Reading and writing

Jeb's favorite subject of 1st grade is still language arts. The first couple of days he much preferred reading over writing, but he is really catching on to writing and is even starting to sound out words and trying to write by himself.

Today he had his first spelling test from the words we have been working on all week. His reader has a short story for every day, and each week they are mostly made up of words with a similar ending. This week was -at words, with a couple of added sight words like the, and, is.

We are both really enjoying Sonlight's Core A, much more than the 4/5 curriculum. I love the way they tie the subjects together. When we read about Adam and Eve leaving the garden of Eden and having to work harder to support themselves, and the chores Cain and Abel did, we read in some history books about early civilization and how they learned to work the fields, find food in the wild, make clothing, etc. Jeb especially liked learning how people would hunt an animal, eat the meat, then use the skin to make clothes and the bones to make tools.

Here is his first spelling test, and his first short story about one of the characters in his reader.

Homeschooling today

Yesterday we started our new curriculum. We decided to stick with Sonlight, Jeb is doing Core A. Core A includes bible and memory verses, literature, cultures, biology, physics, and he's doing 1st grade reading and math. The math is Horizons, which is one of many options got math from Sonlight, but I didn't realize it was a Christian curriculum. Yesterday we read the creation story in the bible, and today in his math book he is writing the numbers to the corresponding day of creation. So far he is still really excited to do the work, he LOVES his reader and wants to just read the whole thing. He did not enjoy the copy work exercises, which work on handwriting and sentence structure. This morning he asked if be could only read and not write :) and he enjoyed science and math yesterday too.

Jeb's schoolwork

Finally figured out (thanks to Eric) how to post to the blog from the iPod! Here are just a few fun things Jeb has been doing the past couple of weeks:

We have started reading chapter books to Jeb after the girls go to bed. This is his pictorial book report on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:

When Captain Nemo and the main character went for an under water walk to see Atlantis

And The Nautilus going under the water-sorry they're on their sides, I'm not sure how to fix that!

Jeb had to sound out the days of the week on notecards, put them in the right order, then write them in his notebook

Color mixing activities-it's always fun to watch their faces as I mix the paint up in front of them, it's like magic!

This isn't a school paper, just one Jeb drew for Journey. It's Journey, complete with glasses and purple aids! So sweet!

1st day of school 2013

We belong to a local homeschooling group that has an 'enrichment hub', where home schooled kids can take enrichment classes (music/art/dance, rather than the math/reading/science they are learning at home). They also have holiday parties so they can experience the halloween and valentine parties similar to what public or private schooled kids have. And it's a Christian group so it's in line with our beliefs, and that's always nice.

There are 4 blocks of classes, 2 blocks, then lunch, then another block, and the 4th hour classes have staggered start times. We haven't done a 4th hour class because we'd be there all day and it's just too long for the kids right now.

This winter 2013 semester is extra special because while Jeb is returning for his 3rd semester, it is Vivi's first! Look at my little girl, all grown up and taking classes!




They just look so old! They are taking their 1st class together, an arts and crafts class, then Jeb takes a music class while Vivi takes 'adventures in literature', where they read stories and then to a related craft. Jeb took this class his first semester and loved it, and the teacher is really nice. After lunch, Vivi plays in the parent/tot room while Jeb takes an acting class.

They both had a great first day of school and loved all of their classes. Vivi was very brave and there were no tears when I took her to her classes. It helps that parents are welcome to be in the classrooms or in the hall, observing. I stayed in the hall and got my exercise during 2nd hour running up and down the stairs watching Vivi's class on the 2nd floor, then Jeb's class on the 3rd floor. Jeb's music class has his 2 buddies in it that he's had a few other classes in, he was excited about that. It will be fun to watch them make friendships and interact with the other kids in their age group, they will likely be growing up together and experiencing the homeschooling life as well as the enrichment classes together, and hopefully make some lasting friendships :)

M is for marshmallow, N is for noodles!

Every week in our homeschool curriculum is dedicated to a letter of the alphabet, and every week we do a craft relating to that letter. Usually they paint with something that starts with the letter we are learning about. This is our craft from the last 2 weeks, for M we used the extra large marshmallows as stamps to paint on our M.



For N we painted with cooked linguine noodles (or as Vivi kept calling them, 'green beany noodles' hehe) I've been making these up as we go so I wasn't sure how they would work but figured the kids would have fun anyway. They turned out really cute! Jeb is always very focused and likes to fill in his entire letter carefully, while the girls just put paint everywhere-a sign of both the age difference and their personalities. In so many ways Jeb and Vivi seem so close in age, but in things like fine motor skills, concentration, and being able to focus completing a task, the 20 month difference really shows. She's also more of a free spirit while Jeb is more organized and detail oriented.

