January 28, 2010

Life has been exciting here with plenty of changes!!

We have added several of short 'recesses' throughout the day.  The kids wake up, do some chores, run around outside, do a lesson, run around outside, another lesson, run around and play, come back in for lunch, run around and play, come in and lay down while mom reads stories, when 3yo falls asleep, we're up again!;) lol..

I have read about 'Self-Teaching' by Joanne Calderwood.  Her children literally teach themselves!! 

http://homeschoolcoach.wordpress.com/welcome/

She also has a yahoo group where she lists curriculums that can be easily adapted to self-teaching, or, as she says, she has yet to find a curriculum that  couldn't be adapted/wasn't good.

:) Which was good, as I didn't feel I had to change! :)

Anyways, the kids are enjoying Spectrum, so I went out and got all the books in Abeka, except for math and history.  The history is kind of dry, and I am still in my classical phase;) I chose 'Christian Liberty Press', as I like their books better.  Still kind of story-like..with questions.  But I don't start history till around grade 3/4. 

I use the spectrum math for my 7 yo.  My soon-to-be 9yo moved very quickly in math and  has already started saxon 4/5.  My 7yo, however, needs things introduced one subject at a time, instead of one.  This didn't work for my 9yo..she got bored.  So I plan to have her use Spectrum until she reaches about grade 4/5, and move to Saxon.

(Rachel is studying this in her history book)

  We purchased the Dive CD for this (which can be used with all the other kids), and she now has her own teacher online!!  If she has a question, she just puts in the CD, goes into that section and it gets re-explained to her!!

I am very leary about wasting time with science, since it's only repeated in high school.  I am, however, considering adding it in after grade 3 or 4. 

I will also be adding Prima Latina on grade 3 (in my 9yo case, in June), and then starting French Learnables in fall (or for others, grade 3).  The Prima Latina has a DVD, and the Learnables has a Cd-rom, no teaching by me!!! :) Got to love it!!

Anyways, this is our update!! 

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Okay, guess who we're watching now?? 

Currently I am fighting with the computer trying to post pictures on our website...for some reason our computer does not want to open up the site so I'm guessing I'll have to go to the library to see if it 'is' our computer (if it takes too long to open, our computer will sometimes just refuse to try any harder???), or if the site if actually down!  This is making me nervous, so I may just transfer all my photos to my blog.  If you open up this blog to find 100+ photos, you know what happened;)

We're still on Chrstmas break here, I guess.  We had one day of school but that didn't really last long...   Will try again Monday.  The latest debate in homeschool is what language the kids should be learning.  I think french is a good language, has a good latin root, will help in reading.  Start Spanish on grade 6, choose another language at high school.  DH would like Spanish first...my argument: what's the difference?  For me, however, I am looking at Spanish and thinking it may be an easier first language since the phonics are more consistent with English and I can help her, versus French where I know nothing about the language.

Oh, well. If anyone has any experience on this, LMK.

Happy Homeschooling!!

:)