Back to School

We're back!  Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!

I'm posting today and Friday since there's so much going on this week.  If I don't post today, the one on Friday will be 10 pages long.  Just spreading out the love.

I'm not sure who was more excited to get back into school: the kids or me.  We took a month off as Christmas vacation/maternity leave and it was more than enough.  I don't know how we'll survive all summer without school, and I'm thinking I may not try.  Of course, the kids will play outside more then.

Yesterday morning started quickly.  I got up at 9am because Solveig had a bad night and Knut had the morning off.  So on my way to get coffee I started telling the kids to get dressed for school.  To my surprise, both Silje and David eagerly got dressed and showed up quickly without any argument to the dining room table to get work.  (I hit the floor running since the day was so late, and didn't get a chance to change until much,much later.)

David actually sat nicely for the morning devotional, and then asked what he was going to do.

I didn't have anything really planned for David, but I have work-boxes of things for him that I pulled out.  First I brought out his level 1 (kindergarten) reading program that he zipped through at the beginning of the year.  I had him read all the little books in there, which he did with great enthusiasm.  Next I had him do some Mighty Mind puzzles.

(I know David looks like he's dressed as a Christmas elf.  I sort of let them pick out their own clothes when we're just chillin' at home.  You know, since no one sees us.  Just the people on this blog. ;) )

Finally, I brought out Uno.  I saw it on clearance at Walmart for only $1, so I bought 2 decks.  I figure it's a game with colors, numbers, and a few sight words.  Perfect for school!  He was eager, so even though it took him a few minutes to catch on, and he needed a bunch of help, he ended up beating me in the end.

He also did some jigsaw puzzles, practiced writing his name (gasp!  That's a huge goal for this year!) and he completed a total of 13 pre-handwriting worksheets (dot-to-dots and mazes mostly).  This from a kid who normally hates worksheets and I have to bribe to hold a crayon.

Elias had no interest in playing in the playroom, or watching t.v.  He did so well playing upstairs around us.  I just couldn't believe what a great start back it was.

Our schoolgirl did well as well.  I'm adding some more handwriting drills to her days this week because I'm convinced she is getting sloppier lately.  So after she had written her memory verse and her spelling words, I gave her another blank handwriting sheet and had her fill the front with capital "A's" and the back with lowercase.  After the second and third lines of lowercase letters began to look more like the letter "u" I gave her one more sheet to do.  I did get an eye roll for that, but she did it, and much more carefully.

Today we have our homeschool group this afternoon, piano lessons and choir practice.  On Friday, Knut and I are hosting a homeschool group field trip to go cross country skiing.  So far 3 families are signed up so we're pretty excited about that.  I'm still in my 6 weeks of no exercise, so I won't be skiing.  I'll be looking after Solveig and Elias and helping out getting skis on and off at the "lodge."  It should be fun!

Homeschool Friday

Well, we made it to Friday and we haven't been to the hospital.  So at least for now, we can once again return to "Homeschool Friday."

Sooooo...how do you catch up on 3 weeks worth of homeschooling updates?  Things have been going pretty well.  It was much easier when Knut was home and didn't have to work.  On days where he has to haul corn and I have all 3 kids, it gets a bit trickier.  There were one or two days where all that got done was Silje did her reading.  Other days we got a day and a half's work done.  Overall, we haven't fallen behind at all, and I'm pleased with that.

I talked a bit about the Mountain Born book that we've been reading.  We got caught up on her read alouds by having her read one of her read alouds by herself as one of her independent readers, as she's still a month ahead in that area.  Her read aloud turned independent reader was Henry and Ribsy which was a really fun read for her.  So now we're all caught up on our read alouds, and still way too much ahead on her independent readers.  We are in desperate need of a library run or she may finish all of her readers for the year before we know it.  I hope that one of these mornings that Knut is home we can squeeze that in.

We're finishing up our huge unit on ancient Egypt in history, and will be moving on next week in our year of ancient history to Greece.  I'm really curious how she'll like it.  Our read aloud book will be many stories of Greek mythology which could honestly go either way.  I know many parents who use this curriculum skip over the Greek myths, thinking that it can be confusing and unnecessary to teach kids.  However, I'm a firm believer that it's nearly impossible to discuss many literature "greats" without a firm grasp on 2 things that public schools don't really teach anymore: the Bible and Greek mythology.  Stories and analogies from those 2 areas show up everywhere in literature and it's very foundational information.

Now, maybe she won't major in literature like I did.  In fact, I hope she does her own thing.  I guess I just love the idea of a classical education too much, and Silje will just have to suffer through that.

We have had a bit of time off from our homeschool group, and will have our Christmas party with them next week.  I've almost not had Silje go to her piano lessons and choir practice with all of the upheaval in the house, but Knut has managed to be home on those afternoons to drive her, so she hasn't missed a beat.  It turns out that instead of a Christmas choir program, her choir will be caroling at a local nursing home, which I still need to get the details on.  I think she'll enjoy that, though.

David has started asking for more schoolwork again, which has surprised me.  He's asked to start learning more about reading, and he's been working on his learning puzzles and I think I might even be able to get him to do a worksheet again *gasp!*  He and Elias have been playing together almost non-stop lately on their wooden train set and that's been fun to watch their friendship really deepen as Elias gets old enough to keep up with David.

The big new thing that will happen soon is our "Physical Education" that Silje will be doing this winter.  We were planning on signing both kids up for our local chapter of MYSL (Minnesota Youth Ski League) which only lasts 8 weeks this winter.  However, Knut recently found out that Silje isn't quite old enough for our chapter, but she's so close, and the leaders/coaches know her and her ability and said that they'd be willing to take her.  David however, is definitely too young, and they'd take him only on the condition that Knut stays with him to help out at every practice.

So we've been having lots of discussions as to whether or not we should put both kids in the league.  David certainly has more enthusiasm for skiing, but Silje could use the incentive to get outside and stay active much more.  Both of us are leaning towards putting Silje in this year and keeping David out.  While he's a great skier, and would probably learn some things, his maturity level just isn't ready for that type of training.  He can still ski in the yard, and with the rest of the family when we go to the ski gaard, and perhaps Silje can come home and tell him all about the things that she's learning.

Silje is so pumped about being in this ski league.  She now wants to go outside and practice everyday which is very uncharacteristic of her!  She's usually found in a corner with a book...not outside running around!

I've already begun some research as to what we might do next year, with all the computer time I've had lately, as Knut is still handling many of my chores.  I'm really hoping that I'll be able to attend some sort of Homeschool Conference this spring and page through all the different vendors with curriculums there instead of just researching online.

As I close this rambly post, I'll point out that when this baby comes, I'm officially calling "Christmas Break" until January at least.  We're already more than half way through most of our subjects and I could call it now...but it fills our days and Silje just likes doing it way too much to stop right now!

Homeschool Friday

It's one of those weeks weeks where I feel the need to quote Dickens and say "It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times." However, that seems a bit overly-dramatic.

We had a tough day on Monday.  Silje didn't want to finish an assignment I had given her, and she was willing to put up a fight about it.  It was a silly word search that I normally give her just for fun.  However, this time, for the sake of perseverance, I told her when I gave her the worksheet that I wanted her to find each and every word.  She had to do the whole thing.

First, she asked half way through if she could be done.  No.  Then came the every 2 minute excuses and off the wall questions.  I had to finally leave the room and tell her she could not come and get me until she was done.  With only half of it done, she came to me 2 minutes later with it "done."  Now, I'm not a simpleton.  I knew she couldn't finish the second half in 2 minutes, so I said, "Great!  Let's check your work together!"  Ironically, the first word on the list couldn't be found circled.  Neither could the second.  Or third.  In fact, there were several letters in the word search that were circled but didn't actually make up a word.

Silje played it cool.  She tried to have an innocent "oops" look upon her face, but I wasn't falling for it.  The point to me wasn't that her entire education hung on the fact that she could find vocabulary words from her Bible lesson mixed in with random letters.  I really couldn't care less about that.  Silje enjoyed these types of worksheets, and that's usually the only reason we do them.  The point was, I had pointed out at the very start that the expectation was that she finish an assignment from start to finish, and push over the hump of boredom, or difficulty.  To me, it was a lesson I had set up in perseverance.

What came of it?  She tried to get out of it.  Then she lied/cheated about finishing it, which had to have it's own set of consequences.  For the worksheet, I erased all of the incorrect marks on the page and made her finish.  For real this time.  O, she was mad.  She probably stared at that stupid, stupid word search for over an hour with a clenched fist around her pink pencil.  She wasn't doing it, but she was staring at it because she thought that was somehow obeying me this time.  Her attitude plummeted, and we had to work through that anger for hours afterward.

