Kindergarten!

We had an awesome summer! We spent lots of time with friends and family and being out and about! My original plan was to continue his pre-K work through the summer but I discovered that he doesn't do very well when we dont' stick to a routine and if our summer lacked one thing it was a routine! We have not had "official school" since May and I am so so excited to start school on Monday!

I spent hours looking through curriculum choices that are out there and I finally found Memoria Press and I have been THRILLED with it.  My goals were to find something that would be challenging enough to put him ahead in first grade.  First grade in a school setting is hard - its a long day - lots of work - lots of sitting and lots of writing.  IF homeschooling is a disaster - and lets face it - it might be - I want him to go into a first grade classroom academically ahead so he can focus his energy on the physical demands of the day.  My second goal was to find a curriculum that had enough to do during the day that we would not be done by 10:00.  I want us to be able to stay busy with fun projects, lots of reading about a million different things - lots of learning about the world - lots of themes to build field trips around.  One of the beautiful things about homeschooling is that you really can something for what your family needs.  If you have a family of five and your youngest is in kindergarten - you need something that gets to the point - teaches math and phonics really well and then frees you up to work with your older kids.  I didn't want something like this - I wanted the fluff - I wanted to enrichement projects, social studies projects and most of science experiments.  Memoria Press was the best thing I could find by a long shot!

I bought the entire Kindergarten Curriculum package.  It comes with lesson plans for the week that include the math and phonics minimums that he needs but also has a TON of activities, memory work, social studies, Bible, science (although not quite enough - I also bought the Harcourt first grade science book) as well as fine arts (classical music and art).  It was like Christmas morning when the box arrived at the house.

Each week offers a book of the week, a poem of the week, a piece of art and a pice of music that all go together.  There are several projects that work to tie all of this in together.  There is copy work and memory work each week using Bible verses and stories.  I dont' feel like this is enough religion so I have a book called The Big Book of Catholic Customs and Traditions that goes through each month and provides projects for all of the liturgical seasons, a saint of the Month, service projects, bible stories - it looks great.  I think this will be good!

Click on the link that says Memoria Press and you can thumb through their stuff.  It's great - and they are fabulous to work with!

So that is what we are doing! I have schedule printed out for Monday - I was planning on posting the original versus what actually happened!  I really want to journal through this year - I am nervous and excited all at the same time.  Parker is ready to get back to science experiments.  This will definitely be an experience and I am trusting that it will be challenging - but good challenging - and mostly beautiful.   Pray for us as we get ready to do this Kindergarten thing!

                    

The last 4 weeks....

So here's what happened! We had two bad weeks! There were tears, complaining, frustration...and Parker wasn't faring much better (that's a joke - get it?). Seriously though - it was rough for two weeks.

I think I didn't write because I did not know what the problem was - I couldn't decide if the work was too easy and he was bored or if it was too hard and I was being too pushy. Maybe the routine was bad? Maybe the room was set up poorly? Maybe we weren't eating enough whole grains? What? What? What?

I searched online for blogs or books about moms who struggled with homeschooling and I could find none - so I realized - as I stared at my own empty blog that moms who are struggling to homeschool just don't want to talk about it.

I talked to several friends who all had varying degrees of advice for me. No, no, you are not asking too much - just plug ahead and he'll catch on! Or, he is too young to be such concentrated work, you should ease up! And everything in between! Not that it wasn't tremendously helpful - every single friend encouraged me to keep my head up! What a blessing!

We took a week off to go to Austin for a few days to help out my sister in law (who homeschools her four children) and what I noticed at her house is that boredom breeds learning and play.

When we came back, I changed some things up. We keep all electronics off in the morning - all the way until after lunch. I do not do any of the "sitting at the table" school work until Cooper is asleep. As soon as Cooper is down - the house is clean and quiet and we are ready to work. And work we do! We are using Saxon Kindergarten Math right now - there are no worksheets - its all hands on and we have never finished a lesson without him asking to repeat it a few times. I love this! Once we wrap this up we do handwriting - still Handwriting Without Tears. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this curriculum! I had no idea how tricky it was to teach someone to write! He's good at it - but we have corrected a few letters here and there - like he used ot write a capital B with a big line and two circles that may or may not touch. We've got it now!

After handwriting we take a reading break and curl up on the couch and read 5-10 books. He is reading on his own better now so he has to read one. We are hitting the library every few days to keep up a new flow of books. He is really into Bearenstein Bears and the Magic Tree House series (these are a great blend of scary/educational chapter books that I read to him at night).

After reading, we break out phonics. I'm still working to get a good routine going with this because I want to teach both phonics AND sight words. I'm using Explode the Code still and I like this. He alternates doing two pages or one page each day.