After the pictures dry, we put them in binders so they will each have their own alphabet book to look through.

Fall themed quiet activities

I always imagined that I would have a Montessori style play room-cute little activities in baskets lined on shelves. Pouring, scooping, sorting. But then real life happened, and Vivi, my anti-Montessori child happened. She's not one to sit quietly and scoop beads from one bowl to another-she's one to dump them on the floor and giggle at the sound they make. She never wants to do what is intended, always finding a different way to see things. Which is a good quality, but not really conducive to a shelf full of glass pitchers and 1,000 small pieces.

So I instituted 'quiet rest time toys'-toys that are kept out of reach during regular play time and are brought out during the big kids' quiet rest time (their alternative to napping), and the girls do them in the afternoons while Jeb does school work.

I found these red plastic leaves in the dollar section at Target, a box of them for $2.50. They are called 'table scatter', like for arranging among the candles on a table cloth. I don't know how many came in the box but it was enough for 2 activities and I still have some leftover. They also had white ghosts and I think purple spiders? But I thought that red leaves would last us longer than the Halloween themed ones. They also had these cute acorn bowls 2 for $1. We already owned the spoon, pitcher, green bowl, and the baskets, so for $3.50 I have 2 great themed activities that all three kids love!

The letter C

A computer issue made me way behind in posting, we're on the letter F now, but I wanted to share some of the things we are doing to help us learn each letter of the alphabet!


We always start the week by decorating a big letter with something that begins with that letter. For C, we painted on the letter C with Cotton balls. I also let them pick more than one color so that they painted their letter c with Colors.


Later in the week we read a really good  book about the lifecycle of a Caterpillar. The book is called Life Cycles Caterpillar to Butterfly by Sally Hewitt, which came as part of a set of books with great close up pictures. My favorite picture from this book is of a caterpillar coming out of it's egg! It looks like the book is a little bit hard to find, but I included a link anyway. Sally Hewitt seems to be involved in a lot of science related books for kids that look really interesting.

Anyway, after we read the book, I had cut out paper circles and drew a C on the kids' papers. Then they used glue sticks to turn the C into a Caterpillar.

Alphabet book, the beginning

Last week we started our homeschooling in full swing. We got the curriculum at the end of April and the kids were so excited to jump right into it. We were very relaxed about it, only doing it on the days we were home. Jeb had class at the enrichment hub on Fridays and we had a lot of play dates and doctor's appointments, so there were a lot of days we just didn't worry about it. We also had 3 weeks of VBS at our church and our friends' churches, so we held off those weeks to let everything soak in, and to reinforce the lessons he was learning at church. I'm glad I did it the way I did because it let us experiment with different ways of doing things, different times of day, etc to find out what works best for us, and how they learn. Week 10 of the curriculum gets a little heavier on reading material, including a letter of the week, starting with A. I've also added some more books, workbooks, and activities to the schedule to round it out a little more and make it work better for us.

Jeb has been really interested in learning to write letters, and a couple of weeks ago he saw a girl his age reading letters from a store sign and got really excited about the fact that knowing letters lets you read things outside of the house! He has been working double time to figure out what all the letters look like, and LOVES doing worksheets and any kind of paperwork that seems like a big kid school thing to do, so I decided to make an alphabet book with him that he can add to every week while we go through this unit.

Originally I thought the book would have 26 pages, one page per week. But he loved the first page so much that we ended up doing a page each day last week, and I was able to write up a lesson plan that we can carry on through the rest of the weeks that will help him learn his letters, add to his book, and work on some other skills like patterns, cutting, and handwriting.

Here is day 1, using halved apples to stamp a big letter A. This was a big hit, as most things involving paint are!



On Tuesday, Jeb used a washable stamp pad and made finger prints all over a paper, and I drew on legs, antennae, eyes, and smiles to make them look like happy little ants. I typed 'A is for Ant' on the paper.

On Wednesday, I used this website to give him a paper with the letter A, and another paper with pictures that start with the letter A. His job was to cut all the pictures out, and glue them onto the paper with the A.

On Thursday, he did a coloring page with an apple tree and a little paragraph about apples. He was only mildly excited about this, he's not really big on coloring, but he was excited to add another paper to his book!