I suppose now that I think about it, if that's our worst day of homeschooling thus far, as far as behavior/attitude problems, then I'd say we're doing fantastic!  Lessons were learned.  I don't plan on doing another word search for a little while.  The rest of the week we had great school times.  As amazing as Silje is, and as much as she blows us away with her maturity and intellect, and just plain awesomeness, she's still just a kid.  We have to remind ourselves of that sometimes.

Silje, Knut and I are still in the process of adjusting to the expectations of what homeschooling is like.

For Silje, it's easy to focus on the negative, (although I don't mean for this to come out making her look awful.  She handles things usually WAY better than I ever would).  Maybe I should say, when any of us are put in any given situation, it's natural to focus on the hard part of it, and how people on the other side of the fence have it so much better.

You see, the one thing I didn't get at first when looking into homeschooling is the time on the hands of homeschool students.  Last year, she spent 2 hours a day just on her school bus.  2 hours.  Now that's a pretty typical school day!  That's not counting recess, standing in lines, lunch breaks, etc.  She was basically gone from 7am to 4:30pm for kindergarten 3 days a week.  The idea of losing our Tuesdays and Thursdays terrified me.  When on earth would she have time to be apart of our family?  We would just have to add one activity like piano lessons or ballet for our whole family to rarely be together for supper.  What would happen with multiple kids having multiple activities...it was like watching my children's childhood flash before my eyes.

Homeschooling is different in the aspect that Silje can get more learning done in 2 hours one on one with me than all day at "real school."  It makes sense.  One on one just goes faster.  However, that leaves her with more time on her hands than the typical 1st grader.  For that reason, there are 2 things (well, I'm sure more than that, but 2 things relative to this post) that Silje does more of than the average 1st grader: chores and play.

Silje helps me out a lot.  A lot.  She helps me pick up.  She tells me when disaster is about to strike with one of the boys and I'm distracted.  She does dishes sometimes (although she's supposed to do them every day and I usually only have her do them 1-2 times a week).  She takes care of Lena more than any other family member.

Before you have labor people knocking down my door, I'll add that she gets to play more than the average 1st grader too.  She will often build a couch cushion fort, have a tea party, or pretend she's a butterfly before school starts in the morning.  She has declared Thursdays "pretend I'm a cat day" in which she likes to pretend she's a cat all day.  I mean, it usually only lasts about an hour or so, but she tries to be consistent about it.

She has so much time to play!  We had the "best of times" last Wednesday putting together felt Christmas ornaments in preparation for the upcoming season.  We used cookie cutters as templates, and traced and cut out shapes.  Then I let her sew on little crystal seed beads all over the front of the ornament.  (This was her first "real" sewing project as she got to use a traditional needle and thread and tiny little seed beads from my own stash.) We were both in heaven, and I was so excited to see her trace, cut, embellish and sew the fabric with her own hands! Then I taught her the basic running stitch and she pieced together the front and back and then stuffed it full of polyfill.

It was a blast, and we'll be doing a lot more of these ornaments before Christmas comes.  I decided not to show pictures yet for 2 reasons: the ones I have taken haven't turned out that well, and because some of them may turn into fabulous Christmas gifts.

I try to explain to her when she complains about her chore load that sure...she does a lot of work around the house.  She does have chores.  Every kid has (or should have!) chores.  However, she gets a lot of things that other kids don't get either: time.  I'm sure if she came off the bus at 4:30, tired, cranky, hungry, I would not make her do the dishes before supper.  On the flip side of the day, when she had to meet the bus at 7am and we rushed to get her a good breakfast, hair brushed and mittens on, we didn't have time to make sure that Silje let the dog out to go potty and got food and water.

I'm beginning to realize that her complaining a bit more about doing chores is just that: a kid complaining about doing chores.  She doesn't have too much on her plate and the majority of her day is free play time/free learning time.  While I do admit, she probably does more than if she went to school, she does play way more at home too.  So I guess if she were being as overly dramatic as her mother, she would refer to it as "the best of times and worst of times" as well!

Homeschool Friday

Well, I already told you about our fun day on Monday.  Although, I haven't been blogging as much as I usually like to, I feel like all I've been blogging about is homeschooling, and I've tried to limit that to once a week.  This week I'll have to make an exception.

On Tuesday the 3 kids and I went on a field trip with the homeschool group to the local county historical museum.  Silje went there last year with her kindergarten class, but it was a first for David and Elias.  It was fun, though exhausting, and ended quite a bit earlier than I expected.  Fortunately, Knut's mom called me up and drove the boys back to her house for the rest of the afternoon while Silje and I stayed in town for her choir practice.  Both the boys were in meltdown mode by the time she called and I was more than willing to let Elias take a nap there and David have some down time.  God was totally watching out for me and this little baby that day!

I find myself feeling guilty over things that should not be felt guilty about.  I'm told that with the curriculum we've chosen, it's a common feeling because there's just so many options as to what we can do.  It's set up where we pick and choose which activities to do, and I'm finding I feel bad when I don't choose some.  I'm modifying things, and then feel guilty that I didn't "stay the course."

For instance, we're supposed to read from our read-aloud book about a chapter a day.  Since we normally do this at odd times of the day, it can often get dismissed, or if we have an unusually scheduled day, it often gets forgotten.  However, Silje has been whipping through her advanced 2nd grade readers that came with her program to the point that I'm having to add books to keep her busy.  (That was the highest reading level available for the history program that I wanted her to start with, however her reading level is much higher than that.)  Her read aloud books are 4-5 grade reading level, which she can also read with ease, however the program instructs me to read these books aloud to her.  So sometimes when we get behind in this area, I give her an assignment to read a chapter or two of her read-aloud book to herself (instead of me reading it to her) and then I ask her the normal questions afterward and we discuss it.

Now either way, she's reading the book.  I'm testing her comprehension both ways.  However, when I get busy, and have her read it to herself instead of me reading it to her just to catch us up, I feel so guilty about it.  I mean, several families who do this program don't do the read aloud books at all during the year, and just have them be their "summer reading" books.  There are no hard and fast rules here that I'm dealing with.

When the spectrum of what to teach is so wide open, it's difficult to allow myself to be satisfied with the fact that she's learning, and not be down on myself that she didn't learn it a certain way, or I didn't make it more fun, or go all 9 yards.  There are very few rules to homeschooling, which is why we purchased complete curriculums this year to give us some structure in an area we're so unfamiliar with.  All of the structure that we have in place is all self-imposed, and I don't regret having it there!

Sometimes I love the freedom of being able to manipulate the lessons to fit our family, and other times I feel like it's cheating.  For instance, Silje learned a new concept in English this week.  We added 2 more jingles about prepositions and objects of prepositions.  We also learned to label these 2 new parts of speech in sentences, as well as recognizing the prepositional phrase.  I picked a bunch of practice sentences because I was anticipating this being a very difficult concept for her to grasp.  I mean, come on...she's in 1st grade.  Many grown ups I know don't know this stuff. 

As we started the lesson, though, she picked up the concept of both instantly.  I mean, at least in regard to how to label these 2 in a sentence.  We're going to practice different angles of these concepts in the next few weeks, but for the particular kinds of sentences that we were working on...she had it.  So half way through the practice sentences that we were doing on our white board, when it was clear that she had done it correctly over and over again, I just skipped the last sentences and had her move onto her journal writing.  Afterward, I felt so guilty and questioned myself for not making her finish each and every question.  How silly!  I was the one that picked that many to begin with and had obviously picked too many, and had adjusted on a whim.  That should be a good thing, right?

So anyway, today we'll hopefully be doing an scavenger hunt in English before her test where she'll get a pile of prepositional phrases as clues for the hunt.  Things like "under the table," or "in the cupboard."  I think I'll have an actual prize at the end...something from my Target $1 aisle stash that she doesn't know about.

I've been very very busy this week getting the last of the garden produce that is now in our garage into a more permanent place for the winter.  I used to be able to roast about 4 pumpkins a day, but I bought a new big sheet pan and can now handle 11 pumpkins a day easily (and in less time!) so I'm almost done!  However, the apples are already starting to soften, and I still have a few beets to cook and freeze up. I would really like to have all of this set for winter before the new baby comes.

Silje's been begging for a "cooking class" but I've been nervous to let her too near the stove or knives.  So I've put her to work washing beets, or taking out the insides of pumpkins along with me.  I feel bad making her "work" like this during school time when most little girls are at school with their friends, but she's having the time of her life and begs for more to do, so again...needless guilt.


