Friday, May 25, 2012

Week 2 and 3: We Hit a Snag

Week 2 brought a snag. Our homeschool has had growing pains ever since I've added a second student. We are still working out the kinks but I have to work hard to keep character issues pruned and weeded.

We weren't quite as productive as we have been school wise. It took us a full two weeks of working to get done what I planned for week 2. But that is okay. I often tell just starting out homeschoolers that the character issues wouldn't disappear by sending their children to public school. They would still be there and instead you would get notes home or be blindsided in a parent/teacher conference. At least this way, I can nip them in the bud.

Oh how my view has changed from when we first started homeschooling! We first started homeschooling due a bullying issue in Lainey's kindergarten classroom and the school's inability to keep my 5 year old safe. Sad but true. I wasn't willing to let my child be sacrificed and after prayer, Brandon and I both decided to homeschool Lainey.

Homeschooling was more public school at home then. A means to an end, if you will, because we could not afford private school tuition and didn't have the money to break our lease for her to be in a different school zone. Now Brandon and I see it as the opportunity to pour into our children throughout their whole day-- an opportunity to share our faith and why we believe what we believe, build character AND teach academics. This view occasionally feels overwhelming, but then I wonder how overwhelmed I would feel if I only had a few short hours every day to share our faith, build character and do homework. That seems much more overwhelming when I put it in perspective.

Anyway, on to what we got done..

Lainey:

Math: We completed Chapter 1 and Lainey took the Chapter test. We are still working on paying attention to what the problem is asking her to do. Sometimes she gets in a rush and adds when it is asking her to subtract or vice versa. We started Chapter 2.

Grammar: We worked on verb phrases. We had to stop and have a refresher on helping verbs. I'm simply going to require Lainey to memorize them. This is the song that we are going to use:

Helping Verb Song to Jingle Bells Tune

Social Studies: Lainey did all of the corrections from Lesson 1-3, completed her review and did Quiz #1. She did EXCELLENT on this quiz. We do need to work a little harder on spelling continents and oceans properly for the mapping portion of her quizzes. (Next week her handwriting review will be continent names. Sneaky, sneaky, mama!) We also did lesson 5 and 6. This geography program remains one of her favorites!

Science: She is studying biomes so she read extensively about grasslands and different types of forests like temperate forests and rainforests.

Reading: Lainey completed Detectives in Togas and read Little House in the Big Woods. Her reading speed is picking up dramatically.
Goals for this coming week are:

To get our work done in a timely manner while not sacrificing accuracy.
To start our formal Bible curriculum as a family.
To have a positive attitude.

Julianne and I are still trudging through her workbooks. She continues to fly through her phonics work and math workbooks and loves being read to. This coming week, I'm going to pick up an easy reader and see if I can trick her into reading aloud for me. I know she can do it because she is sounding out words, but I think she gets intimidated by a whole book. Maybe we'll alternate every other page. :)

~Stephanie

PS: I linked this post to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for their Weekly Wrap Up. I love reading there to see what other homeschoolers are doing in their schools!

5 comments:

  1. When we did our studies on the Rainforest we learned some very cool stuff. Great book list!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't wait for our Miss 7 to read Little House in the Big Woods for herself. I think she would really enjoy it. Might offer it to her soon. :o)

    Looking forward to visiting your blog again. :o)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love seeing what you are doing with your girls! What exactly are you using for science? I fall short miserably in that area and your books look interesting.
    Thanks for the link to the helping verb song! Never in a million years would I think to look on youtube for such a thing. My girls will be listening to that for sure!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Debbie- I'm using Mr. Q's Elementary Life Science: http://www.eequalsmcq.com/ClassicScienceLife.htm it is FREE and a great jumping off point for some good science exposure without being overkill. I've just chosen to round it out with topical studies from our library.

      Glad you liked the Helping Verb song! It's catchy!

      Delete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete