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!