Day 122: The Spell of the Spelling Words

We are using BJU Bob Jones University for our Spelling curriculum. We really like it and we will continue to use it for the years to come. It works for us, both me as the teacher and Coqui as the student. One list per week, and the kids learn to use the words in context, proofreading, and dictionary skills. It shows that those spelling words are not just words put into a list but that spelling has a purpose in life.

So for a while, we've been working on learning to think about the way the words are spelled, and why. I keep telling him to think about the root word and what else has happened to the word, like a prefix or a suffix or a tense change. So today, for the second time, during a spelling test, he's taken to a piece of scrap paper and trying out different ways to spell a word that he is not sure about. And for about half the time, it has worked for him. He spelled it correctly.

This is it! These are those little milestones that make me jump for joy. When our learning has reached a new level. I don't want him to drill the spelling words for one week and then forget about them. That would not serve him for life. But thinking why and how..... YES! This is it.

Super proud of him for this. And for being able to skip spelling lists here and there, because he already knows how to spell all the words. We are down to our last list of the year. We are excited about finishing the book and taking a break.

Day 107: Math App

A friend of us told me about this cool app that she is using for her kids to supplement Math. Now I don't think we need to add any more Math to our daily schedule, but it was worth trying it out. So I downloaded it this morning, signed up for the two weeks trial, and got Coqui hooked. He loved it immediately although he said that it was very hard.

The program is called Dreambox, it is an online Math learning program for elementary and middle school. It cost money, that's why I signed up for the free trial first before I commit to anything. We will try it out every day to see if it is worth the investment.

So far, I like that he is challenged already on day one. I like that I can go into the program as a parent (aka teacher) to see the progress he has made. It tells me where he has had trouble and where he has done great. It has many different areas covered (as far as I can tell from today), for example fractions with money, all the operations, measurements, decimal, etc..... It seems to cover pretty much everything. Let's see what I think in two weeks.

Day 104: Complete Metamorphosis

After studying birds for the first part of the year, we moved to the flying dinosaurs. Apologia then had us studying the bats. Now we moved on to insects and will do that for the rest of the year.

I can not tell you how much I (!) am learning alongside these kids. I know we talked about metamorphosis during my school years, but I am pretty sure that we never covered complete and incomplete metamorphosis. That is what we learned the other day. So today, Coqui showed me what he 'built' with those shapes that his sisters usually plays with. All four stages of a complete metamorphosis. I love when they do this kind of stuff on their own.

They got it. Yeah.

Now one big reason why I love Apologia is that it is Christian based, creation based, and anything taught points back to God.  Studying the complete metamorphosis, the book tight in the Christian walk of becoming a new creation when we first believe and invite Jesus into our hearts. What a beautiful picture that is. When we become a Christ follower, we also go through a complete metamorphosis, and at the end, we come out like a brand-new, beautiful butterfly.

Day 99: Historic Settlers of Rome (aka Settlers of Catan)

So we finished our History book for the year. It was a little sad. After drawing chariot racers, building a working aqueduct, dressing some Roman dolls, reconstructing a Roman villa, playing the Ransom Caesar game, becoming a senator, and building the Roman Colosseum, we are ready for something new. Rome was divided and is fallen. We have learned a lot and enjoyed every minute of it. I really love how history comes to life in our house - I did not experience it like this when I went to school, actually, it was rather boring. 

To celebrate today, we played a game of Settlers of Catan, the Cities & Knights expansion, and pretended that the barbarians are attacking the Roman empire, not Catan. It was so much fun.

We already got the next book of the Story of the World, volume Two, and we are very excited to get it started in a little while.

Day 92: A Research paper about Japan

Coqui is not a fan of English, especially when it asks for writing letter, reports or research papers. We are using Bob Jones University, which alternates between grammar and writing chapters. Well, we finished our grammar chapter and are now working on a research paper about a country of his choice. He chose Japan, his favorite country of the moment. After some resistance from him, he totally got into the research, and I was not gonna stop him. He kept reading and reading, and even took some notes. It was one of those rare moments of pride. One day, they will really get this whole homeschooling idea of independent study and research and interest lead learning. 

Day 91: Peanut counts on

In my post about Peanut showing off her work, I mentioned that we had to take a break from the Horizon Math. We finished the Singapore book and are back to Horizon, yeah. Here she is practicing 'Counting On' with her fingers. She can add in her head most of the addition problems, but some are a bit harder, or rather the numbers are higher, so she needs a little help. I am so proud of her for sticking it through, even on hard days. We know that one day, she will fly through it.

Day 89: Handwriting through Bible verse study

Peanut has been working hard on her Reason for Handwriting book. Now that the repetitions are over and we moved to the bible verse study every week, she is a lot happier about it. So we study one verse per week. Monday through Wednesday, she has certain words that she needs to work on. By Thursday, she has to trace the entire verse. And on Friday, she has to copy the verse onto a border sheet, which is really just lines with a nice frame around that she can color.