There's no particular conclusion to this blog post, other than to reveal the range of emotions that this homeschool mom deals with.  One day I feel such freedom, and then the other I feel guilty for using that freedom.  Maybe that's just a pregnant homeschool mom...heavy on the pregnant.

Lovely Day

This lovely past weekend the guys finished harvest and Knut got to come home.  They still have work to do, but the stress of the harvest is off his shoulders and it shows.  We had some family of mine come through town on Saturday night and stay with us and we stayed up late drinking coffee and just catching up.  What fun!  Stewart is my mother's cousin, and I was the flower girl in Pam and his wedding 22 years ago.  I must admit, that made me feel a bit dated.  It was just the 2 of them at our house this time, and they were telling us of the busy-ness and rapid growth going on in the oil fields of North Dakota where they live.

They left Sunday morning, and Knut and I enjoyed a lovely morning at church, and then a lovely long nap in the afternoon.  Elias slept too, and Silje and David watch a movie quietly in the basement.  It was so peaceful.  Lovely.

This morning was "A Little Break" when traditionally I bring the kids to a local church once a month where they have a great program where you can drop off your babies through preschoolers for 2.5 hours and just leave and have some alone time, or get some errands done.  What's even better is I can tell when I pick them up that they haven't been attention deprived in the least!  It's non-stop activities, almost like a once a month VBS.  They read books and sing songs and learn actions, and do crafts and have open play time.  They always come home exhausted!  I haven't done it since we've started homeschooling Silje, so I was debating whether or not I should send the boys.  You see, we have a field trip tomorrow to the museum with our homeschool group.  Usually on homeschool group days we don't get as much "school work" done in the mornings, and I thought if we missed school this morning, and didn't do as much tomorrow we'd be starting 2 days in a row of bad habits.

I didn't have that many errands to run in town...just a necessary trip to the post office. I was debating out loud to Knut if I should just run into town quick with all the kids to the post office, and then come back for school, or if I should drop the boys off for the morning, and find something to do with Silje in town and miss school this morning.  He then suggested that we bring our work along, and do school in a coffee shop this morning.  I thought that was a very fun idea, so that's what we did!




I had a mocha and coffee cake, and Silje ordered herself some gingerbread spice tea and a chocolate brownie, and we sat and went through all of our science, history, geography, read alouds and math for the day.  That only left her English, Chinese, and a little more independent reading when she got home.

We had so much fun, and I think this will be a monthly occurrence.   I don't remember the last time I had so much fun with her! 

This was the first time however, that I noticed people noticing us.  Besides the very sweet older man who came up to us there and was so pleased to see a mother reading to her daughter and spending quality time with her  (he went into this long tangent about how he feels hope for the world or something.  It was so sweet!) we got several other comments as we were at the post office, and a few other places. 

Silje is now big enough that she looks like she belongs in school.  People asked us if school was out today, or asked how old she was and were confused when she said "6."  It was even funnier when she told people, yes, she does go to school and today it was at a coffee shop.  Some would persist and ask what she learned in the coffee shop, to which she would say something like "I learned that Venus is the hottest planet.  And did you know that on Venus, a day is longer than a year?  There are volcanoes erupting all the time, but there is never any ash because there is nothing there to burn up except rock!  So it just melts and cools and melts and cools, but never any ash like our fireplace!"

Yes, yes, my daughter is a genius.  Today was a lovely morning, and we've had so much fun so far today.  What's even better is that Knut will be home tonight.  Probably even for supper.  (Well, I think he might have a meeting in town...but he'll come home first!)  It's the little things that bring so much joy.

Homeschool Friday

This week of homeschooling has been mirroring the laid back attitude that I've been trying to have with things lately. Silje is still getting her work done, of course. We've been working on Egypt some more for the first part of the week, and moved onto the ancient civilization on the island of Crete on the latter part of the week. I believe we will go back to Egypt, but first do a brief overview of the various ancient civilizations. I believe we're supposed to hit the Indus Valley ancient civilization next.

The neatest thing that we finally are getting into is our timeline book. It's just a large blank timeline that's in book form. You can make notes about the things you study and write when they happened as you learn them. It helps set some context to know things like who ruled different countries at the same time. She caught on really quickly to what B.C. and A.D. means, and knows that B.C. dates count down to the birth of Christ, and A.D. counts up after the birth of Christ. I don't think I learned that until 5th grade? Maybe? Anyway, she gets it, and won't let me pass a single date given in our textbook without writing it down in our time line book.

In math, she's learning how to tell time on a regular clock. Right now we're just getting the hour hand down, and I think I actually expected her to know some of this better, but it all seemed to be new information for her. She's also getting into odds and evens.

English grammar I actually haven't been on top of as much as I should be. We're still about 2 weeks ahead of schedule, and I think it's been bad that I sometimes skip it on crazy busy days since we are so far ahead. The last half of this week I've been doing a bit better with that. Thursday was really good, though, because she's been working on writing her own sentences and she desires so much to create stories and fill her journal.

Her desire to create has really shone in other subjects as well. While practicing the piano this last week, she said "Mommy, I want to learn all the notes so well that I can write my own songs!" For afternoon activities this week, I let her sculpt with some play dough while I got supper ready (something I don't let her do nearly enough) and she just went to town making the most creative things.

Knut just recently refilled the bird feeder outside our kitchen window, which has drawn some birds I've actually never seen by our house before. We've seen a blue jay and a red-headed woodpecker (that was really cool!) Silje has begun to take a pencil and blank notebook over to the kitchen table, and sits and sketches the birds that she sees. It was her own idea, and she did it completely independently.

I feel bad I haven't been doing the crafts that I've been planning to do with her that somehow got dropped with other electives when I was sick a few weeks ago. I really ought to add those back in. Her desire to create things is just oozing from her lately!

She's starting to prefer to do her work on the couch in the living room in front of the fireplace as opposed to the dining room table. I've let her do that, until I saw a big slide in her handwriting again, so we're back to the table at least for the writing assignments.

Going over the curriculums, I see that we're soon approaching the half year mark in 2 subjects. What? Didn't we just start?

I've reorganized the day from what I had originally scheduled it out to be. So far it's working well for me, but I haven't asked Silje's opinion on it yet. Basically before I was planning on alternating subjects that she could do independently with subjects that she needed one on one time with. I've changed that into 2 clumps now.

We start the day together doing our devotions/Bible reading and then I hand her a stack of her worksheets that she needs to complete that day. (This includes her Bible coloring pages, which she LOVES, a piece of handwriting paper to write out her memory verse, her spelling words worksheet, and sometimes her math worksheets [although sometimes we need to "do" a teaching math lesson first, and then I do it later in the day.])

During that independent work time, I start the house off for the day. If we need bread, I start some in the breadmaker. Almost always a load of laundry needs to be started. I clean up the kitchen for the morning, check my email, attempt to get dressed, and get the boys set up with some fun activity. When she's done with her independent work, we go over it together and discuss things that she may have gotten wrong, or finally figured out. Then we sit and read through her history/geography lesson, and do the activities which usually involves searching our map, writing on the timeline, but most often she has so many questions, and I do my best to answer them. If she stumps me too many times, we schedule a trip to the library as soon as I can manage it that week.

Grammar is also a subject that we do together, as well as the read alouds, which normally, or not so normally gets put somewhere into the day, but not necessarily the "school" portion of the day.

I think I'm happy to be falling into some kind of routine after being sickish for a month or so. My goals for this next week will include getting back on top of some of our electives like Chinese and sewing, as well as relying less on the t.v. for the boys. Usually the time I spend with Silje one on one, is less than an hour, and often I feel left with no choice but to hypnotize the boys with some show, which 95% of the time is PBS kids.

However, the more I rely on the t.v. the more difficult they all are to handle throughout the rest of the day, and they're just wearing me out! It's almost as if they forget how to just play after watching t.v. at some point in the morning, and follow me around and whine once it gets turned off. A few times this week, I've left the one on one work until Elias' afternoon nap time, so I only have to worry about keeping David occupied while I work with Silje. (Which is much much easier!) I could go into a whole post about this struggle, but I think it seeps out of a homeschool topic and into a straight parenting topic, so I'll save it for another day.

Homeschool Friday

We had a fun week homeschooling this week. We've had a pretty good week about starting school in the morning, and getting lots done. We've been perpetually behind in our read aloud books, but I started reading to the kids during their snack time instead of before bed, and it's so much easier! They're sitting there with food in their mouth so they can't interrupt, and it gives their hands something quiet to do. We've gotten mostly caught up, and are currently enjoying the book "Mr. Popper's Penguins" which is not only teaching us a lot about penguins, but it is pretty funny.



