages - 2

Math - Addition, subtraction, time, measuring, fractions, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Spectrum Math Grade 1 (Spectrum)
Number of Pages - 2

History/Geography - Map reading, directions, land-forms, continents, etc.
Days - Saturday & Monday
Quizzes - The Wednesday after the unit ends
Textbooks - Beginning Geography Grades K-2 (Evan-Moor)
Number of Pages - 1

Reading & Reading Comprehension - Learning to read level 1 books, as well as some reading comprehension & activities with some short stories.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - A book report due every Wednesday
Textbooks - Listen, Read, & Learn Grade 1 (American Education Publishing) for the reading comprehension stories and activities, Step Into Reading Level 1 books for learning how to read.
Number of Pages - Will vary from day to day.

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - No set textbook, however Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing) has a spelling unit section that I will be pulling pages from and Brain Quest Workbook: Kindergarten (Brain Quest) has a spelling section that I plan on using.  I have also printed up sheets from education.com and schoolexpress.com to go along with the spelling units.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Logic - Same/different, patterns, opposites, mazes, dot-to-dots, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday (twice), Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), generic 1st grade logic workbooks
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Art - Coloring, painting, activities in coloring books, etc.
Days - Saturday & Monday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Cheap coloring books from the dollar store of their favorite cartoon characters, as well as cheap paint with water books
Number of Pages - 2

Why are all subjects not covered everyday?  Why are some subjects skipped?

• I don't want to overload them their first quarter.  They're going to have enough on their plate as it is.
• Also, do we really need to cover some of these subjects everyday?  And I'm not just talking about Logic and Art.  Our Science book is neat, and it talks about a different animal on every page, but do we really need to learn about a new animal everyday?  Or should we take some time to make sure they have some other concepts down?  Their Geography book is neat, and doing more would of been nice, however it's a short book and I'm not sure how well they will understand it at first.  To even things out and because of the lack of pages in the book it just made sense to only cover this subject twice a week.
• Why is there no gym?  Someone asked me this the other day so here's my response: they already get plenty of exercise!  They play sports, they do yoga, we go to the pool, we take walks, we are signing them up for football soon - why on earth do we need a gym class?!?
• No mythology still?  Too true.  I'm working on this problem.  I'm having a hard time finding stuff for 1st graders.  I might just have to make something myself.
• Where did Arts & Crafts Day go?  Well, this isn't kindergarten anymore!  I'm not saying we will never do arts & crafts again, but we won't have a whole day dedicated to it anymore.  We needed to make room for all of the quizzes that they will be doing, and a day to write up and review their book reports.  I'm hoping that their book reports will help them learn how to read and right now reading is my biggest priority, more than anything else.  
• Where did Magazine Day go?  It also got tossed.  Like I said, this isn't kindergarten anymore.  We'll still read the magazines and do the activities in them, it just won't be for school anymore.

Scooby-Doo's original post about our goals for the past three months:

Scooby Doo isn't preschool age yet, but he loves watching his older brothers do their schoolwork, and he likes to feel involved so I decided to start doing schoolwork fairly regularly with him.  When Optimus Prime & Bumblebee were three we did one page (front and back) of schoolwork everyday.  Since Scooby Doo isn't three yet I'm not going to go with such a set schedule but I do have some "Colors & Shapes" workbooks that I picked up for him at the dollar store.  I figure we'll tackle however many pages he wants each day, whether it is zero pages or ten pages.

I also set a book goal for us.  We read everyday as a family (see our Reading List page) and I'll read any book to them that they bring me, but I decided that Scooby Doo needs some more "us time" to read more board books together so that is one of our goals for the next three months.  We'll set aside time everyday to read three books together, without his brothers.

Average for everyday of the past three months:

• 1 page from a "Colors & Shapes" workbook (Dora, Care Bears, Minnie Mouse, and generic).
• 3 pages (front and back) coloring books.
• 3 board books a day

*all page number refer to the front and back of one page.  Example, 1 page means the front and back of one page, 1/2 page means just the front (or just the back) of a page, etc.

Concept Week #5: Seasons & Weather

So I logged in this morning to talk about Ancient Egypt and work on putting up our new schedule when I realized that I never put up a post about Seasons & Weather.

Whoops.

So, a quick post about this topic (since it's really rather self-explanatory).

Like I said before, this Concept Week was an extension of the previous one, Calendars.

I found a TON of worksheets at education.com talking about seasons, however they were mostly about the holidays that occur during the seasons.  It worked out, though, since I was able to tie in what the holidays meant, and why they were celebrated when they were.  They also had some weather worksheets, but most of them were above my boys or were supposed to be done over the course of a month, so I only printed up a few.