We didn't get to do it yesterday, so there was some work waiting for her today. She had to start over two times, because her letter formation looks like one of a doctor..... yep, she likes to scribble fast without taking her time. But she got it done, and then she could do what she loves best: coloring the picture around the verse.

Day 86: Curriculum exchange

My friend came to visit me today and because she home schools as well, our chatting resolved a lot about what curriculum we each use. Her kids are a bit younger, so she hadn't heard much about certain curricula. I had lend her the Story of the World books and she loved them. But then she also wanted to know about Apologia and other stuff I am using. We had a great time exchanging thoughts about what works and what does not. And I got a few recommendations about reading books from her. Now an Amazon order is due - lol.

Day 85: Science Games Galore

I bought this book a while back when I was not sure which science curriculum I would use. I liked the idea of learning by playing. So in this book, there are several sets of matching card games across all of science. It covers animals, moon phases, habitats, and, as you see, adaptations. You play it just like a normal matching game, just that here, the picture has to match a certain text that explains what the student it suppose to learn. For instance, that the geese migrate to the south, that the snakes makes a sound to protect from predators, or that the walking stick can blend in with it's environment (aka camouflage).

It's a fun way to repeat and/or learn more about general science. We play it once in a while and have not used all the sets yet, so we are stretching the book a bit. Wonderful resource.

Day 72: Cursive Writing Skillbook

Abeka's homeschool curriculum seems to put a big emphasis on penmanship. When we bought the entire box for the second grade, we received two penmanship books. Coqui was just starting, so we followed the teacher's manual at first just to realize that every day's workload was way too much. We cut it down significantly, and never finished the book.

But I liked their third grade book as well, so we bought the Cursive Writing Skillbook and added it to this year's curriculum. Last year, we worked through the first part of the book. Coqui learned about one animal in each lesson. He had copy some facts and then answer a question. He loved it and it covered some science for us.

This year, we moved to the second part which is more geography related. He learned about the territories of Canada and is now working on the fifty states of America. A state a day - so to speak. He finds out about it's capital, it's state bird, and state plant. Above, he is studying the state of Indiana, then finds it on the map and I also test him on the states learned in the days prior to today.

At the end of the lesson, he also copies some quotations or verses for character building. Each lesson focuses on the different character, like trustworthiness or kindness. I love this book.

Day 64: A Decimal Problem

Coqui always claims that he doesn't like Math, but that is only because he doesn't like to repeat the same old problems over and over. I totally get it because if you are lucky to get Math than those repetitions are tedious and annoying. I make him do it anyways, at least to an extend. He has to prove to me with two problems that he understands what he is doing and I let him 'get off the hook'.

Yesterday, he had a 'bad' chapter test which made me realize, maybe he did not understood it as well as he claimed. And by 'bad' test, I mean it was a 72 which is not normal to him. So I got the book out and our Math manipulative, the only once we have because he usually doesn't need them. And I explained away. We had fun with those little fraction pieces. And it wasn't the fraction part he didn't get, it was the conversion into decimal numbers. At the end, he mastered it and I think he will get a better test next time. Proud of my boy.

In case you are wondering, we are using a mix of Math books. We had been using Abeka for years and finally had enough of the drills, so we switched to BJU, Bob Jones University, just to realize that they are 'behind'. We are in the process of testing him for Teaching Textbooks, so far he has surpassed even my expectations, which means that they are 'behind', too. Looking for a better fit for us can be tiring but I want the best for him. He needs the challenge, even if he doesn't like the 'work'. So after those tests, we will test him for Singapore Math. They are known to be 'advanced', so I have a feeling that we will end up using that.

Day 63: HIStory - The Story of Jesus

We continued our studies from The Story of the World curriculum. It was great that we learned about the beginning of Christianity today, which was a brief summary of Jesus' life actually. We heard the story about His birth, His life, and then his death and resurrection. There couldn't have been a better time frame for this lesson with Easter being yesterday. The kids loved coloring the four stages of His life. We then talked about the geography of Israel a bit. This was followed by a discussion about the different names of Jesus, like the Truth, or the Light, or the Shepard, or the Vine. It was a good day.

In Latin, we even studied an entire sentence about Jesus' life. It was a good wrap up about this weekend. I did not plan it this way, it just came together like this and I love it.

Day 57: German Vocabulary

Today was a crazy day - I was cleaning all day while trying to get school done. So here is a picture of Coqui doing his German. I already talked about our curriculum here. German in Ten Minutes a Day is a great book and we still love it. To stretch the lessons a little bit out and to repeat vocabulary that we talked about a few days or weeks ago, I have him do his own sheets of words. The book comes with stickers that you are suppose to put on the new learned words. I don't like that idea, and they do not stick really well.