Once phonics is complete - we do something messy and sciency. I have a great kinder/1st grade science book that keeps us focused on a topic during week. We are doing plants this week.

The last week and a half have been AWESOME! No tears! No complaining! No arguing or bribing! Just fun and learning!

I would love to post some pictures here - but my phone crashed this morning so they are gone....

Hopefully soon!

Oh and Cooper is doing great!

Good times!

We've had another fun week here! The theme this week was "Weather". I found "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs" at the library and several books on rain and weather. We spent Monday talking about the water cycle and why it rains. We made did a couple of experiments with this. We made "rain" on the wall of the shower by turning on hot water and coming back a few minutes later to see all the condensation. We made "rain on a spoon" by putting a spoon in the freezer for awhile and then holding it up to steam from a pot of hot water. Then we made "rain in a bag" where he put dirt and grass in a bag, we blew air into the bag and then taped it to the window - that was cool - it was a hot day so the bag had dripping water running down it.

He also did several art projects with "rain". He painted a picture of "outside" and then (since it wasn't raining) we sprayed a water bottle on the paper and let the paint drip down - this worked better with markers (thanks Aunt Aly!). He also made a picture of clouds and used marshmallows.

He's doing well with handwriting and reading. We decided to move his lego table into the playroom and try to work in there - the chair is his height and he is not so wiggly. He was pleased to have it look so "official". I will saw we still spend most of the time on the floor of the living room or at the big table - but anything where he has to write, he goes in there to do it.

Getting Into The Routine

For two weeks our schedule has gone like this:

Wake up and get dressed early - this is for me - not Parker. The morning is MUCH smoother if I don't have to break for a shower or something.

Eat breakfast and morning chores. Clutter really bothers me - so we clean up from breakfast, make beds and pick up the morning toys before we start school.

9:00 Table Time (this includes prayer, doing his weather journal, calendar, and his "I Wonder" question. I started the "I Wonder" question because he always has these really hard questions and I need to look up answers (think: how do fish sleep? Why can bees fly with little wings but ostriches can't fly with big wings?). These are never on topic but they are important so I want to have time set aside for these.

After Table Time we do math. We've always played games - maybe a worksheet or two. He really likes math and has a harder time gettingexcited about reading so I am thinking about doing Reading first next week.

After math, we get a snack, go outside or play a body game like freeze dance or "how many pillows can you jump over". Cooper likes these too!

After that he can play playdough, paint, cut things out or do some project alone. You can not imagine how messy my house is at this point...This is the hardest part for me so far!

We eat lunch around 12 and then Cooper takes a nap.

I've tried to do Silent Reading Time this week...just for 15 minutes. I like the quiet time and after that we do reading and phonics. We read 5 books and then he's done for the day.

Tuesday mornings we have play group so this schedule does not work on Tuesdays. On mornings when we have something - I've just picked a few of things to do in the afternoon when Cooper sleeps.

I'm really happy with how things are going. Parker has not asked me about his preschool class - I was really worried leaving in the middle of the year would make him really sad, but he has not said anything about it.

In just two weeks I have noticed a tremendous improvement in the way he speaks to Jon and I. He was struggling on days when he had school with being disrespectful and short fused. It's not perfect - but it is a lot better! He has also really started playing alone more. I thought that homeschooling would force us to be together 24 hours a day and thats not how it is turning out at all. When he is not doing school - he is thrilled to be as far away from me as he can be out of fear that I'll make him read something else. He plays in his room (he has never been good at playing in rooms that I am not in), he plays outside and in the playroom - it's really nice and quiet actually. I am really pleased with the day!

Here are our Valentine math activities - graphing and greater than/less than with candy hearts.

During Silent Reading Time, he's made his own pallet and place to sit and be. I would like him to just look at books - but he gets bored easily so towards the end of the week, I gave him some stationary and he made cards for people.

It was cold and rainy and he really wanted to go outside - so he took out a plastic bag and droppers and collected rain from different parts of the yard and put them into different bags. This was all fun until I opened my freezer and found about 6 bags of frozen muddy water.

Trip to the pet store! Cooper loves birds!

What does Cooper do all day? He's just around :-) He is such an easy baby. He's pretty busy but he's always so happy. I have some toys put in the closet that I only pull out when Parker is doing school stuff. Most of the projects he can do too so for most of the day, we all play together.

First Week

Parker was more than happy than to begin homeschool this week and his "only" request was that we study legos and volcanoes. I do aim to please, so that's where we started. I found a fantastic website that had several lego worksheets, game boards, cutouts, and all kinds of ideas. Most of the games were math - so we spent all of math time playing with legos. The objective for math this week was to see if he could recognize numbers 0-40 by the end - we had so much fun playing the games that he can recognize 0-100 so I'm pleased!

