Homeschooling and Feeling Thankful

I think it is easy to go through daily life without truly being thankful we are for what we have in the moment.  Certainly,  I'm among the many who have taken things for granted.  The exception seems to be when we have experienced loss, suffering, pain, or difficult times for a long duration, and then we find ourselves in a situation which brings relief.

Since we started homeschooling through a K12 school, I can honestly say that even on the "worst" of days, I feel thankful and grateful to have the opportunity.  Sure, we get grumpy sometimes, and on occasion there is a difficult lesson that we're all thrilled to just be done with.  For the most part, though, we enjoy life so much more than we did during those two truly miserable years when Reezle attended our local public elementary school. There are no bullies, no revolting odors wafting in from the cafeteria, no morning (with the exception of state testing days) where the kids have to drag themselves out of bed before they're good and rested, and no crammed evenings of stressful rushing through mountains of homework and bath times.

My dad visited yesterday, and we spent most of the day working in the garage.  Because of our amazingly flexible schooling schedule, the kids were able to work ahead this week and had plenty of time to spend with their Papa.  We had a great time, and enjoyed a pizza picnic in the yard under a tree.

Does this count as art class?

After my dad left, the kids and I decided to take a walk through the woods.  On our way there, the school bus (my daughter's previous assigned bus) drove past us.  At that moment, Reezle and I just looked at each other and smiled.  We were grateful.  So grateful.  Having family time is a priceless gift. 

Walking through the woods

We spent the remainder of our blistering hot (I swear, it felt like 100 degrees outside) late afternoon/early evening in the cool woods beneath the shade of the trees, following trails and making our own, hoping to find some cool frogs.  We didn't find frogs, but we found a lot of happiness and reasons to smile and laugh, and fallen trees to play tightrope on.  And I was grateful.  Nothing in this world makes me happier than spending time with my kids and my dad.

Tree walker Reezle

Homeschooling my children has taught me a lot about being grateful in the moment, about their strengths and my own, and proves to all of us on a daily basis that we are capable of accomplishing anything we set our minds to.  Family is so important, especially to young children.  We don't get these precious years back, and I am thankful beyond words that I get to be more of a part of their young years than I would if they were behind the walls of a brick and mortar school.

As an added bonus, we are doing a more independent and family-centered model of the program this year, and they both have the same contact teacher.  She is amazing, someone who truly cares about the families she is working with, and we feel even more fortunate because we have her.  Yes, we have many, many reasons to be thankful.

Recommended links:
http://www.k12.com
http://www.abcya.com

The 2013-2014 Academic Year Begins

The 2013-2014 school year has begun, and so far I have some very excited little students.  We began our school day at 10AM for the first day because we can.  It will get earlier as the year progresses, but we're transitioning from summer schedules and I believe in gentle transitions.

Checking out some of their new workbooks for the year

Officially, Reezle is in 4th grade and Little G is in 2nd grade.  They are 9 and 7.  Little G is in 3rd grade language arts and math, and has a goal of being moved into 4th grade by his birthday in December.  Reezle was fairly content to stay at grade level last year, but this year she has a goal of moving into 5th grade math and language arts by mid-year.  Both of them are hoping to be invited to our e-school's version of the gifted program again.  Little G was a bit young for the amount of writing they wanted from him last year, as a 6 year-old, but he is ready this year and his writing has improved dramatically over the summer.

For our extra-curricular enrichment, I've decided to skip Scouts for now.  I'm currently researching our local 4-H, since both of my children are very interested in animals and farming.  It seems to have great potential so far.  Reezle wants to get involved in dance at our local arts center, and Little G is considering it.  He watched some boys tap and ballet videos and he thought it was "awesome".  The next couple of months should be very busy for us, since there really is a lot to do here in the fall.  We're excited to be back in a routine.  And somehow, watching that bus go by and not having to be part of that rat race never stops putting a smile on our faces.

Our First Day of Homeschool 2012-13

Today was our first official day of school! In continuing tradition, we celebrated in our pajamas.

Little G writing 575 in expanded form

I was a little concerned about how Little G would handle a full load of courses this year, affording him less time to do the things he enjoys independently. I expected boredom and frustration on his first day, but there was none! He handled his first day as a 1st/2nd grader like a pro.

Miss Reezle worked on math, language arts, history, and health. She also spent roughly 45 minutes playing Poptropica, which is surprisingly educational. She did great on her first day as a 3rd grader! Her spelling list for this unit is:

objects, insects, facts, products, plants, trucks, napkins, hundreds, numbers, gashes, boxes, foxes, riches, sandwiches, inches, bosses, dresses, *systems, *pencils, *presidents

The red one we need to work on. Mostly, she does fabulous with the root words; she just has a bit of difficulty with some of the suffixes. This morning, there were a lot more red words in that list. Once she reviewed them, she did great. I shared some tips I hope will be helpful for knowing and remembering which suffixes fit. She seems to have caught on very quickly, so we'll go through the spelling words list tomorrow and find out if it sticks.