It wound up being a really easy unit, but truthfully that worked out perfectly for us since we had just recovered from falling behind and were looking at doing Ancient Egypt within a few days.

We had another jigsaw puzzle book (called "Wonderful Weather") for our project.  For our story book we used Chip's Favorite Season by Scholastic.  It's a short, rhyming book that talks about how all the seasons are Chip's (from Disney's Beauty and the Beast) favorite for different reasons.  The book actually worked better than some of the worksheets, since the season's weather was fully described.

Even though the unit was real easy and didn't quite work out the way I was planning on I'm still glad we did it.  My kids definitely needed a refresher on some things, and for other things they didn't realize or never made the connection before.

Two Week Review: September 27 - October 10

You know I completely forgot about this post.  It's a good thing that I had most of it written up already and I only had to polish it up a bit, otherwise I would of had no clue what I was supposed to be talking about!

So, Scooby-Doo is completely caught up according to his "schedule."  He's back to liking coloring books.  He'll color in them, put stickers in them, give the pages polka dots instead of coloring them... whatever, at least he doesn't hate them anymore!  I guess it was just that Batman coloring book that he didn't like.

I wrote up the new schedule and I've decided to start doing Alphabet workbooks with him next quarter, on top of his Colors & Shapes workbooks.

Lastly, Scooby-Doo has gone book crazy these past two weeks.  Instead of one favorite book he now has a dozen.  He follows me around the house carrying at least one of them, demanding that I read it to him no matter what I'm doing.  So far the only place he hasn't ambushed me is the shower!

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee did their September Concept Week - we did Seasons & Weather.  I'll work on getting the post up in the next couple of days here.

Nothing really new went on in the way of curriculum.

Handwriting is Handwriting.  In Spanish we did Shapes (let me tell you that Colors unit was unbearably LONG!).  Science we learned about Asian animals.  We're onto landforms in Geography, which they are really excited about.  They really love Geography.  Logic and Art are the same - they love Logic and always want to do more, Art they are indifferent on.

We're almost done with our English book, which is nice because it means we can move onto something new.  I was both glad and irritated that our current English book is the same as our last one.  On one hand I'm like "That's sheer laziness on the publishing companies part" but on the other hand I'm like "Thank goodness we can go over these exact same pages again since only half of it sunk in the first time."

We started a new Math book and had nothing but easy review pages.  It was a nice break, but next week starts with real Math pages and I'm cringing while looking at some of them.  It's all stuff they know, and Bumblebee will do fine, but the pages have a lot of problems on them and I'm worried about Optimus Prime getting frustrated and just giving up.  Math is not his strongest subject.  There are pages in there that are nothing but 36 addition and/or subtraction problems with no pictures for help.  Bumblebee will see it as a challenge to get through the whole page on his own, and he'll get at least 75% of them right.  Optimus Prime will either be relieved that he's getting his brothers help or he'll panic.  We'll see.

Spelling had a change.  I decided to drop the Spelling quiz.  I decided to try something different next quarter for Spelling, and that included dropping the quizzes, so I decided to take pity on them and figured their last four quizzes they don't have to do.  We'll see how it works.

Big news in Reading/Reading Comprehension!  Optimus Prime is starting to guess what sentences say based on the words he does know and the picture on the page!  I'm excited.  He might not be super good at Math, but he has other strengths - like Spanish and Reading.

Thoughts On Unschooling

I just found this blog today, by following a link on facebook, and on it I found this very interesting post about unschooling and this (also interesting) post about unschooling (same blog, a very good blog too from my glance, I want to add).  After reading these posts it got me thinking about the schedule that I just wrote up for next quarter (and haven't gotten around to posting yet because it's still a bit too early, start looking in a week) and some of the big changes I had made to it - and it also got me thinking about unschooling in general.

For those of you who don't know unschooling is one of the most controversial, misrepresented, and misunderstood (by both the pubic and, oddly, unschoolers) form of homeschooling that there is.  Essentially what unschooling is, is homeschooling by following your child's interests.  There really is no structure, you just let your child play, learn, and explore largely on their own but with you there every step of the way to guide them, support them, and nudge them if you have to.  You don't force, you don't threaten, you don't write up lesson plans, and you don't quiz or test.

I say that it is misunderstood because a lot of people - unschoolers included - believe it means a completely hands-off approach to homeschooling your child.  You don't do anything with them, they have to figure out everything on their own or you only teach them when they ask, you never check on their progress, you never make sure they are actually learning anything, etc.  Some unschoolers don't even read books to their babies because they argue that they are waiting for their child to show an interest in reading and books.