For this game, I wrote numbers 0-30 on index cards and put them on a table leaf. I was Darth Vader (lego) and he was Luke Skywalker. We rolled a dice, moved along the board and if we knew the number that we landed on, our character got to chose another star wars lego guy to be in our "army". Parker won and after the game was over we had a battle.

I dumped serval legos on the table and he graphed them. He enjoyed this one - I was trying to guess which one was going to have the most and the least (guessing obviously wrong) and he got a kick out of proving me incorrect.

This was a printed lego chart to 100. For this game, we rolled a dice and moved along the board. If you knew the number, you got to stay on the space - the first to 100 wins. I hoped to get through 40 and we played this so many times that he knows them all now. He loved this game. We used Star Wars Lego guys for this too.

This is lego word building. I wrote some words on a board and he built them - I had to guess which word he would choose to do last and write it on a piece of paper and see if I was right (surprise - I wasn't) He is competitive though so I've learned that he'll do anything if there is a winner in the end.

This was a measuring activity. We used Duplos to measure the items on the worksheet. He enjoyed this one too. We're still working on handwriting - so I wrote the numbers and he traced.

Finally - we got to the volcanoes! We watched eruptions on youtube, checked on cool books at the library and finally made one in the kitchen! Nothing makes a mom feel like a confident homeschooler than building a volcano in the kitchen - it's total validation that I can find something fun that he'll like to do.

It was really cool - and they even cleaned it all up!

It was a really fun first week! Lots of playing, lots of reading, lots of hanging out with friends - Parker said he forgot how fun I was to hang out with...I think that was a compliment?

Let's Get It Started!

Hebda Homeschool will commence in 5-4-3-2-1: MONDAY! We've decided to continue Parker's Pre-K education at home. I've done research and feel comfortable in this new skin and am ready to start working! Once the decision was made to homeschool, I did two things. The first was to really watch Parker learn - try some things out - see what motivates him - what interests him - what gets him asking questions. This was actually very easy. I realized that I have been Parker's teacher longer than anyone! I know him very, very well. We've had a lot of fun in the last three weeks playing and learning together.

The next step was to really research homeschool methods, curriculums, structures and ideas. I knew I loved Classical Education and I read the book "The Well Trained Mind" and was VERY encouraged about this method. This definitely seems like it is for us.

The Well Trained Mind

I had no idea how many debates existed in the world of education! Will I teach him to read using a phonics based curriculum or whole word? Will the math curriculum that we use be mastery or spiral? For me, these were all new terms to research. While I eventually made decisions for this year and next, I always realized that most people change their mind - something might work one year and not the next - or something might work for one child and not their sibling. That is the beauty of homeschooling - you don't' get stuck with 12 years of "one way".

I've decided to spend the remainder of this year doing week long unit studies. I've also decided on a phonics and math curriculum that I'll work in throughout the days activities. I'll also use a Bible stories/character and virtue building book that I have not found yet! I'm still in the market for this!

I'm going to use Phonics Pathways and Explode the Code for phonics and reading and Math U See for our math. I have heard great things about both! Several of my homeschool friends have used Handwriting Without Tears with great success and I'm going to go with that as well.

Phonics Pathways

Explode the Code

Math U See

Handwriting Without Tears

I found this website to be super helpful when it comes to finding reviews for curriculums!

homeschool reviews

I've found an overwhelming amount of science experiments and art/cooking/outdoor/physical activities to do each week online so I will stick to that for now.

123child.com

playcreateexplore.com

sciencewithme.com

Parker's last day of school was Friday. He is concerned about missing his friends I think but overall he has been very excited about all of this - especially going on field trips with Jon on Tuesdays, being the "Calendar Helper" everyday.

This coming week I have a lego theme planned out. He also wants to learn about volcanoes so I have a kitchen volcano experiment to do on Tuesday. I'll update next week with pictures of our first week.

Ready or not - here we go!

What's Working...

So I've taken the last few weeks and have organized my thoughts and goals. We have been doing "school" on the days that Parker does not have preschool and I am filtering ideas and finding what works...actually what doesn't work. For example - Parker's attention span to sit at the table and look at charts - no matter how colorful - and do w

orksheets only is about 15 minutes. My original plan was to get some kindergarten materials for now and over the summer and see if he breezes through those. That way wecould begin 1st grade stuff in the fall and spend more time in school. I'm sensing this is not going to work - not because the work is too hard but because he isn't able to sit at the table and focus long enough to learn the material WELL.

I've realized about myself that I want to homeschool a 6th grader - concentrated schoolwork until one or two o'clock in the afternoon. That's not where we are so I'm changing gears. I've decided to do themes or units each week. I think I can incorporate math, phonics, reading and handwriting into the themes every day with gam

es and activities. I can find fun science activities a few times a week and fit in cool lessons about people and real world things to talk about, read about, find videos about, ect.

