Little Brother said he wants to learn about space, so we're off on a voyage through the galaxy, where we'll explore planets, stars, and other out-of-this-world objects and phenomena. As we go along, the kids are going to be compiling their own Space books using resources I found at Enchanted Learning's Zoom Astronomy, Learning Page.com (membership is totally free, and there's a lot of fun stuff for the under 10 set on their site), and the (paid) Printables section on the Scholastic website.
Oh, and Brother also let me know last week that he would really like to have "theme" days, like they did at his school. If you stop by tomorrow, I want you to know that it's "Bring Your Stuffed Animal to School Day"...
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Getting back into the swing of things...
It's been one crazy summer. July was filled with one road trip after another, with only 12 or so days spent at home. The first week in August found me and the kids at Girl Scout Day Camp - I volunteered (teaching Map & Compass), Little Brother was in the boys unit (for sons of parent volunteers) and Big Sister was in a 5th grade unit. We had a fantastic week! The morning after our final day at camp, we started on a whirlwind revolving door of house guests. It was a lot of fun visiting with friends and family, and taking them around to various touristy activities - however, we are all now exhausted and trying to remember how life goes when it's all back to normal.
We've been on the fence over whether to have Little Brother homeschool this coming fall. He reminded me the other day that I had said early on in the summer that we would try out homeschooling the two kids together and see how it went. If it didn't go well, we would likely have him return to ps. Well, he was essentially firing me as his teacher, saying that homeschooling this summer has NOT gone well AT ALL! I explained that we haven't been anywhere near home for the past six weeks, and would make it up to him once our last guest was gone. Grammy went home yesterday, and school started back up this morning.
One thing I noticed I need to work on with Sister is her summarization skills. They are sorely lacking. We'll focus on that a bit in the next few weeks. Also need to polish of the rusty multiplication tables after 6 weeks of sitting idle. It's amazing how quickly that knowledge drifts away.
Brother read to me for a bit, did some math, played with cuissenaire rods, and put together a puzzle. While putting the puzzle together, he said "This feels like homeschooling." I think that was a compliment, LOL!
Off to a couple of playdates to reconnect with nearby friends we have been missing due to all the other fun we've been up to...
We've been on the fence over whether to have Little Brother homeschool this coming fall. He reminded me the other day that I had said early on in the summer that we would try out homeschooling the two kids together and see how it went. If it didn't go well, we would likely have him return to ps. Well, he was essentially firing me as his teacher, saying that homeschooling this summer has NOT gone well AT ALL! I explained that we haven't been anywhere near home for the past six weeks, and would make it up to him once our last guest was gone. Grammy went home yesterday, and school started back up this morning.
One thing I noticed I need to work on with Sister is her summarization skills. They are sorely lacking. We'll focus on that a bit in the next few weeks. Also need to polish of the rusty multiplication tables after 6 weeks of sitting idle. It's amazing how quickly that knowledge drifts away.
Brother read to me for a bit, did some math, played with cuissenaire rods, and put together a puzzle. While putting the puzzle together, he said "This feels like homeschooling." I think that was a compliment, LOL!
Off to a couple of playdates to reconnect with nearby friends we have been missing due to all the other fun we've been up to...
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Backing up a bit...
Big Sister went on her first solo sleepover to Grandma and Grandpa's house over in Yakima. See Grandma Sharon's post over on their blog.
They had driven over to our side of the mountains to watch Sis perform in her play "The Princess Plays". There were two acts - in the first she played one of the Princess Court, and One o'clock, and in the second she was one of the Royal Soldiers. Cute play, but not her favorite - it was a large cast, and most of the characters weren't particularly well-developed. Next year she plans to try a musical.
Here she is as a soldier...
...and here's one of both kids on the afternoon of her first performance:
They don't look at all related, do they?