This could not be further from the truth.  True unschoolers may not buy textbooks and force their kids to sit at the table for six hours a day with a lunch and recess break, but they are VERY involved in their child's learning process.  They go out of their way to provide their kids with the resources and tools that they need to learn, they step back and watch, and step in to help when needed.

With all that said, while we have a semi-structured schedule and workbooks I actually do consider myself an unschooler.  Some unschoolers probably would not consider me one, and that's fine, everyone does have their own opinion about what unschooling is or means and even though I just wrote a couple of paragraphs about "real unschoolers"  there are some unschoolers out there that stand by their refusal to read to their kids so that their kids can figure it out on their own.

Just like with everything else there is a right, a left, and a middle ground.  There is no one right definition for every single person, and what it ultimately comes down to is unschooling is about doing what works best for you and your family even if it's the exact opposite of what other unschoolers do.

Which is why I consider myself an unschooler even though we have a schedule, workbooks, and quizzes.

We do this because, as I've explained to my kids before, I want them to have a good foundation for when they play, learn, and explore.  When we did our Dinosaur Concept Week Bumblebee learned even more about dinosaurs then he already knew.  Optimus Prime is always picking up new Spanish words and he uses them around the house in place of the English ones.  We just finished up our Seasons Concept Week and my kids learned about Kwanzaa and Hanukkah because of it, holidays that I didn't even think to mention to them because we know no one who celebrates them.  As a matter of fact, they decided to make Hanukkah cards to mail to Santa!  In our Science book we learn about animals from all over the world, animals that I had never even heard of before we started.  Geography taught them how to read maps, something that they had asked me multiple times to show them how to do.

All of their structured schoolwork is based on their desire to learn these topics - even the dreaded Spelling lessons!  They might hate Spelling, but they are desperate to learn how to read, they are so eager and impatient, so while they might hate writing out their spelling words they are so proud of themselves when they get them down and are able to pick the word out of a book all on their own.

My kids LOVE workbooks.  They love getting reward stickers on the pages they do really good on.  They love when I ask them questions about what we just learned and they get to show off how smart they are.  They love discussing a topic (sometimes to death!) after we've just learned about it.  They love debating, forming opinions, thinking things through that weren't mentioned in the books, and making (quasi-educated) guesses.

One day we will drop the workbooks because we won't need them anymore.  One day they will be able to completely read on their own, figure out math problems on their own, etc and sitting at the table to fill in workbook pages about addition, handwriting, dinosaurs or lemurs will just seem silly.  Yes, we'll still have some sort of basic structure to our homeschooling, but they will have the basic foundation that they need to go new places without me holding their hand anymore.  Workbooks?  Nope.  Quizzes?  Nope.  Book goals?  Maybe.  Book reports?  Maybe.  Zoo and museum trips?  Yes.  Discussing and debating books we have read?  Yes.  Discussing and debating current news stories?  Yes.  Discussing and debating every other new thing we learned?  Yes!

So while we can debate til the cows come home just how far you should take unschooling one way or the other, what it is really about is teaching your child all of the topics that they yearn to learn in the way that works best for you and your child.

Two Week Review: September 13 - 26

Some how I missed putting up this post even though I wrote it almost a week ago...  Oops!

A lot has happened since our last two week review, with some exciting Scooby-Doo news!

So first, Scooby-Doo.

He's still a little behind, but like I said before his schoolwork schedule is really more of a guideline then anything else.  But, for some exciting news for him I think he might be getting his shapes down.  He's not saying the name of the shapes, but his Minnie Mouse workbook covers each shape on a two page spread.  So we practice the shape (with me holding his hand and guiding him) on the first page and then the second page has a mixture of shapes and you are only supposed to color in the shape you just reviewed.  Well, he'll put his finger on the shape on the first page and use that too help him color in about half the correct shapes on the second page.  He'll then stop checking back and forth between the pages and proceeds to color in ALL the remaining shapes, but hey, it's a step in the right direction!  Trying to get him to color in a coloring book was like getting your teeth pulled.  He wanted nothing to do with it, even though it was a Batman coloring book and he loves Batman.  Optimus Prime and Bumblebee actually colored in the whole thing with Scooby-Doo gracing each page with one minuscule scribble...

Soon I have to start planning out next quarter.  He loves doing his Color & Shapes workbooks, so I won't stop those, but I'm thinking that I do need to start adding onto what he does.  Especially if he is going to start doing his Color & Shapes workbooks correctly.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee are completely caught up.  We had quite a few days of major cramming going on, days where there were fights because they were kept at the table longer than usual, but in the end we got it all done by the 25th.  Let me just say that I hope we never get three days behind again!

Also, we did not do the September Concept Week.  We had so much extra work to do trying to cram in the three missing days that it never got done.  We will start it next week so all's well that end's well, I guess.

