School Days

We are loving school!  Some days are tough, but they are few and far between.  Every once in a while, they'll get in an extreme silly mood and then Mama has to get tough.  And sometimes they get up on the wrong side of the bed, but a little reminder about attitude usually takes care of it.  Both my kids are really into learning and teaching them is a pure pleasure. 

Our schedule is something like this:
We are always started by nine.  On Monday-Wednesday, I babysit a friend's three year old.  So the time up until nine is spent finishing breakfast, getting dressed, and getting some playtime in together with our little buddy before we crack open the books.  At nine, we do our opening exercises which always include calendar time, school day countdown, working on the Bible verse we're currently memorizing, journal entries, the pledge and whatever else I think needs to be tossed in there.  (Like now, we're doing our Thankful Turkey feathers.)  After our opening, we hit the books.  I have our days broken down into the three "Rs" (remember the three Rs? Reading wRiting and aRithmetic?) and Bible and the other subjects like Science, Social Studies, and our Fun Unit.  Almost every day is the three R days and the kids really work hard on these days to accomplish their assignments.  Then there are days that I can just sense that we need a lighter day and that's when we pull out the other subjects.   That happens about once a week. 

The amount of time we spend on the work varies from day to day.  There are times when we'll spend an hour and a half on it and we're done.  Then there are days where, even after three hours, we'll have stuff yet to do.  It really depends on what lessons are being taught that day.  That might not sound like much time, after all, kids who go to public school are there for seven or eight hours, right?  Right.  Well, our work time is all work... and doesn't include recess, snack time, rest time, craft time, lunch time, hallway time, waiting for other kids to finish their work before moving on, etc. 

Now, for each kid... what are they doing?  Well, they both have their journals.  They write in their journals everyday, writing their complete name, the date and then either copying something from the board (a Bible verse) or answering a question that's written on the board.  This gives Caleb practice  learning how to spell the days of the week and months of the year, working on writing neatly, answering questions in complete sentences and using correct writing skills (punctuation, capitals, etc.).  Sarah also copies the date from the board and writes her name all by herself, and then I spell out her simpler answer or Bible verse on her level and she writes as I spell.  Both of the kids' writing skills have really improved over the last few weeks since starting the journals!

For Reading, each kid does their own thing.  Caleb is about 3/4s of the way through his first grade work- and textbook.  The actual reading part is much lower than his ability, but we are going through the whole book to learn the rules of spelling and sounding out words, which is all new to him (and some to me!).  He is also working through a chapter book to earn his BookIt certificate each month.  (Just a side note, and yes totally bragging on my son: he would have started Kindergarten this Fall had he gone to public school.  Rather, he's about to finish his first grade school books and the book he is reading is third grade level according to the wonderful world of Internet research!  I LOVE that I can teach him according to his ability level and not his age!!!!)  Sarah's reading lessons right now involve learning a different letter sound each day and studying her words.  Right now, her word card pile (a very fancy set of words written with a purple pen on index cards) consists of 40 words she reads with no problem (time to introduce new words!) and a set of the same fancy cards we use to study blending words in the "at" family.

Writing (Language Arts): The L.A. lessons coordinate with the Reading lessons as far as studying the rules of spelling and phonics.  However, they also introduce the ideas of contractions, punctuation and capitalization.  What is taught in L.A. is worked into the Reading lessons and vice versa.  Sarah doesn't do this stuff specifically.

Math:  Sarah joins right in with the math lessons.  She doesn't completely understand the concepts, but she wants to do the work, too, and I am not going to discourage her!  I teach the new, major lesson on our board and then the kids have seat work (worksheets) to practice the new lesson as well as review what we've learned in the  past.  Caleb does the seat work independently and I help Sarah complete hers.  I love our math curriculum, also first grade work.  While the major focus right now is subtraction, addition, and math families, we also hit things like telling time, place value, a little geometry, story problems, etc.  Caleb loves math, especially the timed test he takes every day!  And I bet Sarah Rose is the only three year old I know that can count to 100 and tell you exactly how to break down a number into hundreds, tens and ones place values!

Bible: The curriculum we're using is working us through the Old Testament, first grade style. Its a great fit for our setup because it teaches the more deeper aspects of the story that Caleb is able to grasp, but Sarah and our friend Nash (when he's here) can listen to the story and still do the activity sheet with Caleb.  Everyone enjoys the Bible lessons!

Science:  First grade science is pretty simple.  In fact, I think its too simple and soon we'll be switching to a new, more involved curriculum.  Science, as studied in a book, is optional at this age but I really think its important to get those thought processes going.  I have our new curriculum all ready, we're just waiting for one thing: the first unit we're going to study is plants; so we planted some popcorn in little cups last week and I'm waiting for the plants to form so we can study them in real life as we study them in the text.  We have our plant journals made and the first day of planting recorded.  Now the roots are about an inch long, so next week we'll record more in the journal.  When the stems and leaves start to form, we'll start studying the unit from the text.  Studying plants has always been one of my favorite things to do!  Both kids work together when we do this.

Social Studies: not to be confused with geography... which I did!  Social studies is just that... studying the social part of our lives.  Right now, the book is talking about families and family relationships (the Biblical ideas, mind you!).  Again, at this age, S.S. is optional, but we do it.  And again, Sarah does this right along side Caleb.

And our "Fun Unit": we have just finished talking about our bodies.  We completed a Caleb-life-size poster, gluing on the parts and organs as we talked about them.  This was really fun and the kids really got into learning about the organ for the day.  I'm not sure if they remember everything every organ does, but they do appreciate that our bodies are an amazing, complex creation and how hard it works to keep us thriving!  We did this maybe once a week... maybe not!

Whew.  I think that's it.  That was a lot more than I thought I was going to write!  My fingers just got carried away typing, I guess.   And that's not even talking about all the other stuff we do every day, like crafts and free reading and story time.  We pack a lot into one day!

Now for some pictures.... what would a post be without pictures? Sorry, they're  not very good ones, 'cause picture taking isn't exactly my priority when during school, but I have a few.

Can't beat wearing a cowboy hat to do one's work!

 

Sarah's reading lesson.  Note the fancy shmancy cards!  (And I guess you could note the smiles!)

 

This was the source of the smiles from the previous picture.  Sarah likes to make silly sentences for us to read.

 

Journal time!

 

Here's the poster we made during our body unit.  Most of the organs are movable or have flaps so that what's underneath of the organ on top can be seen.

 

Finding the brain...

 

...and searching under the intestines.
(If you study the poster very hard, you'll see that our body has both a uterus and testes.  The kids understood the concept though that boys and girls are different inside and that they don't have both!)

 

Ta-da!  Its a little lopsided and not perfectly proportionate, and it certainly won't make a modeling career with that face, but it was fun and the kids learned alot!  Don't they look proud!?