They had driven over to our side of the mountains to watch Sis perform in her play "The Princess Plays". There were two acts - in the first she played one of the Princess Court, and One o'clock, and in the second she was one of the Royal Soldiers. Cute play, but not her favorite - it was a large cast, and most of the characters weren't particularly well-developed. Next year she plans to try a musical.
Here she is as a soldier...
...and here's one of both kids on the afternoon of her first performance:
They don't look at all related, do they?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Happiness is a perfect day...
Yesterday was a terrific day! The kids finally woke up shortly after 9am. While they ate breakfast, I reminded them that I wanted to get to our schoolwork before they got involved in their game, and they were both totally fine with that. They finished eating, got dressed, and met me downstairs. Big Sister covered handwriting (she's working on learning cursive), spelling, and math, and Little Brother did some math, handwriting, and reading. We were done by 10:30, and then they went upstairs to watch a Voltron cartoon on Hulu.
Shortly before 11am, I got a call from the mom of a friend of Little Brother. Her boy was in LB's class this past year, and the two of them started getting together for playdates in the last month of school. He's a really nice kid, and the boys have a lot in common - it's nice to see Brother finally having a friend of his very own. Anyway, we invited this boy down to our place for a few hours, and had his mom drop him off with a lunch and a swim suit for the slip-n-slide and wading pool. He showed up wearing a brown, hooded sweatshirt, hunched over and using a little stick like a cane, and announced that he was Yoda for the day. See? The perfect buddy for my boy! Each of them dueled with sticks for 3 hours straight, and not so much as a scratch on either one - shows pretty impressive self-control for two 6-year old boys.
When Big Sister found out that Little Brother was having a playdate, she wanted in on the action, too. Until this past fall we didn't know any other kids in our neighborhood. It's an older neighborhood, and there just aren't a lot of young families. In the few families that are around, the kids seems to play indoors, or in their backyards, so we've rarely seen children in the three+ years since we moved here. Fortunately for Sister, that all changed last month because the family of a girl in her girl scout troop has moved in around the corner! She is so happy to finally have a friend within walking or biking distance. I held Sister off for a few weeks while her friend finished up the school year and her family got settled, but we finally had her friend down to play on Saturday for the first time. Yesterday I let Natalie walk up to her place, and they played there for a couple hours while the two young Jedis kept me entertained. Eventually both girls ended up back at our house, and I treated them to a snack of watermelon and popcorn.
Maybe I'm a freak in the Mom World, but I loved having kids over to our house. This is what I've wanted for my kids for so long - something that more closely resembles what I remember from early childhood. My kids have always had friends, but they're friendships that require phone calls, car rides, and scheduling in advance. These are friendships that have grown over time, and we would never trade them for the world, but I've really always yearned for them to be able to wander over to a friend's house to knock on the door and ask if their friend can play, and I want their friends to be able to do the same. I hope our summer will be filled with many more days of friends dripping water through my kitchen, and eating me out of house and home! And for any of you out there? Stop by, anytime (after our schooling is done, lol)! ;D
Shortly before 11am, I got a call from the mom of a friend of Little Brother. Her boy was in LB's class this past year, and the two of them started getting together for playdates in the last month of school. He's a really nice kid, and the boys have a lot in common - it's nice to see Brother finally having a friend of his very own. Anyway, we invited this boy down to our place for a few hours, and had his mom drop him off with a lunch and a swim suit for the slip-n-slide and wading pool. He showed up wearing a brown, hooded sweatshirt, hunched over and using a little stick like a cane, and announced that he was Yoda for the day. See? The perfect buddy for my boy! Each of them dueled with sticks for 3 hours straight, and not so much as a scratch on either one - shows pretty impressive self-control for two 6-year old boys.