No exciting news here, but, oddly, a lot of endings.

Handwriting is the same as always.  Sigh.

In Spanish we finally (thankfully) finished the Colors Unit.  Next week we'll move onto shapes.

In Science we finished our North America Unit and start Asia next week.  They're excited about that.

Our current English book is actually has the exact same pages as our previous English book.  It also has new pages and everything is all mixed up.  So even though the pages are largely review that's working out okay.  They missed a lot of concepts the first time we went over them and they are now starting to sink in the second time around.

Math is going pretty good.  We finished up the first half of our current book and start a new book next week.  The second half of our book is all adding and subtracting double digits.  Bumblebee might be ready for that but Optimus Prime definitely is not.  So we'll save it for another quarter.

We finished our first Unit in Geography.  We are done with maps & compasses and move onto land forms next week.

Reading is also the same as always.  One change is that I decided to drop the Reading Quiz.  Now that they realize they can read a bit on their own I don't think we need me to print up sentences for them to read anymore.  Hopefully instead they'll start picking up on sentences in their books.  We still have the Book Reports, but I'm thinking that we'll do them differently next quarter...  I'm also thinking that we might need to start tackling some sight words worksheets to go along with our reading...

For old Spelling words that they just could not get down I made up a bunch of worksheets for them as extra work.  They grumbled, but they did them and I dropped those words from their quizzes.  They did pretty good on their new spelling units.

Logic and Art are the same as always.  They also finished both of those books and start new ones next week.

Lastly we finished up Dinosaur Cove.

Like I said, a week of endings for Optimus Prime and Bumblebee - we finished three units, two books, and a book series!

Hopefully next week things will get back on track.

Dinosaur Cove

We have (finally) finished the Dinosaur Cove books!  I am a bit sad to see them go since Bumblebee really liked them...

Synopsis - Dinosaur Cove follows the adventures of best friends Jamie & Tom and their dinosaur friend Wanna.  Jamie & Tom find a hidden tunnel that leads to the past where they can visit real dinosaurs.  While there they meet a Wannanosaurus and become friends with him.  Together they travel around and observe dinosaurs first hand.

(Note - This series has quite a few books spanning over four series with a few extra double length books as well.  However, only the six books of the first series (the Cretaceous Adventures) and the first three books of the second series (the Jurassic Adventures) have been published in the U.S., and they have been published as one series - not two.  None of the other books or series have been.  You can get them used online however at this time we are not doing that for two reasons.  #1 is that they only came out a few years ago and I want to see if they will change their minds and release the rest since there is customer demand.  #2 is I figured we could use a break from Dinosaur Cove for a bit and focus on the stack of books that we currently have sitting on our bookcase waiting for us to read - including more Scooby-Doo books, more Pokemon books, and some Magic Tree House books.  We will eventually get around to buying them and once we do and read them I'll put up a new, revised, posts - one for each series.  So for now, this post is only about the books released in the U.S.)

Ash Falcon - "These books were amusing and a very light read.  They were pretty ridiculous, though, so if you are reading them to your kids prepare for some eye-rolling on your part.  Let's just say that you have to suspend your disbelief (in regards to dinosaur reality) a bit while reading them.  I'd say a 4/5."

Optimus Prime - "The books were good, but #8 was scary!  Remember the monster [plesiosaur] was biting holes in the board?"

Bumblebee - "They were really, really nice and all of them were good!  #8 was my favorite."

Dinosaur Cove by Rex Stone

1. Attack of the Tyrannosaurus
2. Charge of the Triceratops
3. March of the Ankylosaurus
4. Flight of the Quetzalcoatlus
5. Catching the Velociraptor
6. Stampede of the Edmontosaurus
7. Saving the Stegosaurus 
8. Swimming with the Plesiosaur
9. Tracking the Diplodocus

The Chores Dilema

So I've been mulling this post over in my head for the past week or so and I've decided to give it a go even though it's not exactly about homeschooling.  Chores, though, can be a bit like Home Economics.  I never had Home Ec. when I went to school - as a matter of fact I don't even know if it's taught anymore - and while I was glad when I was in high school once I moved out of my parents house I was a bit sorry that it was never an option.  I still remember the look on my future husband's face when I told him I had no clue how to work a washing machine.  The shock and disbelief on his face would of been hilarious if I had been joking, but I wasn't so instead it was just plain embarrassing.  Same with the time I had to tell him that the toilet wouldn't flush and could he come and fix it, please?  The problem?  The chain fell off of the handle.  I had no clue that the handle was even attached to a chain.  And while "How To Fix A Toilet" or "How To Operate A Washing Machine" were probably not topics covered in Home Ec., the class would of (ideally) taught me some of the things you need to know to function as an adult in the world.