My goal between now and September is to get him reading. He's really good at consonant - vowel - consonant words and he has several sight words as well. We have been using StarFall.com, ReadingEggs.com, Phonics Pathways and Explode the Code. I'm also trying to read A LOT more than we do now. We just started Charlotte's Web and he's into it. Here are some things that have also been working for us:

This is Lego word builders. I just put w

hite tape on the side of each duplo lego and wrote a letter

on it. I wrote a list of about 15 words and he built each one and got a prize at the e

nd for getting them all right.

This next picture is a sight word game with twister rings. We can connect the rings in any way that we want to make a cool path. We pretended that everything outs

ide of the rings was lava. I called out words and he had to jump to the correct word

without falling off. Then he called out words and I jumped - this turned out to be much more effective because he thought it was hilarious to watch me jump a long distance - he had to get the word correc

t or my jump was not quite as dramatic.

This one is just a word family activity. He was not a fan of this one ha ha. I think it was boring? He did it though...

This last picture is a board game we made up. We rolled dice and moved Lego Ninja's that number of cards. When we landed on a card with a sight word on it, you had to read

it. If you got it right, you kept the card. If you got it wrong, the card stayed out. The game ended when all the cards were gone and the winner was the person with the most cards. Parker really likes to play "teacher" and correct me. I can get him to do work that he doesn't want to do by asking him to "be the checker". He always knows when I've made a mistake.

We are having lots of fun and working hard!

Make New Friends

This morning the boys and I went to a new friends house. I have known her for years but have never been in playgroups or anything with her. She pulled her oldest son out of school last year after kindergarten and is now homeschooling. She is involved in a local homeschool group in our area and I was hoping to get to know her a little and maybe tag along to the next meeting. We had so much fun talking! She brought out the books she uses and showed me around her school room. Her second son is Parker's age and they had a great time too. This sounds bad to say - but they are so normal! I think the stereotype is that homeschooling families have shy, socially awkward kids - and maybe the parents are fanatical or trying to escape modern life. They totally aren't like that. In fact - she was telling me how many families I know who homeschool at our church and I was very surprised. There is a group of them who have kindergarteners and first graders - all young families with babies like us. They have joined the network of museums and zoos and go out and take advantage of the homeschool activities in Dallas.

I've have been concerned about what Parker and I will do with ourselves all day once the actual work is done - I feel assured that we will not have an issue with this - I think we are going to have lots of fun and be out in the community learning a lot. Very exciting stuff!

In The Beginning There Was a Decision...

Every journey has a beginning and this is mine - well our beginning.

Well actually - that's not true. Seven years ago, I never imagined that I would consider homeschooling any future children that Jon and I may have but sometime between "back then" and touring kindergartens the idea has planted itself in my heart.

My dad taught me how to make pros and cons lists when I was really young (I was a worrier back then too). I have lists all over my house with the pros and cons of homeschooling, private school, and public school. Jon and I have talked for hours - consulted our parents, friends, researched, and most importantly, prayed to God and have decided to homeschool Parker in the fall.

I have a million reasons for doing it and I also have several concerns that I am placing in God's hands because Jon and I both believe this is right for us.

There are days I am motivated by academics. There are days I am motivated by religion and the desire to preserve Parker's innocence as long as I can. I saw a sign yesterday that said "I have seen the village and I don't want it raising my child" ha ha. There are days I am motivated by finances. There are days I am motivated by how much I love to spend time with Parker and I am so excited to continue to have time with him when he is at his best - not the leftovers.

So that is that. Decision made. I'm on board. We're all on board. We are doing this thing. When I have moments of panic I think to myself - Kindergarten is not even mandatory in Texas so I can't really screw everything up.

Besides - this might be the best decision we ever made.

We decided to take education one year at a time and keep open minds and also the boy's best interests at the top of the priority list.

I love to write. I need to write. I am hoping to chronicle this year from the beginning and have it "out there" to remember. For better or worse - we will all be learning next year!

Making the decision was a huge step. It feels good and right. Next - I'm going to start to investigating some curriculum ideas. There are several "one stop" packages that include entire curriculums with teachers manuals and lesson plans - or we can pick and choose. Overwhelming? Yeah, to me too!

I also checked out "The Well Trained Mind", "Homeschooling. When is it Right for Your Family?" and "Homeschooling the Young Child" at the library.

I'm also finding some local homeschool groups to connect with so we can stay busy and social during the week. I am blessed to have a sister-in-law, aunt and a few friends who are homeschooling successfully.

Say some prayers for us and if you're up for it - follow us on this new journey. I expect good days and bad but I feel like it's going to be an incredible experience!