And on Friday, we had 2 projects. I had drawn some pattern exercises on a pice of paper using different variations of a red apple, a green apple, an acorn, and an ant. Most of them were simple a b a b a b patterns, but a couple were trickier. He did great, only missing one, and he is really good at drawing something he sees.

On the other side of that page, he practiced writing the letter A a few times without the lines from his dry erase practice book.

Jeb is insanely proud of his alphabet book-he even slept with it a few times in the past week! And wants to show everyone he sees. He was actually bummed over the weekend when I tried explaining what a weekend is and why we don't homeschool on the weekends, and couldn't wait to start the new letter on Monday. We actually ended up having to read some educational books to him at the usual time of day because he really wanted to 'have homeschool' every day :)

Quiet time activities

Jeb has officially outgrown naps, and Vivi really needs to stop napping so that she goes to bed at night. Journey can sometimes go without, but usually needs a nap. And I like my hour+ of quiet time to myself every day! The problem we were having though is that Vivi, when left alone in her room with her books, kept falling asleep, then being up and crazy all night, and Jeb's imagination leads him to playing and getting loud, sometimes waking Journey up in our room.

So off I went to pinterest to browse for activity ideas to keep them quiet but busy during 'quiet rest time', with the idea that I can keep these activities separate from their day time toys and use on a rotation, each kid getting a couple of activities every day so that they stay fresh.

Unfortunately I can't find where I first saw the idea for the felt activity, but I made 2 sets of fun mini felt boards. The blue rectangle is a half sheet of felt, so it's pretty small. I keep it, and the shapes to go with it, in a quart sized ziploc bag. I made a sheet of grass and some other basic shapes, with the house in mind, but later when Jeb and I were playing with it we used these shapes to make a truck, as well as some abstract art. Jeb LOVES this 'toy', and the past few days he has practically begged to go into his room for quiet rest time. Since taking this picture I cut a few more shapes, and brought them to church on Sunday for the girls (who are on a Sunday School boycott) to keep them quiet and busy so we can listen to the sermon. We sat next to a mom and daughter who was having a hard time sitting quietly, so I pulled out one of the felt boards and passed it to her. Vivi and I would make a picture, and A and her mom would make a picture, then we would show each other. We got creative and I got some more fun ideas from the other mom, and picked up some more felt to add to it. I'm also excited to change the shapes up seasonally-orange pumpkins in October, white circles for snowmen in winter...



This activity is based off of an idea from the blog http://no1hasmorefun.blogspot.com/. The idea was to use a colander, but we were at Ikea and saw this neat little utensil holder for $3. I like it more than a colander because the shape seems better for little hands, and it is easy to stretch the pipe cleaners from one side to the other. This is one of Vivi's favorites. I also have a baggie of just pipe cleaners and let them each have one in the car on a long drive. We have used them to make shapes, silly faces, letters, and jewelry. Not bad for 87 cents for 25 of them at Hobby Lobby!


I have a few more ideas and I'm slowly building up a collection of fun, budget friendly quiet time toys, hopefully I'll be posting more soon!

Homeschool update

We are still homeschooling through the summer, but we're being relaxed about it-if we have a playdate or something else going on, we'll skip a day here and there. The kids look forward to the stories, and we just finished a science section where we learn about months of the year, seasons, and holidays, and have started a unit on nature, and one on the 5 senses. We've been incorporating both of those topics in a lot of our daily learning. We went on a nature walk and made a book of things we see in nature, then we went on another nature walk to listen to nature. Next we'll do smelling and feeling, and hopefully by the time we get to tasting we'll have some food growing in our garden!

For our seeing nature walk, I cut a bunch of papers up and Jeb made a nature book. We walked down the sidewalk and whenever he saw nature, he would call it out and we would stop and get out his papers and pen and he would draw it. I brought papers for the girls too but they weren't really interested. Journey just waved her paper around, and Vivi ignored the nature and scribbled on her paper the whole time. Maybe next year :) Jeb really enjoyed it and carried the book everywhere with him, showing anyone who would stop and look.

 Jeb's handwriting is coming along, driven by his desire to write everyone's names, especially his and his friend Tariku's. 

Vivi enjoys the stories, but we don't do any kind of book work with her yet. She already recognizes and identifies all of the letters, but isn't ready to learn to write them. We have 2 of everything for the times that she wants to sit down and try, but we're not pushing anything with her yet. She always knows when I take out my teacher's binder that it's time for homeschool. When we stayed at the hotel in Columbus, there was a binder on the table with local restaurants, and Vivi picked it up and said "Hey! Whose homeschool is this?"