School rarely starts before 9am, and since the kids get up much earlier than that, Silje got in a quick tea party before school yesterday.

Tuesday is normally our busy day, but it was the off week for our homeschool group, and Silje's piano lessons were canceled by her teacher as well, so we just had a quick trip to town for her choir practice. However, on Thursday, we decided to go on our first field trip with the homeschool group. I was debating whether or not to go, and Knut suggested that I not go unless I can get someone to watch Elias for it, since it was during his nap time, and he didn't want me chasing around a cranky tired baby for a few hours on the outing.

Fortunately, Grandma came to the rescue, and Elias got to take his nap at her house while I took Silje and David the the Prairie Wetlands, which was hosting the homeschool group. Silje went there several times last year in kindergarten and loves it out there. She was in the older group and David was with the preschool group. I couldn't be with both groups, so I stayed with David since he was hanging on my leg, and Silje pranced off to be with her friends without looking back.


David was pretty excited to get a map to the place, and paid close attention to where exactly we were on the map at all times. We had a "guide" there who pointed out to us all the interesting wildlife in the wetlands.

We walked through the grounds until we reached our destination on the map: a grove of oak trees.

There we looked through the leaves, in search of fuzzy white or pink "gulls" that are actually eggs that insects have laid on the leaves before they have fallen.


It took David and I awhile since he was more interested in rolling around in the leaves. Here's his gull with his "Lil Farmer Gloves" that he rarely leaves the house without.


And here's his smile that says "Can I go back to playing in the leaves now?"


Then we headed over to the pond, and the kids laid down on their tummies and looked in to see what they could find.


There was so much to see.


David loved that this bridge floated. It was at this point that he was about done and didn't like to keep up with the rest of the group.

When the time came, we got Silje from her class. She had been given a little notebook and got to draw the wildlife she saw and then learn about it. She drew a cricket, and got to learn all about them.

After the field trip we stopped by the library, and I picked out some more readers for Silje to use for the next few weeks since she's still so ahead in what the curriculum package sent us. We also found tons of books on ancient Egypt, which is our history unit right now. We don't need any more books than what we have in the curriculum, but I figured it can't hurt to have more information lying around if she wants something interesting to read in her free time. I'll have to admit, I'm astonished at how much I'm learning in this unit!

We also picked up a bit on penguins, since Silje wanted to know more about them from our read aloud book. She read about them the whole way home and was telling me all about things baby penguins do.

I've added a few "supplements" which has been keeping Silje's mornings more full than usual, but I think we both like it better that way. She doesn't like only having school for 2 hours. So I printed off some coloring sheets and crossword puzzles that coordinate with our Bible lesson of that day, and she gets to work on those. Then I did a quick search on some of my "free teacher worksheets" sites that I've found to be so helpful, as well as the Sonlight's list of suggested supplement resources, and have just given her more work in the areas that we are already studying. She's doing extra work so far in English, geography, and sometimes science, although I think the things I added for her in science are a bit over her head so I think I may drop that. This week I picked up an extra credit reader at the library for her as well.

It's not more work for me to give her more work. It simply keeps her more content, and that basically makes my job easier.

Homeschool Friday

OK, today will be quick and short because I just have so much to do. Besides being one day behind due to the business of David's birthday on Monday, homeschooling went just great this week. As Monday got busier and busier, I finally just scrapped the whole idea of trying to squeeze school in and declared it a holiday. I haven't decided yet if I'll just catch up gradually, which hasn't happened yet, if we'll just do school on Saturday, or if I'll just add that day onto the year, making the year one day longer. Regardless, I think we'll be just fine.

Silje learned a bit about butterflies, and that was the theme of the books we picked up from the library this week. I've also started printing off some free coloring sheets and cross word puzzles that line up with our Bible lessons, so she has a lot more things to do in the day as far as worksheets, and she really likes it that way. She loves worksheets!

In grammar, she learned a new concept of complete subjects and complete predicates, which was kinda tricky for her to pick up at first. Once she focused and put her mind to it, though, she became a pro at labeling them.

She still produces perfect worksheets in Math consistently, as far as getting the answers right, but her handwriting always goes out the window in this subject for one reason. I'm still trying to figure out why, and how to fix that. Her handwriting is beautiful in other subjects, but in math she'll have letters turned backwards, lowercase 'j' starting at the very top of the line, e's that lay sideways. I've been making her redo that part, and do it right but I have yet to have her stop doing it in the first place.

We picked up some new readers at the library this time, so after she finishes the Sonlight reader that she should finish today we'll be venturing away from the assigned Sonlight readers for a month or so, since that's how far ahead she is. In the mean time I think I'm going to have her go through some Ramona Quimby books.

We finished up our geography unit on how different people live all over the world. Up until now we've talked about different types of houses, different types of clothing, languages, beliefs, etc. It was just an introduction, and we'll be covering these things more in depth throughout the year, but the Sonlight curriculum has us adding in some more history now, and we're going to start studying some ancient history. This year we should cover creation through the fall of the Roman Empire. Sonlight follows the "Charlotte Mason" teaching philosophy (one interpretation of classical education) where you start teaching history at the very beginning, as opposed to what most public schools do with starting to teach about your city, your state, your country and than your world. With the Charlotte Mason philosophy, by the time you get to studying America, there is a strong foundation of why America was so significant in history.

As far as David goes, I've been trying to push him outside and enjoy this nice weather of ours as much as I can. He's been working night and day on the legos and puzzles that he got for his birthday. Elias has been gradually turning from "cutie" to "stinker" and I'm going to have to figure out how to occupy him better in the coming months. For now, though, all is well.

Homeschool Friday

So how has homeschooling gone this week? No comment.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaahaha.

No really, it wasn't totally awesome, but it was by no means awful either. Harvest has come upon us, and we're still getting into the new "flow" to our day in how everything seems to be affected with Knut's schedule being different. My cough has moved to my sinuses, and although I'm pretty sure change in a cold is good, it's been kinda painful all over my face, and my motivation has been down I think because of it. The tough part here about homeschooling is that I can't call in a sub.

School has been done more in the afternoon this week. Mornings I've just been trying to get my bearings. We're about 2 days behind in English, and about a day behind in geography, and our electives I've kinda put on hold (sewing, etc.) but other than that I've been keeping up pretty well. Well, I shouldn't say we're behind, because actually we're weeks/months ahead on most of our curriculums. If we stay on our current pace we'll be done with our work at the beginning of March and that's with a maternity leave figured in. I'm starting to reconfigure my lesson plans to slow down and allow for more depth in some areas, just for fun. I'm also doing things like putting a pile of old magazines in front of Silje and have her go through and cut out pictures and paste them on paper around whatever theme I've picked that day. She really likes it.

When I say we're behind I mean my personal organized schedule, which I don't even have access to see right now because I had all of my lesson plans organized on my laptop, and checked off things as we got them done. However our laptop is not working right now. So I'm writing this on our desktop which Knut primarily uses in his office in the basement. While I fortunately still have internet access through it, very few of my documents are on here. I still have all of my teacher manuals that have all of the information that I had collected onto one spreadsheet, but it's just a bit more tedious. Honestly, most of the information was engraved in my head so it hasn't been too tough. My head is just stuffy these days and thoughts are slow. As I said on facebook, it would be so much nicer if I could take the "good" drugs for my cold so that I could function a bit better.

On Sunday of this week, David surprised both Knut and I and brought a paper and pencil to Knut and asked him to teach him to write his name. Normally he's so resistant to this type of activity, so him initiating it caught us terribly off guard. Knut had him try with both his right and left hand. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that he was left handed, but his lines with his left hand were all over the page. The lines with his right hand were far more controlled...as in there was no comparison. Hmmm...so I'm still a bit confused on the matter.

Silje is enjoying the extra reading I've been assigning her over and beyond her "required" curriculum reading. She keeps asking for more, so I think I need to gear up for another trip to the library which I've put off with my cold, and our schedule being off. This next week we MUST go though. We must.

She's also started doing something new. I think she's testing me to see how closely I look at her work. She'll turn in her work to me, and sometimes when she does I'm doing dishes or changing a diaper, and I just say "set it right there and start working on XYZ while I look at it." Then when I finish what my hands were doing and pick up her work, I see she totally skipped questions, or did a sloppy job, or just puts in something totally random.

Now, I DO check all of her work, so I've had to bring her back and point out these "errors" to her numerous time this last week. For good measure, we've been having more in depth conversations about what she's been reading than the normal "tell me about it," or "what was your favorite part?" I want to be sure that she really is reading every page, and so our discussions on books, as well as going over her writing assignments have been taking more time. This last summer I read all of the books that she was supposed to read this year, and I think that was a good idea because I already know all of the stories and know what to ask her.