Mr. G's spelling words list for Unit 4 was:

spot, stop, sled, brush, speck, swim, crib, drum, crab, splash, trot, grin, prop, slip, fled, brick, crush, grab, frog, crash, won, and busy, with bonus words travel, dragon, and crunch.

He got them all correct, easily, so we moved on to the unit review and wrapped things up.

As a little surprise for the kiddos, I downloaded several children's books to my iPad. Today we read Pete The Cat: I Love My White Shoes. This story was awesome. Both kids are well beyond the book in terms of reading level, but the message was fun and useful. Basically, no matter what happens, keep a positive attitude.

That's a message even I could learn something from. And Sticky, too, apparently, because she joined right in the reading break with us! What other school offers a furry friend to snuggle and pet while you're going through the day? We love our (home) school!

Perfect Little Spellers

This morning and afternoon, Little G worked on some more spelling. He seems to really be enjoying it this year, which I attribute to the difference in presentation with the curriculum change. Well, that and the fact that he earns warm and fuzzies for getting them correct! We have some pretty sweet trades in the trade bucket right now, so he has some good incentive.

On his first try, he spelled all of the words correctly, including the challenge words, without even a moment of hesitation. I went ahead and had him take the Checkpoints for Units 2 and 3, and he got 100% on both.

Unit 2 spelling words:

then, mush, when, rush, such, much, them, dash, shut, check, neck, tuck, luck, chap, peck, sham, duck, puck, chum, hush, what, said

Challenge words:

sandwich, checkers, sharpen

Unit 3 spelling words:

hand, gift, bump, pond, soft, bent, milk, belt, tent, fond, pond, land, pump, lift, silk, jump, hunt, find, felt, loft, send, says, front

Challenge words:

defend, adrift, shrimp

Little man is feeling pretty stoked, having finished three units of spelling before school even started officially. I'm very proud of him. Since we are working with consonant blends, I first asked him if he remembered what a vowel is. "Yes, it's A, E, I, O, and U." I was impressed, and asked if he knew, then, what a consonant was. "Yes, anything that's not a vowel." Daddy asked if he knew which consonant was sometimes a vowel, and Little G immediately answered, "Yes, Y."

Miss Reezle also completed a unit of spelling! I was surprised how quickly she mastered her spelling list, since she didn't seem very into it today.

Spelling words:

next, until, happen, sudden, rabbit, magnet, ticket, pocket, finish, publish, public, contest, himself, problem, establish, fantastic, may, have, say, hard, *difficult, *exact, *children

She also scored 100% on her spelling test! I can only assume that their avid reading is the reason they do so well in language arts. Grade 3, Unit 1 of spelling is complete! Warm & fuzzies for all!

Gearing Up for the 2012-13 School Year

School starts for us on Monday, officially. We're very excited, all ready to go, and doing a little work in the online school now to get back into the groove of learning. My Reezle girl is a bit grumpy today, so we will probably work with her either later on or tomorrow. Little G did some spelling. His words were:

lock, dish, back, than, chin, shop, that, this, whip, wish, with, which, dock, chop, cash, ship, mash, mock, math, bath, from, does

His challenge words were:

thermal, within, relish

Since he is exceptionally good at spelling and was helping Reezle master the trickier words last year (which are his words this year, being that he's taking 2nd grade math and language arts), I'm just going ahead and asking him to spell them before we do anything with the lessons to find out what he knows. He spelled all of them correctly except thermal (he substituted an "o" for the "a"), so we wrapped up the unit and went right on to the Unit Checkpoint. He scored 100% with ease. I asked him after the Checkpoint if he could spell thermal again for me, and this time he got it correct.

The little guy also completed word set 1 of 3 in his first unit of vocabulary. He did great with the concept of prefixes; it required virtually no explanation on my part at all. I think he likes the idea of root words, prefixes, and suffixes because it is, in a sense, somewhat like addition and subtraction.

The language arts portion of the curriculum is different this year, and so far I think I like it more. The kids both like it more because it includes more workbooks, and they love their workbooks. We do have fewer books for reading this year, and we were all a bit disappointed about that. However, we have plenty of our own books and my Kindle, so we'll more than make up for that with leisure reading. The material is excellent, and will be less overwhelming for kids who are not avid readers.

And, of course, a school day for Little G would not be complete without some math. He completed the first four lessons, putting him about 1/4 of the way through Unit 1. I strongly suspect he will be moving into 3rd grade math with his sister before very long. While I had some reservations about my 6 year-old possibly getting a bit ahead of himself, I now feel this would probably benefit both of my children. Little G is a very adept and patient tutor, and he masters new concepts quickly; the kiddos will probably do very well learning the same material together.