So I have him pick any ten words a day. He sticks them on the paper and then he can draw a picture of it. So in the above picture, he picked shorts, salt & pepper, a bicycle, and he is drawing the refrigerator. Those are all words that we have learned within the last few weeks. It is a great way to repeat words that are not spoken very often. And it helps with the pronunciation - so more often he says them in German, the better he will pronounce any word.

Now the best part is really that Peanut, who has been very reluctant, starts repeating some of the words. Mostly, she wants to draw those words, too. So this was a great idea because Peanut learns better with hands-on activities. She will draw or sing anything, and memorizes it this way.

Day 56: Sight words practice

Peanut is almost done with this great book that I picked up at a local store. It's Sight Words: Level A from Flash Kids. We have learned all 55 sight words and are now working on the reviews that you can find throughout the book to make sure they won't forget what they learned. So here she did her review and at the end, she was suppose to write a sentence with as many of the five sight words that she reviewed. Yep, she wrote this sentence all by herself!
It totally reflects her goofy character. She is my silly one, my goofiest, the one that can make us all laugh, and she doesn't even have to try - it is completely natural to her. She brightens our days, even though my dry nature has a hard time with her sometimes.

Day 52: How hard is the job of a paleontologist?

We are more than halfway through our science book - that might not sound great to you, but to us that is huge progress. Last year, we also used Apologia, the Astrology book, and without that awesome Homeschool planner app that I talked about a few weeks ago, we did not even come close to halfway. So we dropped it all together and started a new book this year: Zoology 1, which are the Flying Creatures of the Fifth day. The Apologia program for the elementary age groups follows the six days of creation, so we kind of skipped a few books but that is the beauty of homeschooling, we CAN.

So we finished the bird study of the first half of the book and now moved to bats, dinosaurs, and insects. Coqui is not always a fan of science, but at least the notebook is made interesting enough for him to stick with it for every lesson. Today, we studied the flying dinosaurs, the pterosaurs. One of the experiments was to find out how hard the job of a paleontologist is. He had to study a photo of a person that he doesn't know very well, but that I know. The student was asked to make a table with three columns. In the first column, he had to write down facts of observation. What did he see on the picture? In the second column, he had to make guesses about the person. Who was she? What did she like doing? And so on. He did really good. Then I had to tell him about that person and he had to take notes. The picture above is of my latest grandma, my mother's mom. She was a great woman and I loved her very much. He filled up the entire page with notes - this is big for my non-writer. He really liked doing this. And he learned a little bit about our family. Great lesson from a great book. We really like the Apologia books.

Day 51: Classical Conversation's Timeline

In the last few years, I have build a great network of friends, most of them that are homeschooling also. We are not all doing the same thing, some are doing school at home, some are unschoolers, some Montessori followers, and a few that are part of the Classical Conversations community. When I told my friend that Peanut is learning a lot by singing things to herself, like learning the 66 books of the Bible in a song. She lend me her CDs with the CC Timeline songs on it.

Now if you don't know what those are, they tell the entire human history from the beginning to the end in chronological order. They follow the Story of the World, so the order is the same what we study. They only teach the order of the main events, so it goes very fast. But once you studied all the events, it is a lot easier to keep the order in your head. And that is the main idea for us, that we learn history happened in order, the events prior influenced things happening after.

As you can see in my picture above, track One is the Age of the Ancient Empires and we are all the way at the end of the ancient times with our study of the Roman Empire. We learned more about Julius Caesar today, and while the kids were coloring, I heard them sing almost the entire first track. They memorized the lyrics by studying the material and listening to the songs over and over. Now when we talk about Rome, they know that it came after the Greeks. It's such a great tool to have and I wish they had stuff like this when I was a kid, I would have enjoyed history a lot more. I am glad I can do that know with my own children.

Here is a link to a youtube video with the motions and the words: Click here. We have not learned many of them but they do help memorizing things. This video is another good one: click here.

Day 36: Peanut starts to write

I meant to write about our art lesson today, but then something unexpected happened. I have been trying to teach my Peanut how to read for over a year now. We already know that she doesn't learn the same way her brother does, hence not the same way I learn. So it is harder for me to switch gears towards her. We started out with "Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lesson" and made it about one third through the book before giving up. It just didn't work for us.

Then we moved to Hooked On Phonics and it worked for a little while. Again, I didn't feel the success in the nearer future, so we gave up again. I actually started to become a little bit frustrated. Hooked on Phonics worked well for Coqui, so much that he went from a non-reader to chapter books in one summer. I felt either I am not doing it right, or we just hadn't found what SHE needed.