Religious education has been going well too, some of the bible stories are a little bit above his understanding, even though it's a preschooler's bible, but he does understand how God made everything. Or as he'll tell you, "God made everything, and God made people, and people make cars." We were watching a VeggieTales movie (Snoodlerella) and the girl who doesn't feel very good about herself talks to the king, and the king says:

"You're kind and you're honest,

Funny and smart.

You're really quite charming, you have a good heart."

"Your majesty," she asked, as a tear came in view,

"I'd like to believe you. Is that really true?"

"Of course it is true, every word that I say.

Daughter, I am the King. And I made you that way.

Jeb turned to me and said "Mommy, is that God?" I was surprised that he picked up on that. I said "Yes, that is God, you're right!" And then he pointed at the cartoon vegetable king and said "He made Jebby?" Ummm, not exactly buddy :)

Another big part of our weekly routine is our weekly (or twice weekly) library trip. They have a summer reading program that has us there most Tuesdays and Thursdays anyway, but the kids have truly grasped the concept that we can borrow any book we want from the library, and when we take them back, we can get new ones! We have a TON of storybooks in the house, and when we were in the Children's Fiction section of the library, they were only a little bit excited to pick books out, and then would usually pick their own story books to read at bedtime or on their own. So when Jeb started asking questions about animals and cars, we would head over to nonfiction to check out books related to his questions. He LOVES nonfiction! Every week we fill a bag with nonfiction books and they will spend hours every week just looking at all of the pictures and coming up with more questions. When we have a short homeschool schedule and the kids want more, I'll add a nonfiction book into our studies. For the 4th of July we read a book about fireworks and how they are made, and when we had a science lesson about fuel (how we fuel our bodies and how we get fuel for cars, etc), we read a library book about fueling the body, which led into a conversation about healthy choices.

Our choice to homeschool isn't always popular with other people-when Jeb is at his immunology check ups, we are seen by several different doctors and specialists, and there are a couple of them who clearly aren't in support of homeschooling. At the most recent appointment, they all wanted to question exactly what we are doing, you know, to make sure my 4 year old new-to-English son is learning all the right things, like algebra and cursive, right?? But it was almost as if Jeb knew what was going on, and kept chiming it at the perfect time with something that made me look good! One of the doctors said "so what exactly are you doing to homeschool him?" And before I could answer, Jeb proudly said "J is for Jebby!" and kept adding things that he had learned to my explanation. So between that and his remarkable grasp of the English language, they don't have any concerns that they're able to voice yet.

But despite the concerns of others, we're all really enjoying homeschooling! We're learning together as a family, and I can customize it to make it the best possible experience for everyone. I'm able to reinforce lessons that they learn outside of the home to make them stick, for instance, when Jeb went to Vacation Bible School, the week's theme was Daniel in the lion's den. So instead of the regularly scheduled bible stories that week, we read about Daniel. When Jeb's Sunday School class did a project that involved scissors and he was frustrated because he wasn't very good at it, I pulled out a practice cutting book I had bought and safety scissors so he could practice. The stuff we're doing right now is pretty basic, but I'm really excited to watch them learn and progress and love learning!

Big day for Jebby!

Today was Jeb's first day at 'school', what we're calling the homeschool co-op. They have classes on Fridays for all different age groups, and little ones can play in a big room full of toys for free. There are 3 hours of classes, with a lunch break after 2nd hour. We had originally planned on doing only 2nd and 3rd hour, with lunch in between, but while we were in Columbus last week, we saw a dance recital and Jebriel loved watching all the dancers. He started asking to take a dance class, and what do you know, there was a tap class 1st hour. So we bought him some tap shoes and signed him up! Actually we signed him up and then realized the day before that he needed the tap shoes and made a rush trip to Payless ;)

He was so excited for school all week, especially tap class, but when I woke him up that morning, he started saying "No thank you, I don't want to go." I got him up and dressed and told him that it was ok to be nervous, but I knew he was going to have fun, etc. He cheered up a little, but every so often kept saying "I'm a little bit nervous". By the time we got there and we got into the first class, which was tap, he was totally fine. I had him introduce himself to the teacher, and we put his tap shoes on. We stayed and watched for a little while to make sure he was ok, and then when the girls got antsy, I kept waiting for him to look over at me so I could wave goodbye so he wasn't shocked when we weren't there, and he never looked back. My brave boy! The girls played and I talked to a couple of moms, and even met another adoptive mom.