When Big Sister found out that Little Brother was having a playdate, she wanted in on the action, too. Until this past fall we didn't know any other kids in our neighborhood. It's an older neighborhood, and there just aren't a lot of young families. In the few families that are around, the kids seems to play indoors, or in their backyards, so we've rarely seen children in the three+ years since we moved here. Fortunately for Sister, that all changed last month because the family of a girl in her girl scout troop has moved in around the corner! She is so happy to finally have a friend within walking or biking distance. I held Sister off for a few weeks while her friend finished up the school year and her family got settled, but we finally had her friend down to play on Saturday for the first time. Yesterday I let Natalie walk up to her place, and they played there for a couple hours while the two young Jedis kept me entertained. Eventually both girls ended up back at our house, and I treated them to a snack of watermelon and popcorn.
Maybe I'm a freak in the Mom World, but I loved having kids over to our house. This is what I've wanted for my kids for so long - something that more closely resembles what I remember from early childhood. My kids have always had friends, but they're friendships that require phone calls, car rides, and scheduling in advance. These are friendships that have grown over time, and we would never trade them for the world, but I've really always yearned for them to be able to wander over to a friend's house to knock on the door and ask if their friend can play, and I want their friends to be able to do the same. I hope our summer will be filled with many more days of friends dripping water through my kitchen, and eating me out of house and home! And for any of you out there? Stop by, anytime (after our schooling is done, lol)! ;D
Monday, June 29, 2009
Summer school...
Summer. The sun comes out, and suddenly I want to do nothing more than relax and shrug off any sort of constraints to the pursuit of nothingness (constraints being schedules. and any tasks pursued for reasons other than my personal enjoyment). Consequently, in the past couple of weeks, there hasn't been a whole lot happening in la escuela de Koch. Late bedtimes for the kids, followed by equally late awakenings in the morning, have led to days that are terribly out of sync for all of us.
I'm awake by 6:30 every morning, usually earlier. I sip coffee, and spend time reading email, blogs, and playing on Facebook. When Little Brother was going to school each morning, I had a perfect pattern of: coffee, computer, shower, wake the boy, sit together while he ate breakfast, he gets dressed, I finish getting ready, jackets on, say goodbye to Big Sister, and we'd head out the door. I'd return to the house to find Big Sister fed, dressed, and ready to homeschool. We'd do all our schooling while Brother was at school, and be done by noon at the latest. The kids had the whole afternoon to do as they pleased, and so did I. I was happy. Kids were happy.
In the absence of a real driving need to be out the door at 8:30 each morning, our routine has greatly suffered. I'm still up at the crack of dawn sipping coffee, but my hour on the computer has stretched into two. The kids are up nearly as late as Mom and Dad, and they stagger out of bed at 9, 10 or later. They sit, half-asleep, on the couch in the living room until their growling stomachs eventually drive them to the kitchen to seek out nourishment in the form of oatmeal, fruity pebbles, or (if mom is distracted) a bag of chips. The remains of yesterday's ongoing "game" (it's how they refer to the days-long sagas of pretend play they create) are strewn across the living room carpet, and both of them are drawn in. Not being in any real hurry to accomplish anything, it's now almost 10am and I'm still unshowered. By 10:30 or 11am I'm clean, clothed, and feeling ready to take on the day, but the kids are now fully engrossed in the game. By noon they are hungry again, and I take advantage of the break in their play to at least have them get dressed so we can do something, anything outside of the house. At that point, shifting gears to sit down and do some schoolwork is unappealing to all three of us. The end result is that I end up feeling like we've been incredibly lazy, with nothing to show for our time but a floor full of star wars characters, littlest pet shop animals, and various magnetics pieces scattered from one wall to the other.
I really can't see taking two months completely off and losing whatever progress Big Sister has made over the course of the last few months. Plus, I much prefer to spend the year working hard for a couple of months, and then taking a week or two off - much more manageable, in my opinion. I do need to find some kind of balance so that I'm not sucking the fun out of these long, sunny days, but right now the scale is tipped way too far in the other direction. My intention today is to get us back on track. Hmmm... how to make this work? I think what I'm going to do is let them continue to follow their own sleep patterns, and make sure I have myself ready for the day before they wake up. That way I can be ready to jump in with a little school time in the moments before they find themselves sucked into taking General Grievous to a birthday party for the spotted dog. Wish me luck!
I'm awake by 6:30 every morning, usually earlier. I sip coffee, and spend time reading email, blogs, and playing on Facebook. When Little Brother was going to school each morning, I had a perfect pattern of: coffee, computer, shower, wake the boy, sit together while he ate breakfast, he gets dressed, I finish getting ready, jackets on, say goodbye to Big Sister, and we'd head out the door. I'd return to the house to find Big Sister fed, dressed, and ready to homeschool. We'd do all our schooling while Brother was at school, and be done by noon at the latest. The kids had the whole afternoon to do as they pleased, and so did I. I was happy. Kids were happy.
In the absence of a real driving need to be out the door at 8:30 each morning, our routine has greatly suffered. I'm still up at the crack of dawn sipping coffee, but my hour on the computer has stretched into two. The kids are up nearly as late as Mom and Dad, and they stagger out of bed at 9, 10 or later. They sit, half-asleep, on the couch in the living room until their growling stomachs eventually drive them to the kitchen to seek out nourishment in the form of oatmeal, fruity pebbles, or (if mom is distracted) a bag of chips. The remains of yesterday's ongoing "game" (it's how they refer to the days-long sagas of pretend play they create) are strewn across the living room carpet, and both of them are drawn in. Not being in any real hurry to accomplish anything, it's now almost 10am and I'm still unshowered. By 10:30 or 11am I'm clean, clothed, and feeling ready to take on the day, but the kids are now fully engrossed in the game. By noon they are hungry again, and I take advantage of the break in their play to at least have them get dressed so we can do something, anything outside of the house. At that point, shifting gears to sit down and do some schoolwork is unappealing to all three of us. The end result is that I end up feeling like we've been incredibly lazy, with nothing to show for our time but a floor full of star wars characters, littlest pet shop animals, and various magnetics pieces scattered from one wall to the other.
I really can't see taking two months completely off and losing whatever progress Big Sister has made over the course of the last few months. Plus, I much prefer to spend the year working hard for a couple of months, and then taking a week or two off - much more manageable, in my opinion. I do need to find some kind of balance so that I'm not sucking the fun out of these long, sunny days, but right now the scale is tipped way too far in the other direction. My intention today is to get us back on track. Hmmm... how to make this work? I think what I'm going to do is let them continue to follow their own sleep patterns, and make sure I have myself ready for the day before they wake up. That way I can be ready to jump in with a little school time in the moments before they find themselves sucked into taking General Grievous to a birthday party for the spotted dog. Wish me luck!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Math games...
We just got together with some friends the other morning for the first meeting of the "Monday Math Club" - which met on Tuesday... but that's another story.
In preparation, I went searching for printable math games online. Little Brother's kindergarten teacher has been using a number of dice games with printable game boards during small group time in his class, and they're a fun way to reinforce math facts and concepts. I love the internet - my search did not leave me empty-handed!
Here are a couple of sites I wanted to share right away, but I'll add to the list as I find more...
Dr. Mike's Math Games for Kids - Well organized with straightforward instructions. Includes .pdf downloads of game boards and game cards, as well as worksheets, fun mazes, etc. You can even order a real game board through a link to Zazzle, if you want something more permanent than sheets of paper taped together.
Learn-with-math-games - Printable Math Games. This site includes rules for all kinds of math games. At our math club, the kids enjoyed playing a dice game called "Stuck in the Mud". We also had two rounds of Fraction Feud going on at either end of the table - we printed the deck of fraction cards off the website, for a game that is a twist on the game "War". The kids playing were often quick to just guess which fraction was bigger (hmmm... 10/12 or 7/8?) so parents supervised and kept paper and pencil handy so the kids could work through the process of finding a common denominator, etc. Who knew fractions could be fun?
*graphic from stock.xchng
Friday, May 8, 2009
Why I need to trust the process...
For the longest time, one of the biggest obstacles to feeling like our homeschooling was going well has been the fact that my kid couldn't read. It didn't matter that she has always been kind, caring, attentive to the needs of others, assertive, able to talk with adults, a whiz at math, a history buff, a budding conservationist, an animal lover, etc. The big "marker" of our success or failure was whether or not she could demonstrate an ability to read, and she just wasn't getting it.
I had heard time and again from parents of other late readers that this would all be okay. My child would eventually read, and that homeschooling was a gift for these kids who aren't ready to read when school needs them to be ready. I was skeptical, and I guess I was also frankly unwilling to be okay with my child not reading until she's 12 years old. Having a 9 year old who wasn't reading was far enough out of my comfort zone.
What a difference a year has made.
This morning my daughter spent 45 minutes reading to me from a book that's listed at a 5th grade reading level. So what's cool about that? A year ago she was only reading at a first grade level, and doing so reluctantly and with little fluency. What's extra cool about this morning's reading? When I asked her this morning what she wanted to do for school, she asked if she could read to me. Twenty minutes went by, and I told her she could stop anytime, but she pressed on. I finally got her to stop reading aloud to me, and she's still reading to herself on the couch.
What did I do to get her to finally read? Nothing. Well, maybe it was a guided nothingness. A huge break through was when I got over myself and accepted graphic novels and comics as a literature choice. I have also continued to read aloud to her each and every day from books that were within her interest level, but above her reading level. We got hooked on the Warriors series, which is where she has taken off - she started out reading the Warriors manga back in January, and is moving on to reading the full novels on her own. I could have chosen to force her to read, as is often recommended by well-meaning folks, but I have noticed that in all areas of our homeschooling, trying to force learning brings slower and more reluctant results than learning that is joyful and less stressful.
And that, my friends, is my lesson to myself today. Trust the process. It's so hard to trust the process when the going is really tough, and voices (my own, and others around me) are causing huge doubts! Today's snapshot really did a lot to help me have more faith. This is a work in progress, and (as a wise friend told me recently) it's not time to take her out of the oven yet. When I peeked in today, I did see that my daughter is coming along quite nicely....
I had heard time and again from parents of other late readers that this would all be okay. My child would eventually read, and that homeschooling was a gift for these kids who aren't ready to read when school needs them to be ready. I was skeptical, and I guess I was also frankly unwilling to be okay with my child not reading until she's 12 years old. Having a 9 year old who wasn't reading was far enough out of my comfort zone.
What a difference a year has made.
This morning my daughter spent 45 minutes reading to me from a book that's listed at a 5th grade reading level. So what's cool about that? A year ago she was only reading at a first grade level, and doing so reluctantly and with little fluency. What's extra cool about this morning's reading? When I asked her this morning what she wanted to do for school, she asked if she could read to me. Twenty minutes went by, and I told her she could stop anytime, but she pressed on. I finally got her to stop reading aloud to me, and she's still reading to herself on the couch.
What did I do to get her to finally read? Nothing. Well, maybe it was a guided nothingness. A huge break through was when I got over myself and accepted graphic novels and comics as a literature choice. I have also continued to read aloud to her each and every day from books that were within her interest level, but above her reading level. We got hooked on the Warriors series, which is where she has taken off - she started out reading the Warriors manga back in January, and is moving on to reading the full novels on her own. I could have chosen to force her to read, as is often recommended by well-meaning folks, but I have noticed that in all areas of our homeschooling, trying to force learning brings slower and more reluctant results than learning that is joyful and less stressful.
And that, my friends, is my lesson to myself today. Trust the process. It's so hard to trust the process when the going is really tough, and voices (my own, and others around me) are causing huge doubts! Today's snapshot really did a lot to help me have more faith. This is a work in progress, and (as a wise friend told me recently) it's not time to take her out of the oven yet. When I peeked in today, I did see that my daughter is coming along quite nicely....
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