Week 2 Update

The past week went better. I went back to listening this Charlotte Mason Seminar DVD that I had and one of the things that was suggested was to vary the lesson. So with Buddy, who could not sit still, I tried switching to Math right after Handwriting and it seems to go better. I think this is also a matter of getting used to the routine.

I have added Geography (basically read one chapter of Paddle to the Sea) and Mandarin to the lesson. I also tried to be more consistent with Science and History.

I still need to get more organized in terms of the Artist and Composer Study. I have not really done that yet.

Buddy
Buddy could read many words now. I think he is pretty good at blending, but at times, he gets b and d confused. Sometimes, he also blends from right to left as opposed to left to right. That tends to happen when there  are b and d involved.

Right Start Math is also working for him. He learns what is parallel, perpendicular, even numbers and odd numbers. I am still trying to teach him to recognize the abacus beads without counting (as advocate by RS).

In terms of handwriting, he does well when he stays focused. We are still working on the habit of perfect execution here.

Princess
She is getting better with her narration. I am pleasantly surprised. I had heard that it will take a while for a child to get the hang of it. But she does well and could narrate several sentences at one go. I am so proud of her.

She is working on cursive now and the Zaner Bloser worksheets are going well.

I am still working with her on Singapore Math 1B. I think she is getting the hang of it. I think I will slow down a bit to make sure that she really master this portion of adding and subtraction before going further. She can do them, but at times she gets confused with what the question is asking. We also do Right Start Math B just for fun. It takes about 5 min for that. I think I need to read up on some of the Math games that came with the kit to play some of those with them.

I am still trying to understand All About Spelling. We are almost done with Level A, but I don’t think she really gained anything. It may be because she is quite a good speller. Plus, I get annoyed at some of the dictation phrases that do not seem to make sense (e.g., “went past Jim”). I checked up on Spelling Wisdom and I think I might want to switch to that. In Spelling Wisdom, dictation is given in the context of meaningful passages, which is what Charlotte Mason advocates. But I am still trying to figure out if I want to invest in that.

We had a great first nature study yesterday. Well, we didn’t exactly go for a nature walk, we just went to the driveway. The kids picked up some leaves on the ground. We checked up on the parts of the leaf. Even Meimei also could distinguish what are ‘veins” and what are “stalks.” So that was fun. When we came back, they pasted their leaves in their notebooks and Princess wrote a little note next to it. That gave me a lot of encouragement about the potential for Nature Study. I need to make it more of a weekly thing, if possible.

As for myself, I need to continue to work on patience and being encouraging to the kids. I do get frustrated sometimes when they lose their focus and I think my role is to find way to help them to focus. It is a skill that they have to develop. When they were in school, there were lots of opportunities to not focus if the teacher was focusing on other kids. But now, they have the full attention of the teacher, they probably still need to get used to that.

Hopefully next week will be better than this.

Keeping little one busy during lessons

Homeschool Helper

I used to wonder why would anyone spend money to get audio tapes of books such as Story of the World (our history curriculum). Why can’t the parent read from the book? Why pay to have someone read it?

Well, after a few days into the new school year, I realized what a blessing it is to be able to have someone read the book on my behalf.

First of all, it helps with “car schooling”. For example today, we have to leave the house to run an errand and so I just popped the CD in the car and presto! we are having history lesson.

Second of all, given that I am trying to figure out how to juggle teaching two at the same time, this allows me to get Princess to read/listen to the CD on a segment while I work with Buddy on something. After that, I could get Princess to do the narration.

So, I am definitely going to go with any audio CDs that come with whatever books we are using.

Tweaking our schedule

I guess I could say that I have been doing a “soft launch” of our homeschool. I started last week with an hour of handwriting and grammar/reading and I gradually added Math, History, Science, Spelling (for Princess). It is like a dry run sort of thing. I still need to add Mandarin, Composer Study, Artist Study, Hymm Study and Nature Walk. Along the way, I learnt the following things:

1) I need to think of a better way to occupy the other kid(s) as I am focusing on one student. Usually Mei Mei will distract us such as wanting to sit on my lap, wanting me to get her stuff etc. I think I need to have some activity boxes that I will bring out only during school time for her and then for the older two, I will need to set one at the computer for some educational program (such as learning chinese or doing some online math thing) while I work with the other. Right now, I just send them off to play while I work with one. This creates two problems – the child I am working with would look at his/her siblings playing and want to join in and also it creates some noise which makes it difficult for us to focus.