Before that moment with the washing machine I was rather proud of my lack of skills.  I looked down on women who cooked homemade meals, who sewed, who stayed home and took care of their families, etc.  I mean, the 1950's were over with!  Feminism had happened!  Didn't women realize that they could be anything that they wanted to be?!?  Why on earth would you cook a homemade meal when you can eat food out of a box or a can?  Who would want to sew their own clothes when they could just go buy some from the store?  Who would deliberately chose to be stuck home all day caring for their family?  Not me!  No thank you!  Work a washing machine?  Why would I need to know how to do that - oh, wait, that's right.  To have clean clothes.  Huh.  I don't think I thought this feminism thing through that well...

Yeah.  It was an eye opener all right.

Now, I'm the exact thing that I scorned at when I was 18.  I stay home, take care of my family, cook homemade meals, and even know how to work a sewing machine - and I love all of those things.  Life's funny like that, I guess.

So, when my kids grow up and move out I want them to know how to work a washing machine and how to cook something that doesn't come out of a can.  They don't have to learn how to work a sewing machine if they don't want to, but they do need to know some basic skills and chores are the perfect place to start at.

Until this week Optimus Prime and Bumblebee's chores were pretty basic.  Clean their bedroom, pick up their mess in the living room, feed the dogs, wipe up their bathroom sink with a washcloth at least twice a week, put away their laundry and rinse dishes for me when I wash them.

(Yes, I hand wash dishes.  Don't hate.)

This past week I decided to shake up their chores for two reasons:

1. They are getting so bored doing the same chores over and over again that they are starting to complain.  This does not help me out at all and turns a five minute chore into an hour long stressful event.
2. They need to learn different skills.

So they still have to clean their bedroom, pick up their mess in the living room, feed the dogs, put away their laundry and wipe down their bathroom sink.  But now they also have to sweep the kitchen floor and help me make lunch and dinner.

It's still all pretty basic.  Nothing crazy.  But all of it is building blocks to bigger chores and functioning on their own one day when they are an adult.  Cleaning their room turns into making their bed which turns into changing the sheets on their bed.  Cleaning up the living room turns into vacuuming the living room.  Rinsing dishes turns into washing dishes.  Feeding the dogs turns into walking the dogs.  Cleaning up dirty laundry turns into washing laundry.  Putting away clean clothes turns into folding clothes.  Helping to make dinner turns into cooking dinner on your own.  Or, at least it does if you provide your kids with the tools to build upon and learn those skills.

Chores are important.  I used to think that they were a huge burden that the parents were supposed to do while you were busy hanging out with your friends, and my parents never really did anything to make me see them in any other light.  Yes, I had chores growing up but I really resented them.  To my teenager mind the only chore I should of been in charge of doing was cleaning my own room (which, truthfully, was usually pretty clean).  My parents never took the time to sit me down and explain how unfair my expectations or beliefs were.  Now I see that not only does everyone need to pull their own weight but that if they never strive to do more then the bare minimum they are setting themselves up for failure.  Like my lack of washing machine and toilet skills.  

So what do they get for doing chores?  Aside from living in a clean house that runs somewhat smoothly?

They make $3 a week (each) that they can spend on any toy, movie, or book that they please.  If they refuse to do their chores there is a penalty of 30 cents for the first chore and 10 cents for every chore after that.  Also, as an added incentive to not waste their money on toys and movies (not that I have any problem with toys and movies they just have so many already that I cringe every time they buy more) if they buy a book their dad an I go halves with them.  Just the other day Bumblebee wanted to spend his money on the last Dinosaur Cove book.  The book cost $4, he spent $2 and I spent $2.  It was a win-win as far as I was concerned.  He only had to spend one weeks money on it and he had change leftover, and there was one less toy in the house for me to trip over.

Like I said - win-win.

Concept Week #4: Calendars

Ugh, I have to say that as glad as I am that we did this for a Concept Week it was painful.  Part of the problem was settling into a new schoolwork schedule.  Another problem was all the house work going on at the same time.  Plus everyone started to get sick right towards the end.  But the biggest problem of all was I made too many worksheets.  After day two (both day one and two we only did half of the calendar schoolwork for each day) Optimus Prime fully understood the calendar and was officially bored.  After day three, where we tried to catch up but didn't really succeed, Bumblebee pretty much had it down.  Then I was stuck with three and a half days of calendar sheets that they didn't want to do and I didn't want to just throw out.  So we did them anyway, which meant a lot of whining, which meant we only did a few sheets at a time, which meant it got dragged out longer than it should have, which meant even more whining...

You can see how this is shaping up, right?

However, we survived, and they now fully understand calendars.  They also never want to look at another one again, but they understand them.