We picked him up from tap class and walked him to Adventures in Literature. He asked me how many classes he got to go to, and was a little bummed when I said only 2 more. They read a book about a caterpillar and did a caterpillar craft, but he had trouble telling me what book it was, it doesn't seem like it was The Very Hungry Caterpillar-next time I'll ask the teacher so we can talk about it later. After that class we all went down and had lunch in a big room. It was fun to see the older kids socializing while they ate, I can't wait for Jeb to have friends that he looks forward to hanging out with. During lunch he asked again how many classes he had left, and I said one more. He said "Mommy, I'm sad about one more class, I want more classes all day long!"

After lunch we took him to his 'God's World through Little Eyes Science class, where he learned about rainbows and Noah's ark, and made a rainbow craft.

He had so much fun, and can't wait to go back! I'm so glad it was such a positive experience for him!

Here's his 'first day of school' picture, complete with lunch bag. He's very proud of that bag because it has his name on it, and he can recognize the J for Jebby :)


Later this evening, he was practicing his letters, and he asked to practice writing M for mommy. It took a lot of practice, but he finally got it, and wrote a few in a row. I told him to draw a circle in between the m's, and he didn't understand, so I did it for him and showed him that that spelled 'mom'. He was all excited and wrote this all by himself:


I'm so proud of my boy!

Homeschooling, day one

We officially began homeschooling this morning. I like to think that the world is our school and we are always learning, but today we started following the schedule from our Sonlight curriculum. It's a very light program for this age that only takes about 20 minutes, which is very appropriate for our attention spans right now :)

The teacher's guide is laid out in a way that shows you which books you need each day, and which passages from each book you'll read. It also gives some ideas of other activities to do to round out the lessons. The first day of each week, a memory verse from the bible is introduced, and the rest of the days we read from a children's bible. We also did a passage from the Berenstein Bears Science Almanac, which talked about months of the year, a poem about Mother Goose, a story about a crafty rabbit who outsmarts a tiger, and a short poem about a chick hatching from an egg. From there we went to the computer and watched a video of a chick hatching from an egg, which they thought was very cool, but then they wanted to see other animals coming out of eggs. That's a lesson for another day ;) There is a workbook that came with the curriculum that works on basic skills like same/different and pencil control. Jebriel struggled with the same/different concept because of the language, and Vivi wasn't ready or willing for the workbook, so she'll start hers later.

My happy pupils, ready to begin!


I also got a supplemental workbook about shapes for Jebriel. Each shape has it's own chapter and there are tracing activities which will help him learn these shapes, and also prepare him for learning to write letters later on. He was very focused, and enjoyed the workbook activities. He preferred the activities that required a pencil over those that required him to color something with a crayon. I think the pencil feels more grown up :)

Homeschooling!

The time has come, we ordered our first homeschool curriculum and it came on Friday! I had been going back and forth trying to decide what to do for the first couple of years, whether unschooling (providing the resources without the workbooks and 'school' time and letting the learning come solely through play and curiosity) or if the schedule and order would be best for us. Because Jebriel came from an orphanage that had a daily schedule, he's happiest when we have a routine to follow. He always needs to know what we are doing next, and what we are doing after that, and throughout the day we discuss the schedule, all the way up through bedtime. I decided that a curriculum with a little bit of structure would work best for us right now.

We decided to try out Sonlight, which is a Christian curriculum with a big focus on literature, cultures, and history. The preschool curriculum has very little math and basic science, mostly animals and plant type stuff, and a lot more stories, and poems. The curriculum packs for the older age groups look like a lot of fun, we'll get to do some really neat science stuff! I'll be working with Jeb and Vivi together, since Vivi is ahead in a lot of things and Jeb is behind. This curriculum has a lot of flexibility to help them work on their individual strengths, and Journey will get to tag along on the reading parts of it.

The box came during naptime, but I waited until the kids were up to help open it. They pulled all the books out and flipped through some of them, and Vivi and Jeb found the kids' scissors I ordered for them. They went right to work cutting through the packing paper while Journey started grabbing books and making little stacks of them around the room. I started explaining to them that we were going to have morning lessons and reading so that we can learn new things, and they begged to learn new things right away!

I grabbed a book called 'What's Under the Sea?' and we started reading. We got to a little section about anglerfish, who have a light on their head to attract little fish, and when the fish come close, they eat them. They asked to see the anglerfish eating, so we went to the computer and found a Youtube video of an anglerfish eating. When Eric came home from work, they excitedly told him all about anglerfish and their light, and demonstrated how fast they eat the little fish.

This is going to be fun!