2) I should move my scripture reading to breakfast because I have a captive audience and the food would give them something to do while I read. This would help Buddy who gets antsy with my reading.

3) I need to slow down and not rush through the lessons just to “get it done.” I think this partly arises because I am trying to do some first grade work with Princess even though she is technically in the second grade so as to make sure that I “start from the beginning” with the curriculum I have. I think rushing through is not very wise and is not what homeschooling is all about.

4) I need to incorporate some reading time for the kids – whether it is independent reading for Princess and/or read aloud for all three. It would help when our shipment arrives and I have all the books readily available.

5) I should stop when I feel I am losing my student’s attention and not press on just so that I could “get it done.”

As you can see, my very Type A personality needs to take a backseat and not be a hindrance to my kids’ education.

As much as I want to “figure everything out” by the time I start homeschool officially next week, I know that realistically, it will be a continual process of changing things here and there so as to adapt to my kids. I just need to take a long term perspective to homeschooling. 🙂

2011 – 2012 Curriculum

After researching and preparing for the past few months, I have finally figured and resolved that my homeschooling style is more eclectically classical with a charlotte mason blend to it. I had thought I was more CM but as I read more (specifically The Well Trained Mind), I think I am more of a mix. I will therefore use both elements of TWTM and Ambleside Online as my base.

Anyway, here are my curriculum selection for the new school year.

Princess (Second Grade)

Grammar – First Language Lesson Level 1 and 2, Rod & Staff Preparing to Build 2.
Handwriting – Zane Bloser 2C
Writing – Writing with Ease Level 1
History – Story of the World – Ancient History Level 1, Our Island Story and A Little History of the World
Geography – Paddle to the Sea
Math – Singapore Math 1B, 2A and 2B
Science – Elemental Science Biology for Grammar Stage
Mandarin – My First Chinese Words and I Love Chinese

Buddy (Kindergarten)

Handwriting – Zane Bloser K
Reading – Reading Made Easy and McGuffey Readers
Math – Right Start Math Level A
Mandarin – My First Chinese Words

Borrowing from Charlotte Mason, we do short lessons, narrations, poetry, Composer Study and Artist Study.

I basically do poetry during snack time in the mid morning when they are eating their morning snack and I will read them poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. They are getting better at appreciating poetry.

For Composer Study, I had purchased the Classics for Children by Benjamin Britten. I am still not sure how to implement it yet but I supposed I will just play the CD at meal time. I do have Handel and Beethoven scheduled for this year. I chose them mainly because I have heard of them before. haha.

For Artists Study, I am going to do Giottodi Bondone, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael for this school year. It was hard to choose artists that coincides with the history period we are studying which is Ancient History. Giottodi Bondone is the only one I know of that goes as early as the 1200s. For this, I will just follow other’s suggestions, print out a famous print and put it in somewhere prominent for 2 weeks. We will talk about it maybe once a week. I will also read the artists background to the kids.

I did not forget Bible. Since most of our books have not arrived, I have been reading a chapter from my bible (not a children’s bible) to the kids each morning. Every morning, after breakfast and chores, the kids will gather and we will have do calendar and weather. Then each kid will lead a song and I will then read from my bible. We will end with prayers. I plan to incorporate memory verse too (once I get my memory verse organization sorted out).

For Literature reading, I am still trying to sort that out.

For Princess, right now, I have Charlotte’s Web, Little House in the Big Wood, Velveteen Rabbit, Fifty Famous Stories Retold.

For Buddy, I will probably try to follow Ambleside Online Year 0 books selection.

We just need to get our library membership so that we can start borrowing books for our reading.

I think that’s about it. I hope these selection will fit my children’s learning styles.

It’s Meekness Christian Academy!

Today is the 5th day since we arrived in Charlotte on late Monday night. Since then, we had gotten a phone, a car and bought a house! It is unbelievable how fast things are moving. God is good! He provides.