I'll consider it a win.

The sheets were pretty cool, actually, and for right now you can find them here.  This link might not be good forever, though, so I will tell you that they came from education.com - if you go there and search for calendar worksheets CURRENT ones will pop up.  They only keep them up for two years, then they pull them down and put up new ones.  So as of this exact moment you can only get September 2011 - September 2013.  Next month September 2011 will be pulled down and October 2013 will go up.  The link is for all the 2012 calendars, so like I said it might not be good forever.

For our project I printed up a calendar for October and November, also from education.com.  They have a neat set called "Create a Calendar" where you print up blank calendars for the year and fill them in.  I had them each take a month and fill in our schedule for the month with pictures.  So we now have football practice, holidays, and other events mapped out for the next two months.

For a book I had to get creative.  I could not seem to find a kids book that dealt with calendars.  I found seasons books, but that did me no good, especially since we already own one of those and I'm using it for our next Concept Week.  I did find a book on amazon.com called "The Berenstain Bears The Whole Year Through: With Earth Saver Tips and Things to Do for Each and Every Month of the Year."  I was intrigued, however there was no photo up to show me what the product looked like, and no reviews or descriptions up either.  And for a price tag of $20-689 (yes, you read that right) I wasn't even remotely interested in finding out how the book was.  So I had to order "The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Pressure" by Stan and Jan Berenstain and hope it was good enough.  Since the book did kind of deal with calendars it worked out okay.  The plot was the Bear Family was trying to cram too much stuff into their schedule, which was causing them stress.  I was able to tie the book into our lesson by pointing out how we use calendars to properly schedule our time so we can make sure we have the time to do the things we need to do (like schoolwork) and the things we like doing (like football).

So it worked out in the end.

Two Week Review: August 30 - September 12

Another two weeks over, and despite waking up sick this morning it looks like I might get this one up in time.

So, for some random info Optimus Prime brought something home and was really sick for about 48 hours.  No big deal.  He got better almost immediately then passed it onto Bumblebee and Scooby-Doo, both of whom have been sick for over a week now, Bumblebee especially.  He even lost his voice for three days.  Sigh.  Optimus Prime has been fine since the initial 48 hours, just really tired.  Then, this morning I wake up sick and Bumblebee is STILL doing bad (at least he got his voice back yesterday).  Needless to say we have not gotten much schoolwork done this past week.  As of this moment we are officially three days behind with no end in sight to whatever this is that's kicking around the house.  So here goes...

We FINALLY finished up our first Concept Week for this quarter.  We did calendars, and I'll post about it in a couple of days.  We'll start seasons in a few days, I want to finish off our Week 6 schoolwork first, which we'll hopefully finish off tomorrow...

Scooby-Doo was a trial this past week.  We actually did nothing but read books and are technically a week behind in his workbook.  He was happy with his workbook (Dora Colors & Shapes again) up until he got sick.  As for coloring and stickers - both are totally out.  Stickers now go on the body instead of paper and he likes to position the marker in my hand and make me scribble on the pages instead of doing it himself.  I explained to him that I already know how to color, but he wasn't interested in what I had to say.  Bumblebee decided that I needed some "help" with getting Scooby-Doo to do his schoolwork, so he colored and put stickers all over the coloring book pages for Scooby-Doo.  Scooby-Doo saw that as an invitation to either run away or freak out, depending upon his mood.  Right now I'm content to let Scooby-Doo fall behind.  Our homeschooling goals for him are more guidelines than set in stone, and since he's been sick this past week he has wanted nothing to do with schoolwork and everything to do with cuddling and napping.  Plus, I know he'll catch up quick once he feels better - he loves his Dora workbooks and next is a Minnie Mouse one and I'm sure he'll be equally excited to do that one as well.

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, like I said before, are also sick.  Bumblebee actually has been completely housebound.  I wouldn't let him go to football practice or anything.  Optimus Prime made it to practice two out of three days but it really wore him out.  Despite being sick, however, we actually have managed to stay almost on schedule.

Handwriting is the same as always.  Sloppy for Optimus Prime, varying between neat, okay, and sloppy for Bumblebee.

We are behind in Spanish.  I was planning on having the colors unit finished up by now, but with them being sick it hasn't happened.  Actually, I don't think we did any Spanish at all this last week...

We are behind in Science, however our Science book (which covers animals by continent) likes to do an in-depth look at an animal or two for each unit and this last week we got to do that twice, so they were really excited.  There's a book you get to rip out and staple together.  Then you read it and color it.  They love doing that and they were thrilled that they got to do it twice in one week.  So there was a bright spot.

We finished off our first Math and English textbooks and should of started new ones yesterday, but like I said we are a little behind.