I am reading countless blogs and reviews about homeschool curricula. That's how I came across Explode The Code and we started with the primers and she loved it - I just wrote about that a few days ago here. Those books combined with the A Reason For Handwriting and every encouragement that I can come up with to get her to read have finally paid of, I hope. She has never done this before. Usually she gets her brother or me to spell things for her. But tonight, when her sister and her came up with the great plan to share a room, she made this sign. It reads: 'No go on the bed'. And yes, she spelled it all by herself!

I am praying that this was our breakthrough! She CAN read, but she doesn't want to. She CAN spell if I ask her, but again she doesn't feel like it. I always wondered if she thinks she won't be dependent anymore for me to read stories to her. Bed time is kind of special in our house, and I love to read to all of them. It's part of our routine including singing songs and cuddling. Good night everyone.

Day 34: A working Roman Aqueduct

As you all know, Coqui LOVES History. He just soaks it all up and wants to do any hands-on craft you can think of, so History does come alive in our house quite a bit. After doing the Greeks and some India and China study, we are now fully engaged in our Ancient Rome unit. One of the crafts recommended by the Story of the World book is building a Roman aqueduct. So I researched the internet for some ideas. I wanted to build one that is working, but I also did not want to spend weeks on assembling it. Today was a great day to start this project as it was cold and rainy outside.

We used the template provided by the book, copied it, and then traced it onto cardboard. I cut it out with a knife. Then we build the top, that was not provided by the book, but we needed to connect those two arch pieces. Our source is a water bottle cut open on the top, and filled with rocks as space filler, so we don't have to use so much water for it to reach the intake of the aqueduct. We also needed a 'well' for the water to be collected after it's travel, so we used a small yogurt cup. The water line is a straw, cover on the top to make it more real. We connected everything with glue or duct tape. Eventually, Coqui got to work in covering some parts with clay, to make it look like a landscape. At the end, he painted it all. Et voila, our aqueduct was finished already. It took us maybe two hours. It is still drying now, but we got to try it out before we put it to the side. Daddy was quite impressed how we spend our Sunday afternoon.

Day 31: Explode the Code

It's Peanut again.... Today, she finished a book...... Let's start with last year, where I introduced her to the pre-literacy books "Let's Get Ready For the Code". These books taught her to write the consonants of the alphabet, lower case and upper case letters, and their sounds. She spent just a few days on each letter, enough to make it stick, but not to be boring. She liked it much better than other phonics books that we had tried, so I figured we'd stick with the books if she succeeds. My hope is really that she learns how to read this way.

She finished all three books fairly quickly. So this year, we officially started with the "Explode the Code" books. There are 14 books in total. The first book started with the letter family of -at and moved slowly through more and more families, including all five vowels. We only did one page a day, so we moved really slowly. I want her to want to learn how to read, which she still doesn't want. So I am trying to find a balance between letting her lead without giving up all control - because then we wouldn't learn at all, right? Some of the exercises she liked, others she didn't so much. Those were usually the ones where she had to write the words multiple times. It was also hard for her to read sentences on her own in order to match it to the picture shown in the book.

At the end of the book, so today, she had to read the two paragraphs you see on the left. It took her while to figure out all the words, but in the end, she was so proud of herself that she read that much and figured out the riddle. She beamed as you can see on the right. Now we are off to book 1 1/2. I do want her to repeat a few things before we are moving on to book 2. Hopefully soon, she will be ready to skip the half books, and just reads on her own. Until then, we practice every single day.

There is a good review by Cathy Duffy, the author of '100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum'.

Day 29: A Reason For Handwriting

When Coqui was in Kindergarten and First Grade, I did not use any formal curriculum - I put my own stuff together. But I didn't know any better. My homeschool network has expanded quite a bit since and so has my repertoire of curriculum. When Peanut started to learn her letters, we used A Reason For Handwriting, a wonderful program for little ones.

The very first book was just awesome. She learned a letter a day, and with each letter came an animal that started with that particular letter. So we learned about that animal (science!) and then she had to color it, and then add something creative to that picture. She loved it!
That creative part was so down her ally. The second book is drier so far and she is not enjoying it as much, but she only has a few more days of simply writing her letters before we dive into learning letters and words with Scripture. Now that is the part I am excited about. Not that we don't learn Scripture already with our weekly program, but I think the more Scripture the kids are exposed to, the more will stick eventually.

We like that the lessons are short and to the point, we never spend more than fifteen minutes a day in this book. At this age, short is still better than overload. I totally love the way they explain the letter formation: with a tree house. It's ingenious - a tree house is visual and kids can totally relate to the parts of a tree house. I shared this with a friend and she was intrigued and adopted this. Also this book shows how every stroke of the letter is formed with arrows and numbers, so the child learns (or now is reminded) how to write it correctly. Now why is this important you ask, because correct writing of the printed letter will make it easier to transition into cursive writing. And yes, I totally agree with teaching cursive writing, but we will get there in a different post.