I suppose it's normal for her to test me and see if I actually notice what she's doing, and I'm hoping she won't do it often if she sees that I'm consistent about it.

We had our homeschool group on Tuesday, and Silje got to go to a presentation by a fireman which I snuck out of David's class to watch. (David was invited to the presentation too, but he much preferred the gym.) It was fun to watch Silje in the class because she raised her hand so often, and asked the fireman so many good questions that showed she was thinking, paying attention, and she spoke clearly and without fear. I have to admit, I was pretty proud of her.

In David's class, we studied different types of leaves that are changing colors all around us now. We read a leaf book, and did leaf crafts. We studied insect eggs growing on dead leaves, and even I learned some things I didn't know before!

If you remember, Tuesdays when we have homeschool group, choir practice, and piano lessons, Elias has a tough time without a nap. Fortunately, Elias fell asleep in the van while driving from choir practice to piano lessons. So I dropped Silje off, brought David to the park a few doors down, and watched David play at the park while I leaned against the outside of the car with Elias getting at least a little nap in. It made such a world of difference. It didn't take him days to recover from that afternoon this time. I'm going to have to figure out what to do with the boys during piano lessons this winter when the park won't be as great of an idea. I'm trying to formulate a plan, but nothing has come to me yet. I hope when the snow falls I'll have some ideas flowing.

I'm hoping this cold/pregnancy won't slow me down as much next week, and that I can get access to all of my homeschooling spreadsheets/lists/schedules again. However, it's been good to know that we can continue on without all of them too. As tough as a week as it's been for me, I've learned a lot about how to adapt, and learned a lot as a teacher. I need those kinds of weeks too if we are to be improving and growing.

Homeschool Friday

Is it Friday already?

We had a picnic with our homeschool group this last Sunday, and it was fun for all of the families there to get together. The kids are really starting to make friends, and so am I. It was Knut's first time meeting about everyone there, but there were some acquaintances there that made it fun.

Silje had her first piano lesson, and another choir practice. (Although she was 15 minutes late for the 30 minute choir practice. I lost my keys and was searching all over with all of the kids strapped and waiting in the car...I hate that. Wasn't exactly a supermom moment.) She's loving piano, and is still talking about it. She's so excited that if she works hard, she'll have something to perform for Christmas this year.

We encountered our first bit of trouble this year when Silje had to take her English grammar test on Tuesday. Before the test, we reviewed the material. We practiced classifying 3 sentences together. (Well, she did the last 2 all by herself.) Then she did some journal writing before the test started.

It was the first time she froze for a test. She's had grammar tests before, but she just froze this time. I gave her the test paper: 2 sentences to classify, and 3 sets of words to label as SYN or ANT. We went over the questions together like we've done in the past to make sure she knew what each one was saying. Pretty short and sweet. She started out okay. She labeled the subject-noun, and the verb in the first sentence. Then she froze. Was the next word an adverb or an adjective? I knew she knew this.

So she turned to me and asked me which one it was. I reminded her this was a test, and I couldn't help her. She knew this too, but continued to panic. The more she panicked, the more her brain shut down and she couldn't think. I told her that if she didn't know the answer, to put down her best guess. That's when she started crying. Her body shook as she was terrified of guessing wrong and failing the test.

I didn't know what to do! I couldn't tell her the answer. I knew she knew the answer. We'd done these exact sentences the last week, and she had done 2 similar sentences all by herself not even 5 minutes earlier without mistake. I tried to comfort her, but ended up getting frustrated myself because all she would do is sit there and cry, and wouldn't write anything down.

So finally I left the room. I thought she needed to process this herself. She had to learn how to push through and overcome this test fright. I wasn't helping. The more I talked the more she cried.

Within 5 minutes, she brought the test to me and asked if she got it right. She did. 100%. Relief washed over her face, and we sat down and talked about it. You see, Silje still struggles with perfection. I'm told this is a common trait of an oldest child. In her mind, getting a single thing wrong on the test is the worst case scenario. Out of all the tests/assessments that she's had in the last 5 weeks (she's only tested in Bible memorization, math, grammar and spelling so far) the only thing she has missed has been one extra credit word on a spelling test. Sure, she's smart. For her, though, that's not good enough. She wants to be perfect.

It's not that I want to sit down and tell her it's okay if she messes up a lot. But that's usually what I have to tell her. I remind her that if she gets something wrong, that doesn't mean she's in trouble, but it lets me know that's where we need to work. I don't expect her to be perfect, but I expect her best. I expect her to try. Sometimes we have to make a lot of mistakes in order to get our best to come out. It's called practice.

I'm sure we've all froze on a test at one point. When you look at a question that you've seen before and your mind goes blank. It's a lonely feeling. It's so helpless. Although I wish Silje didn't have to go through that, I'm glad she got to go through that in a place where I got to talk to her about it afterward.

The mom in me wonders if I caused it. Did I put too much pressure on her? Was I being too strict or harsh? Is it really necessary to give her tests when I know she knows it?

I think learning how to get through test-fright is a skill in itself. She'll have to take tests all through school, and for college entrance. We'll probably have her take the state tests as she gets older, to compare her progress to other students in the state. It's optional in our state for homeschoolers to take state assessment tests, but I think it would be valuable information to have.

So the tests stay. We'll have to continue on working with Silje that her best is what's important. While we're so so so proud of her getting 100% after 100% I can't wait to tell her that I'm proud of her 95%. There will come a time when she'll have a tough subject that she just can't wrap her brain around and she'll need to push through and try her best. Right now, when something difficult comes her way, she shuts down. She'd rather not try at all, then get less than 100%. That is what I don't want. I don't want her to not try things that she can't get perfect the first time every time.

So besides that drama, things have been going well. She finished up her first huge unit of Chinese, and was so excited to move onto unit 2, with a whole new set of words to learn. Math has been going very well, and she recently told me it's one of her favorite subjects. We are approaching parts that need more explanation and instruction, and I told her that soon we'll have to slow down to doing just one math worksheet a day. She pouted about that, and pleaded with me to keep doing 2 lessons of that a day. I'm guessing that's a good sign! However, I do think I'll slow her down in the next few weeks, and spend more time going in depth in one lesson, than getting the best parts of 2 lessons put together. Plus, we're starting to do addition drills now, and I think doing 2 sets of those a day will be too much.

I've been easing up a bit on holding her back on only a chapter a day on her readers. She really loves to bite off more than that in a day, so I've been letting her read more, and have picked up some good library books to fill in between the assigned books in her curriculum. She just finished a fun book on the Pony Express that she enjoyed.

We studied the Dongxiang people of China for our people group (without a Bible in their own language) this week, and she really enjoyed doing a bunch of "China" things, especially the Panda bears! We continue to study different types of homes around the world as well, and learning how other people live all around the world. Her geography, particularly in Asia, amazes me. She can point out so many (but of course not all yet) of the countries in that part of the world on an unlabeled map.

David has been keeping busy, and spends most of his day building things these days. He still works on his readers every day, but we haven't moved ahead in his reading program at all this week, and I'm totally fine with that. I'll say it again, but I think this type of play is exactly what a boy his age should be doing. From Legos to Tinkertoys, he builds the most amazing "inventions" and explains to me what each one does.

He's also given the responsibility to play with Elias while I have one on one work to do with Silje, and I honestly think he's been liking some responsibilities that normally get handed to Silje. Of course, he's not always so compliant, but I see his ability to nurture and care for others growing, as well as the bond between the brothers. Requiring him to care for someone else has really been good for his attitude, and I really like seeing how this has been developing him.

He's been more willing to color lately, which makes me very happy. He never uses his right hand anymore for writing or coloring. We've been trying to determine if he's right or left handed and have naively been watching him while he eats to tell. Sometimes he would use his right, sometimes his left. One day, Knut asked him if he could put his fork in his right hand. Aghast, David refused. Knut asked him why, and David explained that the fork goes on the left side of the plate and the spoon goes on the right side of the plate. They do not cross over.

So with that misunderstanding cleared, up, we have let him use whatever hand he desires to draw, and it has been his left hand 100% of the time. I'm a little apprehensive about teaching handwriting to a leftie. I suppose I'll figure it out when I get there.

Homeschool Friday

Homeschool keeps plugging along. Our fun new things were that the kids got to go to a homeschool group on Tuesday, as well as Silje joined a children's choir that also rehearses on Tuesday. Tuesday was...crazy.