Math we went over fractions, time, and money.  They did good on fractions and telling time by the hour.  Once we got into the half-hour things got confusing.  Bumblebee kept reading the hour wrong and Optimus Prime just started making things up when reading the clocks.  We need to work on this some more.  Our kitchen has a little digital clock that I use when cooking, so I'm thinking maybe I should get an analog clock to help them out. The only one we have in the house is my watch, which is always missing since I never wear it.  They understood the concept of pennies and one dollars, but anything more than that just confused them.  They said that they understood a nickel equals five cents or five pennies, but when it came down to it they just did not understand counting by fives to count the nickels.  They wanted to say five nickels equals five cents, not twenty-five cents.  We have some Disney Time and Money workbooks, and I'm thinking next quarter we need to pull them out and really work on the concepts of time and money.

As for English we worked on sentences - telling and asking ones - punctuation, and word order.  There was a LOT of writing, more than they are used to.  The unit was really designed for a first grader that knows how to read.

They loved Geography, of course.  We just finished map keys and symbols and are currently onto map borders.

Reading was a little different.  For the past week and a half we read the story The Little Red Hen from a workbook and did the activities that went along with it.  It was a nice break from trying to teach them how to read.  On the plus side, they are starting to read very basic sentences, but only if they know all of the words in the sentence and only if the sentence is a few words long.  Example - The cat saw a bird.  I can read books.  Etc.  They haven't figured out sounding out words that they don't recognize yet, or guessing the word based on the context of the sentence - but it's a start!

Spelling was pretty good these past two weeks, they both did really good on the last two units.  However there are about ten words total, apiece, from previous units that they do not have down.  I've decided that it's time to do something about some of these words.  Tomorrow we will ideally be starting Unit 7 and some of these words are from Unit 3.  One thought that I am having is to do a Spelling quiz everyday until they are caught up.  Another is to give them extra Spelling assignments using these words.  I'm not sure what I am going to do but I've got to figure it out by tomorrow night.

Logic and Art are both fine.  They are thrilled to have extra Logic schoolwork.  Now they want Art dropped, but I told them no.  Some days they are really into Art, other days not so much.  I'm thinking that maybe next quarter I'll change our assignments for Art, we'll have to see...

For a side note we just ordered the last Dinosaur Cove book and it should be here in a couple of days.  Then we will promptly read it (because god forbid we not immediately read a book about dinosaurs the MINUTE it arrives in the mail) and then I'll put up a post about the series.  I'm also thinking about doing a post about chores.  I keep going back and forth over this in my head.  It's not about homeschooling, however when you homeschool and your kids are in the house all day making a mess there are a lot of chores to do...  I'll let you know one way or another this week.

On a final note I have decided that we won't start our one-on-one time until next quarter.  Right now with everyone sick, just finishing last month's Concept Week, football practice 3-5 days a week, and being three days behind there is just too much on our plate right now - in my opinion - to start throwing one-on-one time into the mix.  We will definitely start it next quarter, however, since Optimus Prime at least really needs it.  Right now the only one-on-one time we get is when we do our Reading assignments for the week, and sometimes we don't have a chance to do that one-on-one.

All in all it was a good two weeks despite everyone being sick.  So long as I don't wake up worse tomorrow I think we can start working on getting back on schedule.

Two Week Review: August 16 - 29

Somehow this post got lost in the shuffle of life.  I mean, here we are onto Week 6 and I'm just now getting around to writing up what happened Weeks 3 & 4.  I'm not even sure what happened to provide me with an excuse.  I mean, the house has been finished (except for rearranging artwork and posters) this whole time and yes I was sick during Week 5 and Optimus Prime just got sick this week, however that's actually given me quite a bit of downtime in which internet stuff should of gotten done.

Scooby-Doo is doing fine.  He's finished up his second Colors & Shapes workbook.  It was harder than the first (not that he cared - it's not like he was listening to me while I was reading the directions or anything, he just wanted to scribble!) and not as interesting since there was no cartoon character.  He doesn't even know who Dora is - we don't watch her show and we have none of her books - but he does like her.  Go figure.  While workbooks are in coloring is so Last Week and as for stickers he thinks they taste better than they look on paper.  Sigh.

At least he's still into his schoolwork time.  Also, our goal of three books a day has lead into a renewed interest in his favorite book Cookie Kisses, which after a merciful four month break has now become his favorite book again.  We are back to reading it a dozen times over the course of the day again, as well as another dozen after tuck-in time.  Sigh, again.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee are doing good.

Optimus Prime's handwriting is getting worse, not sure how.  I'm beginning to think our one-on-one time is going to consist of ABC sheets...

Spanish is doing good.  We are still on colors, but we should be finishing that up by Week 6 and then we can move onto new things.