I finally sat down today and register with the State of North Carolina Department of Administration – Division of Non-Public Education for our homeschool. After much thoughts, we decided to name our homeschool Meekness Christian Academy, to reflect the religious perspective in our homeschool.

I have ordered some more curriculum this morning, in the wee hours of the morning when I was awake from the jetlag. I have a couple of things more to order and then I am all set.

Even though I really intend to begin school on Aug 1, the kids have been asking for me to start early. So I think I will need to gather my thoughts and maybe do some light homeschool before then.

I can’t wait!

Meekness Academy to begin operation in August 2011

Well, it looks like Meekness Academy will begin its operation in 2011!

Through a sequence of events that happened, it led to a decision for us to move back to the US on July 4. We sought confirmation from the Lord and this was what He wants us to do. Hence, I am trying to sought out the curriculum for 2011-2012 school year. I guess I will be blogging on this site a whole lot more to help me keep track of the things that I have planned.

Stay tuned for the curriculum that I have planned soon!

Trial homeschool

Last night, I was browsing this new cool website that I found – Google Art Project. It allows you to view several famous museums just by clicking. You are able to view high resolution pictures and explore the museums aka google earth way. It was so cool.

Princess was really interested and so we sat down together and explored Van Gogh Museum together. We looked at some of my favorite paintings such as the Sunflowers, etc. She was interested in the story behind each painting and also to hear about Van Gogh life story. I gave her a brief introduction and told her that this is what we will be doing for our homeschooling. She was intrigued and interested. That is a good sign!

I am excited about how this Google Art Project will be so useful for the Artist Study aspect of CM.

Over the weekend, I was reading to Princess from the book “Poems to Read to the Very Young“

I was so encouraged too by the fact that she was quite interested in reading it. Of course we made up silly poems of our own. Then while I was taking a nap (due to the drowsy cold medication), she even wrote a small poem/story on roses and violets and copy a poem about pancake from the book. She drew a picture for each of her poem. Here is her poem on roses and violets that got a chuckle out of me:

The flowers
Roses are red, violets are blue
These are beautiful flowers I ever saw
I pick up the flowers and pay it. It was 1$ and 50c.
The end.

I am so excited about homeschooling her.

What if I ruin their lives by homeschooling them?

I read a post today by Simple Homeschool and I love what the person wrote about her fears and how she would not regret. Particularly, here are some quotes that really reasonate with me and I am so comforted and encouraged:

I have the benefit of seeing an outcome: my firstborn, my most experimented-upon guinea pig, is in college. Thriving in a college that is three hours away from home. I can tick off a list of all the things any parent wants:

• his grades are excellent
• he has self-initiative
• he has a good rapport with his professors
• he has friends
• he can navigate in a large city without getting lost much
• he seeks out cultural events
• he eats at least two meals each day
• he can do his own laundry.

But the measure of success is so much more that what one sees on the outside.

Here’s the thing: He is embracing life. He never learned that life is drudgery, that “school” is about waiting for the next Valentine’s Day party. He did not spend 12 years in monotonous routine dictated by the ticking of the clock and the buzzing of alarms.

He never learned that books make you sleepy and teachers are boring people, and that it’s always safest to fly beneath the radar.

He has a deep love of learning. He never learned the art of regurgitation. He’s responsible, yet he has a heart of adventure. He’s willing to take risks, and he’s not worried about what people think. He’s unique and confident in his uniqueness. Because he grew up surrounded by unconditional love, he is emotionally secure.

 

Any fears that he would be labeled a weirdo because he was homeschooled are put to rest. No one cares; no one asks. 

And as much as he loves college, he enjoys being home with us, as well. My husband and I have remarked to each other several times that, had we met our son in college, he would be one of our best friends. We would want to hang out with him.

And what’s really awesome? He would want to hang out with us, too.

Yes, I want my children to embrace these attitudes and to want to hang out with us too!

Meekness Academy

Meekness Academy
Established 2011 but will begin operation in 2012!
This is the new name for our homeschool and this space is where I will record our homeschooling journey and my new adventure as a stay at home mom.