I foolishly thought I could get all of my errands done on Tuesday since we were already in town. After attempting to do it, and pushing my boys especially past their breaking point, I think this would be unwise to attempt on a weekly basis. Homeschool group is only twice a month, but choir, and soon piano lessons, will be weekly. It was too much running, too much rushing. Elias had to skip his nap and he was beside himself. I felt I was being very unfair to him and expecting too much from him.

He did fine at homeschool group, and even made it through the grocery store while Silje was at choir. By the time we picked up Silje, and made two more stops, he ended up just looking, whimpering/half crying, while sitting in the cart at our last stop. I let him sleep an hour in the car when we got home, but that was clearly not enough for him.

The next morning he woke up and didn't know what he wanted. He didn't want to be held, he didn't want to be put down. He wanted food, but not in his mouth. He'd reach for a toy, and scream when we gave it to him. So I ended up putting him back in his crib and he sat and enjoyed the solitude for about 30 minutes before he started calling for me is his normal cheerful Elias voice. I think if I remove the errands from our Tuesday run around, we'll be able to take a slower pace, which might help him manage no naps on that day. (He'll get a nap on the off weeks that we're not at homeschool group. I'm only asking him to skip naps twice a month, but I know that's so tough for him!)

Silje however, was in heaven on Tuesday. She exclaimed it was "the best day of my life!" Not only did she love homeschool group and make lots of friends, but she loved choir practice as well. The age group she was in at homeschool group did a lesson on basic first aid and emergency planning. They got to go inside a real ambulance, and got to bring home a book on household safety tips. (Um, she has already started planning fire drills and monthly alarm tests, as well as drew an "escape route" map of our house in case of fire and ran around making sure everyone in our family knew the plan.) She also started learning the rules of volleyball in gym. It was only 2 hours, but it was so much fun! During the gym time I was able to sit and chat with a few moms and it was so much fun to make friends who are in very similar situations as me!

Having her be in these activities was part of our schooling plan. I kinda chuckle when some people I've talked to about her loving these activities sigh and exclaim "O good! She will have a chance to socialize!" I think it's kinda a joke among homeschool moms as this is still a huge homeschooling myth about the un-socialization of homeschool kids. There has not been one study to support it, and in fact the opposite is true. In most studies I've come across, homeschooled kids tend to communicate better with other children, WAY better with adults, and tend to get along with their bosses better in the workforce.

I think people assume that because we decided to homeschool that equated to us deciding to lock our children in a cage from the world until they are 18. That could not be further from the truth. We hope that homeschooling will open up their eyes to the world in a way that public school couldn't. Putting her in these activities was in our plan from the beginning, and not in response to a huge worry. No one said "but if you homeschool her, how will she learn math???" Um, we get a math program. Duh. However, the "if you homeschool her, she won't know how to socialize with her peers!" was a common comment. Again, I'd like to say that homeschooling does not equal cage. We had a "socializing" program in place too. You know, besides the human relationships she has day in and day out in our home and family as well. Relationships with more peers does not really equal better relationships with peers. Sorry, small tangent is done.

As far as school goes, Silje added Adjectives to her grammar program. She also took her first grammar test and passed with flying colors...again. Spelling also, awesome. Doing the smushing of 2 math lessons a day is turning out to be a success, although I think I need to make sure I'm not removing the "fun" parts of the lessons. She makes no complaint about math, but I can tell it's not her favorite. I still wonder if it's the program, or if she's just still not at the new information point yet. What we're doing now is better than what we were doing before, so I'm content with that for now. I think I'll be able to make a better judgment of the program when she does actually reach her "level."

David's reading progress has slowed down a lot in regards to moving forward, but not in enthusiasm. Now that we've finished the kindergarten reading program already and I opened up the 1st grade set, he is not catching on as fast. So for his 30 minutes that used to be all new information, has turned into about 15 minutes of new information, and then I stop him before he reaches the frustration point, and have him spend 15 minutes reading his kindergarten level books. He still wants to move forward, but he forgets sometimes that he's only preschool age. A 4 year old taking on a 1st grade program is ambitious for him to do, and he is getting it. He just needs it in smaller quantities. So the new information that he gets daily has shrunk, and he gets to spend more time just sitting and enjoying the books he does know how to read. I'm very happy with this.

The biggest problem this week was my motivation level. The beginning of the week I was feeling fine physically (besides the cold), but was being terribly lazy. We still did school, but it was later in the day, and I let the kids watch way too much t.v. in the morning. We lost the routine of the house and the kids starting running wild which wore me out and made me feel even less motivated. I started getting discouraged. On Wednesday night I read back through my post about the widows mite, and realized that I may not have much motivation, but if I can just give a little, God will take it. I don't always remember this myself.

So I just started organizing a few things on my kitchen counter Wednesday night, and pretty soon I couldn't stop! I then organized the pile of homeschooling supplies, then moved onto cleaning out the hall closet I've been meaning to get to, and finished off the evening by gutting out my sewing room and putting everything back together into a nice clean, inspiring place once again! By Thursday morning my motivation surprised me with how much I was getting done both school-wise and household chores-wise. Whether it was nesting or "getting out of my rut" it was quite refreshing to not only get things done, but to feel motivated to get things done again! I'm not sure how long the feeling will last, but I'm hoping to ride it for at least a few days!

Homeschool Friday

We had a short week this week, since we were out at the lake on Labor Day. In our little 4 day week, the kids had a tougher time getting "into" school. The permanence of it is starting to sink in, and the novelty has worn off.

As much of our curriculum is read aloud, it was tough with my dry throat and cough that I've been dealing with. We took lots of breaks, and I've had cup after cup of our homemade hot apple cider.

Silje would probably say the highlight of her week was starting a journal. In science, we learned about the sun, and Silje had to give a speech to the family on why it's not good to look at the sun. In Bible we continue reading through the book of Mark. In English she learned about antonyms and synonyms (which she calls cinnamon) and added the adverb jingle to her jingle repertoire (she knows a sentence, noun, and verb jingle already). She loves singing or chanting along with her jingles during English a lot! We've made up actions to go with them, and she usually can't wait for her grammar lesson because of it.

The highlight for me was when I handed her the new reader for the week: "Keep the Lights Burning Abbie" which is a story about a girl living at a lighthouse with her family and has to keep the lamps in the lighthouse going during a storm that her father is caught up in.

Silje was dressed in her Snow White costume that day. She told me she wanted to wear it for the whole day because it had a hoop skirt, and we had read a story this last summer about a girl in the 1700s who wore a hoop skirt and had such trouble with it. Silje always giggled when she sat on the couch and her skirt would fly up. She learned she had to sit and sometimes even walk differently to accommodate the hoop skirt. (She's had this costume for awhile but rarely wore it since it wasn't pink ;) )

Anyway, she was wearing her Snow White, hoop-skirt costume, and I handed her the book, and she asked if she could get her doll "Abby" and read it to her. Then there she was, in her costume, holding her favorite doll, and reading her the book. She said to her doll "Abby, this book is about you when you get older. You will be so brave." It was just adorable. I'm just loving this.

After talking with Knut's extended family who I consider homeschool veterans, I decided to trim the fluff from each of Silje's math lessons, and combine 2 lessons a day, until we get to a point where we're at the level that challenges her. We're not spending any more time doing math each day, but the "boring baby stuff" is cut out and it's the more challenging parts of 2 lessons smushed together. We'll get done with math earlier this year, or start second grade math sooner by doing this. Still, math has been much more enjoyable for her this way, and her bored/sloppy work has so far disappeared.

The one part in her math book that she seems to have trouble with this week was distinguishing between right and left. She knows which hand is right and which is left, but she has trouble with directions that are right and left. Such as: turn left, turn right. I think we'll do some kind of treasure map or something to work on these directions. See, I'm adding my own ideas into the pre-set lessons now. All together now: OOOOooo, Aaahhhhhh...

In history and geography, we learned about beliefs from all over the world, from tribal customs to the big world religions. I cannot even begin to express how insightful Silje's questions were during these lessons. Not too much gets past her! We also focused in on our Bible-less people of the week: the Brokpa people who live in the Kingdom of Bhutan. We have friends who have a mission opportunity in that part of the world, so it was fun to show her their picture on our fridge and tell her about their ministry.

Since yaks, sheep, and the Himalayan Mountains are all big parts of that country, we went to the library to check out books on these subjects, but only found one lonely book on Bhutan. I'll have to plan ahead better and request some books from other libraries for these kinds of studies in the future. We also did some map coloring and other coloring pages along these themes. When we got home from the library, I just let Silje go through the book (which was actually quite good) with a Post-it pad. She read through the things that looked interesting, and marked 10 of the pages with a Post-it. Well, next time I'll only give her 10 pieces of a Post-it pad. She marked closer to 30 pages and exclaimed "Mommy I couldn't pick just 10! I had too many favorites!" Then we went through the marked pages together and she had to tell me about what she found so interesting on that page.