We are so ready for this school year! The weather is still gorgeous, so we're looking forward to some enjoyable study days outdoors this beautiful season. Hooray for fall!

School Supplies Have Arrived!

I'm actually a little late on this; our school supplies arrived last week! A new school year is just a mere month away, and the excitement in our home is similar to that which precedes a major holiday. "It feels like waiting for Santa!" Reezle announced as I dragged the huge boxes of school supplies in the front door. Little G literally jumped up and down, yelling, "Yay!"

We unpacked our boxes and looked over this year's materials. Much of it was very similar; K12's K-2 science, music, and art materials don't vary much, and Little G is a grade level ahead of himself so we're doing our second year in a row of 2nd grade math and language arts. He is so excited to have the same Math Orange materials as he envied all of last year. Of course, now that Reezle has Math Purple, I'm sure he will want that as soon as the novelty of Orange wears off.

We have far fewer books this year, which is, admittedly, disappointing. However, we read plenty on our own and this just means I'll be hitting the library and bookstores more often. No complaints there.

Reezle and I got her personal learning space set up. Little G will share it for now, since we only have one functioning laptop despite buying two brand new Dell N5110s not very long ago. There should be a second one in G's learning space, but thanks to Dell, there is not. The one we purchased specifically for homeschooling, in November 2011, failed just weeks out of the box. It currently functions as a paperweight and nothing more. Despite numerous calls to Dell to rectify this, I've gotten nowhere. That was actually our third Dell to experience some catastrophic failure, so I'm now a Mac user. Forever. My personal advice to you, regardless of whether you are a PC or Mac user, would be never to buy from Dell. I digress.

Our living room book shelf is now home to some of our new school materials, while the kids elected to keep their favorite, and likely to be most frequently-used workbooks on the bookshelves in their own rooms. Little G is so jazzed about school starting that he says he wishes summer was over. (For the record, I don't wish summer was over...but I am excited about school, too.)

Our art, math, and science cabinet looks basically the same as it did last year, with a few minor additions. Seeds, paints, chalks, a graduated cylinder, math manipulatives, goggles, and various extras occupy this cabinet. I try to keep things near where we typically use them for quick access.

Reezle (and G, by default) will be taking Spanish this year. I've already begun getting them familiarized with it by asking each day, "¿Que día es hoy?" and having them reply with, "Hoy es jueves," or whichever day it happens to be. It's good practice, I think. I took Spanish in college, and it's coming back quickly for me, which is kinda cool. They already know their primary colors and numbers 1-20, so that's also a benefit. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Congratulations to Our Girl

Miss Reezle had her end of year Aimsweb assessment yesterday afternoon. For reading fluency, the goal for the end of second grade is 90 words per minute. Reezle's reading fluency was already 142 words per minute at the beginning of the year, went to 158 words per minute at mid-year, and is now at 179 words per minute. For perspective, most adults read at about 175-180 words per minute. She is 8!

And it's not just her ability to read the material that quickly, she truly does understand what she is reading. Now, I love reading, but I am a very slow reader. Reezle appears to have my husband's ability to devour large chunks of text in very little time, with complete understanding of the material being read. It is not uncommon for either of them to finish a lengthy book in one sitting. I'm so pleased that she has this gift!

Reezle also did a math assessment. She scored perfect on the math at mid-year, so there was really nowhere to go since she was already at the ceiling. The problems were a bit more difficult this time around, and I was concerned when she shrugged and opted to do the test in her head without so much as scrap paper, but she scored perfect again. For a kid who isn't a huge fan of math, that's impressive.

Her K12 teacher and I discussed the coming year in depth, and we both agreed that picking up a language is a great idea. Reezle will be taking Spanish. We also discussed what happens if she chews right through the third grade curriculum, considering her progress thus far. Unless something changes, I stand by my decision to keep her at grade level so she does not become overwhelmed or frustrated. She has an incredible amount of interests outside of or in addition to the curriculum, and being able to master things quickly has provided her with many opportunities to really dig into what she loves. She's been reading biographies about interesting historical figures, watching many documentaries on various topics from history to science to sociology, and taking her interest in birdwatching and identification to the next level. I know I have mentioned this before, but her interest in birds has developed into something our whole family enjoys. We all delight in being able to identify a bird by their song.

We are so proud of Reezle for all she has accomplished this year. K12's curriculum is challenging and very rich, and independent learning requires self-discipline and commitment. Reezle has risen to the challenge in every way, surprising me at every turn. I could not be happier for her, and I know she feels a tremendous sense of accomplishment for all she as achieved.

Congratulations are in order, Miss Reezle! We love you and are so proud of you! And now, a special dinner of her favorite food, and a celebratory cake we will bake and decorate together!