Science and Geography are as good as ever.  I wish we could do more Geography, but I'll need to find more workbooks first.  They love the subject, though, and always want to do more.

English was a lot better these two weeks, so that was a relief.  Soon we will be done with their current workbook, ready to move onto a new which means we'll get to rehash everything and see if they've figured some stuff out yet or not.

Math these two weeks was no addition and subtraction, and plenty of patterns and shapes.  I don't know why.  Yes, the shapes schoolwork is going to turn into fractions schoolwork but for crying out loud, they are in first grade - they know their damn shapes!  We don't need two pages of review for each individual shape - where we COLORED (?!?) them - followed by a few pages of counting stars and moons.  I mean those pages looked like something in a pre-k workbook and they bored my kids.  It was more basic than the shapes schoolwork Scooby-Doo is currently doing.  As for patterns, when you get to first grade simple two color patterns are boring.  They didn't even enjoy patterns that simple in kindergarten.  I'm done complaining.  I do want to add that for our quizzes in Math we did addition and subtraction even though we didn't cover those subjects at all.  It amazes me how well Bumblebee had has his addition and subtraction down, considering we didn't do them at all for two weeks.  He got almost every question correct.  Optimus Prime, however, definitely needs to work on his subtraction.

Reading is going okay, still.  Same with Spelling.  Sigh.  I'm just impatient.  I love reading and can't wait until my kids connect the dots in their heads and figure it out.

Art is the same as always.  Some days they like it, other days it bores them.

They finally won me over with their Logic argument.  No puns about them winning me over logically, I was just tired of listening to them complain about it!  If they want the extra schoolwork then they can have it!  We now do logic every schoolwork day and twice on Saturday.

About our Concept Week we did start it Week 4, however we didn't finish it then.  So I'll tell you more about it in the next Two Week Review.

That about sums it up.  Our curriculum is updated if you want to check it out.  My husband FINALLY got his work schedule so I had to fix ours.  Plus, with doing extra Logic schoolwork it made sense to update the page.  Also, my aunt sent me a bunch of workbooks for all three, which has me thinking that maybe next quarter Scooby-Doo will start doing other subjects too.  Maybe he'll like some patterns or numbers or something.  We'll see.

Concept Week #3: DInosaurs

Well!  All that hype and here we are onto our last Concept Week from kindergarten!

Bumblebee loves dinosaurs.  Dinosaur toys, dinosaur books, dinosaur movies, dinosaur documentaries... I'm sure you get the idea.  Optimus Prime & Scooby-Doo love dinosaurs too, but not nearly as much.

When we first started talking about taking a family vacation this past summer, and our initial plans were scrapped for costing too much, I decided that what we needed to do was something both closer to home and lots of fun.  So I planned a dinosaur trip.  There are LOTS of dinosaur museums here in Texas, I didn't realize just how many until I started looking into them.  We had a blast at two different dinosaur parks and the Dinosaur State Park, and we even decided to expand our trip into two zoos and an aquarium for some variety.

My kids purchased little dinosaur toys almost everywhere we went (because what we REALLY needed in this house was more dinosaur toys!), as well as dinosaur puzzles and dinosaur eggs (that "hatched" in water).
They learned lots of stuff about dinosaurs and saw lots of animals and fish.  All in all the trip was a total blast.

Then, when we got home it seemed only fitting to do some dinosaur themed schoolwork for a week.

I had some dinosaur maze books I had picked up on our trip, as well as some dinosaur dot-to-dots and coloring pages I printed up from education.com.  We also had some dinosaur schoolwork books I had picked up from Target's dollar section back when they were babies and a book of jigsaw puzzles ("Discovering Dinosaurs!") I had picked up at a Waldenbooks back when they were going out of business.  (A side note - if you have never seen jigsaw puzzle books before they are really awesome and you should pick them up.  They are big board books that have a half dozen or so puzzles in them and on the opposite page is a few educational paragraphs about the puzzle, we are going to be using them a lot for first grade.)

So our "textbooks" about the subject were the books I had bought during our trip and from Target, as well as the worksheets I had printed up.  Our activity was the puzzle book (we got to do a puzzle a day), and our book was "The Magic Schoolbus in the Time of the Dinosaurs" by Joanna Cole.

The workbooks from Target were grades K-2, but I have to be honest some of the activities were more geared towards second graders.  However, they still had fun and the book introduced them to codes, which we had never done before, and they caught onto that pretty quick.  Each dinosaur that was covered had a code at the bottom to translate to find out what the dinosaur's Latin name meant.

By the time the trip and schoolwork was over we had been on dinosaurs for almost two weeks, and we were definitely all ready to give it up, but everyone had lots of fun.