We didn't do any crocheting this week, as I'm wondering if we should do some fun, easy felt sewing instead, and leave the crocheting for a bit later (although Silje would be devastated to know that I'm contemplating this).

I did sign up Silje for the local children's choir at the Center for the Arts that practices once a week. David will be old enough to join next year. She'll start this next Tuesday. It will be fun to go to Christmas and springtime concerts this year for her. She's really looking forward to meeting and seeing other kids. I'm trying to figure out how to get her to the choir practice since it's right smack in the middle of Elias' nap. However, I'm willing to resign to the fact that he may just have short naps on Tuesdays so that Silje can do this and we'll just have to deal with that.

Piano lessons have also been set up, and fortunately, she'll go straight from choir to her piano lessons so I only have to interrupt naps one day a week. Tuesdays will just be "music overkill day." I know, I know. We've been debating whether or not she's ready for them this year. It just turned out that the exact right circumstances of the right teacher, the right time slot, and the right price, and the right piano, (PIANO?? You gasp! Tune in tomorrow! Get it? Tune in? Hee Hee.) all appeared before our eyes. How can we say no to all of that? Plus, her asking for lessons has turned into a multiple-times-a-day-plea, so we think she may be ready interest-wise.

Silje lost so much knowledge in just the few weeks that we didn't have her do Chinese at the end of the summer while we were gone. She's been spending this whole time doing review and trying to get back to the point she was before. She was so excited when the computer program she does her lesson with finally let her move forward again! (The program won't let her move forward until she scores high enough to do so. When we got back from vacation her scores were so low that she had to keep doing review until her scores went up. That was tough for her.) Now her scores are back up in the 90s and she can start learning new things. She was jumping up and down over that!

David has still had the desire to learn to read, but his concentration was lacking at the beginning of this week. He now wants to read fast, and has a tough time slowing down his brain and forcing it to look at each letter. He wants so badly for it to come easily. So our lessons have been even shorter, but we keep progressing, although at a slower pace. I'm trying to keep it consistent for him, as in daily, but not worrying so much about how long each day. He's still 4, still preschool age. I have absolutely no desire to make him sit and stay on the couch and do a solid lesson from beginning to end until he gets it right. I'm still of the belief that 4 year old boys are just not built that way. When he's Silje age, he'll have to sit and finish a lesson. Until then, we're doing this all for fun. The last 2 days of the week he started putting his all into it again, so I think it will just ebb and flow.

However, I might add that we have just finished our 3rd week of school and he has learned to read every single kindergarten level (level 1) book and workbook already with our Hooked on Phonics curriculum. Next week we're moving on to the 1st grade book and workbook/games, while keeping the kindergarten ones out so he can keep reviewing them. So really...no rush. If the 1st grade material seems to be too challenging, I have plenty of easy BOB books to keep him interested too.

As his reading desire has increased, though, his desire to color/draw/do anything with a writing utensil has ceased. I'll remind you my two goals for him for the year were to teach him basic reading, and teach him to write his name. One he's very into right now. The other...not so much.

So David and Elias do a lot of racing of trucks around the house, wrestling and giggling, and building amazing sculptures with Tinkertoys and Legos. It's amazing to me that Elias, who is not quite 2 can keep up with David, but he does! Although he can be a little annoying to David, David really enjoys playing with him, and having someone who likes to play "boyish" things with him.

Second Week of Homeschooling

Is it Friday already? Where did this week go? I meant to blog more. Really I did. I've got some good stuff to write. *Sigh* maybe next week. I'm due to post some kind of belly pic on here soon, aren't I?

I apologize if I ramble a bit in this post. You all are probably used to it. I sort through my thoughts a lot during writing! I promise these Friday homeschool updates will get shorter.

Our week went well, although not without it's bumps along the way. For David already, things are getting old. There are only so many puzzles that we have, and while I have quite a variety of worksheet books and coloring books, he's really still not into coloring and arts and craft types of things. His days have gotten shorter, but as I expected, he likes to play on the floor while I read Silje some of her books, and he pretends not to listen, although I'm pretty sure he's listening quite closely.

I called on my online homeschooling mommy friends for ideas, and one that has really helped was to have him play with board games during our work time. He doesn't know the rules to many of them, but just shaking the dice and counting, and hopping along whatever path the game is is fun for him. I pulled out the Tinkertoys that were put away for awhile when Elias first started crawling, and it's like they're brand new and the boys just love fiddling away with them!

(Here's a picture of him I snapped when I caught him reading instead of playing outside where I had told him to go. Is this really my David?)

However, once he started gaining some traction with his reading, he started adding new books to his collection of readers he can read nearly daily now, and spends a lot of his school time doing so. He's accumulated quite a stack of easy easy reading books that he can read by himself. He loves to read them any chance he can. He spends so much time practicing his letters and sounds and words that when we do a lesson in the morning, he's 10 times better than he was the morning before. I truly am shocked how fast he's picking this up. I knew he was eager to learn to read, but my goodness! He's one of those stubborn, passionate people who once they set their minds to something--watch out. He's decided he wants to read and nothing will keep him from that.


Silje is loving school! I make her read her history "readers" slowly as we work on her comprehension. She's been an amazing reader for years now, but I want to be sure she's understanding all those books she reads. Once she's done with the book, it's all hers to consume at whatever pace she likes. The readers she has finished get read through several times a day now. She really enjoys geography too, as we learn about people all around the world: how they dress, what they eat, what they believe. Her eyes get so big and she is so full of questions.

It's sometimes exhausting to deal with her non-stop questions. It never ends. During lunch, in the car, doing chores, while we're tucking her in at night. She always has a question for me in regard to her lessons. Next week we'll start a weekly library run where she'll be able to check out books in areas that she wants to learn more about.

I've also come up with an "extra credit" book list of classics (that she may not ordinarily pick out) that are not included in her curriculum. If she finishes a book and gives an oral book report to the librarian (who loved Silje's oral book reports she gave over the summer...part of the summer reading program at our library) she gets to pick a prize out of a prize bucket I've been accumulating for her. Little things like sparkly lip balm or stickers. She already has 1 book off of the list completed, and has already started on her second.

As far as Silje's schedule, we've added in math and "home economics" to her schedule to make her day full now. When people have asked what math program we're using and I say "Saxon math" I find that people either really love it or really hate it. Part of my problem right now is I'm not sure which level Silje should be at. I picked level 1 for first grade, and while I'm pretty sure she doesn't know the information for the second part of the year, this first part is all pretty basic for her.

So I'm going ahead with it, knowing that she knows most of this already. This week we worked on how to write the date and read a calendar, as well as count to ten using blocks. The calendar things were somewhat new to her. Counting to ten wasn't exactly. However, she got to use some of the manipulatives and that made it fun for her. I'm quickly learning to skip over things that are redundant, but keep the things that are good review. For instance, she needs to practice writing out the date every day. She doesn't need to show me how close high she can count everyday when the goal for the year is 100 and she did that on the first day.


I feel like I found that fine line between the extremes of boredom and overly challenging for her English program (which Silje and I both LOVE by the way), but I don't feel as settled yet with her math program. So far she's not too bored, but it is only the first week. I know she knows these things, and maybe it'll be just fun for her to know the all the answers the first part of the year. Maybe she won't get bored. We do have tougher subjects. Maybe this will just be her easier one. I'm still thinking this subject over, and wondering what the right thing to do is. Until then, I'm just doing the lesson it has laid out for me each day.

Her coloring is sloppier with math, though. So is her writing. All of her other subjects she puts her best out there. That's what I would do when I was bored in school. I'd slack off in the easy classes because who really cares?

I don't want to skip lessons, because I see the learning approach this program is trying to do and don't want to mess with that. I may soon start combining lessons, though, to make it a bit more interesting for her. I want to use this program a full year and see how it all plays out, but I may switch to "Math U See" in the future so I can compare the two better. Those were the 2 programs I was debating between. Basically, I'm totally sold on all of our choices for curriculums we chose for this year except for math. I'm not convinced we made the wrong choice, though either. There are some things I really do like about it.

Her home economic lessons are a bit trickier than I had anticipated, but I'll admit I can be rather impatient when it comes to teaching things I can do in my sleep. I thought I'd start with crocheting, since I consider it much easier to master than knitting. I was hoping she could make herself a simple scarf for herself.

Granted, learning brand new things like how to hold the yarn with the correct tension, etc is very, very difficult. However, for generations, this has been an appropriate age to teach these hand skills, and I do not feel it is too advanced for her. We've been keeping the lessons super short, and try to stop just short of her feeling overly frustrated. Just like David with learning to read, Silje needs lots of praise to keep having the motivation to continue on with this lesson.

I have a big plastic tub of my old yarn, otherwise known as the "cheapy red heart stuff" that you can get at Walmart. It's one of my favorite yarns to use for big projects like blankets, but when it comes to clothing and such, I like to go for the good stuff. I'll admit, the more I've gotten into yarn, the more expensive my taste has gotten. To work with this red heart stuff again feels like sandpaper on my fingers compared to the wool, cotton, bamboo, etc., yarn I've grown accustomed to from the specialty yarn shop. I've turned into a yuppie yarn lady.

I was considering just donating my cheap stuff since I don't use it anymore, but then I thought that there's so many colors, and although it's not as fancy, it's amazing to learn on, and very, very simple to work with. It doesn't split or slip easily like some specialty yarns do. So I gave the whole tub to Silje and told her that this would be her yarn to learn how to crochet and knit with, as well as use for any other fun craft projects that we do.

You better believe that the first color she went for was pink! There's so much pink and purple left over from the ice cream cones I knitted her for her birthday a year ago last summer. We started working on a chain stitch, but then I decided get the scarf started for her, with one row of single crochet done, and have her learn to single crochet another row. I think it's an easier concept to master, and she can learn how to start a project down the road.

She's still excited about it, though, and that's the ultimate point. I don't want this to be drudgery. I want her to feel inspired. However, before you can do art, you need to master the craft. That will take patience...for both of us.

Elias has turned into my teacher's helper. He likes to clean the boards of our little IKEA easel after class is done.


With his brother and sister both having some sort of book with them all the time now, he's starting to follow suit as well. He loves to "read" me books, and has taken a sudden interest in being read to that he really hasn't been into in the past. Competitive much?

And yes, sometimes he does wear his jammies all day. After all...why not?

Our First Week of Homeschooling

A shift in the weather and a nip in the air made this week feel even more like the first week of school. We didn't start with all of the subjects this week, but we started with most. Next week we'll add math and "home ec" as I'm calling it where Silje will start to learn basic crocheting first.

Our day starts with breakfast and the kids listen to Knut read from the book of Mark before he goes to work. Then the kids run upstairs to clean their rooms and get dressed. It's never been easier to motivate them to do this! Now they know that when their rooms are clean and they are out of their p.j.s, they can start school.

Our first subject is Bible, and I've loved the "Leading Little Ones to God" book that we got from Sonlight. It's the most in depth children's devotional I've run across. It's not a book about being nice or obeying your parents. It's a book about God. This week our lessons have covered things like we can't see God (because he's a spirit, and because of his glory), but we can see him through his creation and works. The pictures in the book are very, we'll say "vintage" but the content is wonderful and the kids sit very well for it.

Then Silje works on her memory verse and handwriting which is Psalm 1:1 this week. She's supposed to memorize the first 6 verses of Psalms over the next 6 weeks, and I decided to combine this with handwriting. Let me just say, I'm amazed at her handwriting improvement this week. Simply amazed.

I impressed on her that she was writing God's word, and when she writes the Scriptures, she should take extra care to do her best. She took those words to heart and is writing beautifully.

The first day, she made several mistakes, and I corrected her in where certain letters started on the lines, and such. She kept looking up at me in amazement and saying "I never knew that!" Neither she nor I was frustrated by her constant correcting the first day, but she always erased when something was wrong, let me write it, and then insisted on erasing what I wrote so the whole verse could be done in her hand. Every day she wrote the verse every other morning, she did so without mistake--not even one little eraser mark. We were able to do more reciting of the verse to take it more to memory.

Once I got Silje set up with her handwriting exercise, I work with David with his phonics. This has been his favorite subject, and he read his first story about a fat cat and fat rat who sat, sat, sat. I've been having things available for him to do throughout the morning, but I haven't been requiring him to do any of it yet. I do encourage him, but I feel as a 4 year old, his primary job should still be active playing. His favorite activities are his phonics lesson, mazes (pre-writing worksheets) and puzzles. Lots and lots of puzzles!

The activities I have for him are mostly around encouraging him to use a marker or pencil or crayon more, as I would really like to see him write his name this year. His favorite by far, however, has been an extra pentagram puzzle with different animal shapes to form. He calls it his "magic puzzle" because it's a puzzle that fits together several different ways.

Elias is a pretty independent player, and although he was crabby the first day due to still recovering from our trip, he usually plays with a bucket of toys I set out for him, although I have had to give in sometime during our school day, and put on a Vegi Tales for him to keep him happy while we finish up our last little bit. It's only a 30 minute show, and he loves them.

Anyway, after Silje is done with her Bible memory/handwriting, we move onto grammar, or sometimes reading. I made a big adjustment this week because we got the first week's worth of lessons done the first day. Seriously, I had put together this big grouping/sorting activity they wanted me to do with toys and food and clothes all piled up on our dining room table. The portion assigned for that day took us literally 1 minute and the kids would have looked at me like I had 3 heads if I had stopped there.

After we finished the first week in the first day, I once again looked over the curriculum, and decided to skip to week 5 for the rest of the week. Weeks 1-4 were very repetitious of this same sorting activity, with just switching out the items in the pile. It was a lot of work for me, and to be honest, the kids weren't that into it. So on Tuesday we started week 5 and it has been going really well.

In grammar this week we learned our jingles/chants to go with nouns, verbs, and sentences. We read a story about the Sentence Kingdom, where all the words wanted to live. Words from all over the world would try to form together and go before the Sentence Council to see if they could follow the 3 rules of becoming a sentence. The words that passed the test got a thumbs up from the council, and much prestige, but the words that failed a test got a thumbs down and everyone taunted them by calling them a fragment, fragment, fragment. The words traveled to Nountown and Verbville to get more training on how to become a sentence, and soon, in the end, a little group of words passed the test. Silje was charmed by this all and giggled through the whole story. We got to do some kingdom-like crafts to go along with it, so I guess so far the grammar program is a hit.

For history and geography we've been studying differences in people groups. We've been all over our map studying about how there are over 6,000 languages, and studying peoples who have no Bible in their language. We learned about different types of money, flags, governments. We took out my old passport from when I was a teenager, and found the countries with stamps in my passport on the map. We learned about visas too, and how different countries have different sets of rules. It's just little bits of information here and there that we're reading in our books, but she's really enjoying learning all of these little facts, and is always full of lots of questions!

We do spelling too. We started on a 2nd grade spelling list and she started this week with words with the short "a" sound. She got 100% (plus her extra credit word) on her spelling quiz on Friday, but she really studied it and was really nervous about it so I'm glad that I found a level where she can excel, but she still feels challenged.

After talking with several homeschooling families, I was told to expect about 2 hours worth of work for early elementary ages, and have so far found that to be pretty true. We still need to add in math and another elective, and we're usually done in about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. If the kids don't interrupt much, I still have time to get to town if needed, get in the garden if needed, etc. All of this can be done before lunch! Depending on the number of interruptions, either by the kids or because I really need to get something done quick, the day is done as early as 9:30 am, but took us to 11:30am another morning. My goal for this year is to always be done by noon. (This does not count electives which I have prepared for the kids to do while Elias takes his nap. Silje does her Chinese on the computer during nap time, and when Elias is sleeping is the easiest time to get science projects done too.)

So far, the most difficult challenge has been the kids whining when school stops for the day. That has to be a good sign.

It has made our day more orderly and easier altogether. So far the days are easier than when we weren't homeschooling. I'm sure that will change at some point. For now, we have constructive, fun things for the kids to do that is sometimes independent, and sometimes needing me. We're all together which has been good for dealing with fights and squabbles and behavior by nipping them in the bud without me having to come in to a situation that is out of hand. It's been quite nice.

So far, homeschooling gets a thumbs up from me! Week 1! Done!

(I'll have pictures of the kids working on their things for next Friday's homeschool update. I promise!)

Trivia

What do Robert Frost, Agatha Christie, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Edwards, Hudson Taylor, Blaise Pascal, Claude Monet, William Blake, Stonewall Jackson, Ben Franklin, Daniel Webster, Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Gen. George Patton, Lousia May Alcott, Andrew Carnegie, and Elias Howe (inventor of the sewing machine ;) ) all have in common?

They were all homeschooled.

Today, is our formal start. I mean, Silje was reading chapter books before entering kindergarten, David has known his colors, shapes and letters for quite some time. I suppose they've been taught by us for a few years now. Today, however, formal school at home begins.