Labor Day: Weekly Update

All is quiet ---

Actually is has been nice. We have had a break in the heat. Thank God. The AC has been off and windows have been opened now for the 5th day in a row. Even though tomorrow like today is suppose to get up in the 80s we might be good to keep the AC off. Mainly, because we have one of those whole house/Attic fans and the nightly temps have been in the high 50s/low 60s. We turn that fan on at night and it's instant breeze throughout the whole house. In the morning we turn it off, it stays off during the day, and our home stays on the cooler side. Just when it starts to get uncomfortable, the sun has gone down and the outside temps have started to cool off so we turn it back on.  If the night time stays on the warm side like 70s it doesn't do as good of a job cooling the house the whole day -- so with the project forecast we most likely turn the AC back on on Tuesday or Wednesday. Time will tell.



Despite the pleasant weather I haven't been able to enjoy it -- totally -- I have been dealing with a nasty head congestion, cold.  This prevent Web-Princess from doing all of her work on Friday. She did most, but not all. She, even though it's high school, still needs my help time to time. Some things like Spelling Power I have to do simply with her. It can't get done otherwise.



Other things she prefers my help. For example when it comes to biology she reads her text orally to me. This is mainly because reading is still an issue for her! NOTHING like it use to be. She can read but some words still trip her up -- so reading orally to me is to help her make sure she's reading properly. It also gives her the opportunity to ask me questions right then and there if she doesn't understand something.  (We made the most process with her reading when we starting sight phonics.)

She did what she could and what wasn't done will be moved to Tuesday. I'm counting Friday as a half day of school. We are taking tomorrow off for Labor Day. At least she had some school and me being sick didn't mean no school day. When she (and Superstar) were younger mom being sick meant no school at all! -- so glad those days are behind us and she can do a lot of the the work, even if I'm down and out, by herself.

I'm still feeling nasty. The head congestion alone is enough to bug anyone -- add vomiting, ear aches, -- it's not pleasant. I still have to make all of my lesson plans for this week. I will do that tomorrow even if I'm still feeling like crud so Web-Princess will have what she needs for this coming week. Hopefully, regardless of how I feel I will be well enough to help her for those areas she needs help.

This Tuesday will start week 3 for us! (3rd week, but not 3rd full week. Our first week we only did school on Wed to Friday). I can't believe 3 weeks in already.

We have been doing:

• English
• Algebra
• Biology
• World History
• PE/Health

I will be adding some Bible/Religion to the list. I just don't know what yet.  What I was going to use has proven to be beyond what Web-Princess can handle. So I have been looking for an alternative but haven't found anything I'm happy with. Do you have any suggestion for Bible/Religion for High School/9th grade (from a Catholic prospective of course)?


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Record Keeping! ACK!

Record keeping, lesson plans, and all that have never been my strong suite.  I have Homeschool Tracker Plus which is good and fine, but I have been wanting something online, something accessible on many device (ie. tablets/smartphones) and something easy to use.

Homeschool Tracker does have an online version, but I hate to pay monthly/yearly fees for something I already own outright.  So I have been looking at the freebies.  Many of the freebies I didn't like they weren't easy to use that's why several years ago I bought Homeschool Tracker Plus.  There are other freebies out there, now, but my head is still spinning. Recently I did find a nice review of just a few of the online record keeping options out there: What is the best online planner?

While it's helpful I'm still not sure! So tell me what do you use? Not only that but how do you stay consistent in your record keeping?  I'm telling you it's a chore!

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something.

How the new routine/schedule is working!

Back in January I mention how I was going to reshape our day. So that I 'school' superstar in the morning and web-princess in the afternoon. Well after some trail and error I found a routine that seems to be working for everyone.

This routine allows me to focus on one child at a time. In the morning Superstar does Math, Spelling, and English. I'm there to help him with those subjects, but I also do some house work, or little projects that need to be done, but can be easily put to the side if Superstar needs help.  While Superstar is working on those subjects Web-princess does some reading, wii fit, and piano practice.

After these things are done we do science and history together then break for lunch. After lunch it's Web-princess' turn to do Math, Spelling and English while Superstar does some reading, wii fit, and piano practice. This allows us to be done around 3:00 pm which good because Superstar has made some friends via scouts and they are home by 3:30 pm and at least twice a week are calling here asking if Superstar can play.

After dinner I've put in their time to read their McGuffy Reader lessons with mom. I think this works best, because it does allow us to be done by 3:00 pm and if daddy wants he can read the lessons with them.

It took us a while to figure it out, but so far so good!

2011-2012 School Year: What to use?

I still have several months before I'll wrap up our current school year. I had plan to go all the way to the end of July. We are going to give our hand at all year schooling. However, spring is clearly in the air, because homeschool social sites, such as The Homeschool Lounge, are buzzing with discussions about what to use for next year for science, history, language arts, etc.

Even though I have several more months left I to have been looking at what to use for next year. I have my math and history covered. I have some of my language arts covered like: grammar, spelling and literature.

I HAVE to figure out what I want to use for science. I also need to do something about my children's handwriting and I need to do something to encourage writing.  The grammar workbooks are great for the basics of grammar, but I need to do something that will get them to write paragraphs, reports, or something along those lines.

Fine Arts are a requirement in my state and I think I have that covered okay. Although I think we are at the point were we would like our kids to learn and instrument, but I'm not sure what instrument to encourage or that will even be in our budget. If you have any suggestions that will be great!

2010-2011 School Year Curriculum

We have already done 3 weeks of school. Tomorrow the 27th, will be the start of our 4th week. Then for the week of Oct 4th-8th we will have NO SCHOOL. I've decided to school for about 200 days over 40 weeks. I've also decided that it will be more of an ALL year schooling. Because of this I can almost every 4-5 weeks take a WHOLE week off!  Our off weeks will give me time to grade papers, tweak our plans, and see how things are going.

Language Arts:

• Journaling
• Treasure Spelling Books (Free downloads from Mchschool.com)
• Total Reader
• Phonics Games

Math:

• Web-princess is using MCP Mathematics Level C
• Superstar is using MCP Mathematics Level D

History:

• Library Books
• America the Story of Us DVD
• American Heritage
• Heifer International Lesson Plans (which I got for FREE a while back)
• Drive Thru History America (we got that for FREE when we joined HSLDA 3 years ago)

Science:

• Behold and See 3
• Library Books
• NASA Journey To The Stars (I'm STILL waiting for that one to come)

Fine Arts

• Arts & Crafts
• Music: Recorders
• Various Library Resources

PE/Health

• Various fitness DVD
• Library Resources

Foreign Language:

• Rosetta Stone French

Miscellaneous Enrichment:

• Pizza Hut's Book-It program (Must read 20 books per month to earn pizza)
• BookAdventure.Com
• Head Of The Class
• Classes @ our Homeschool Co-Op I-HOPE

Catholicism:

• Mass on Sundays and Wednesdays
• Find God Faith Formation

School Has Started!

Who knew trying to start up a new homeschooling group/co-op and lessons would eat up all of my computer time? It really hasn't been the group stuff, just the building the website: I-H.O.P.E. Illinois Homeschoolers for Peaceful Open Education.  Luckily webs.com, the service the site is built on, makes it "easy" to build the site. Even though it's "easy" it still takes TIME to add content, tweak things, and submit it to google, yahoo, bing, etc.

On the school front we are 4 days into our lessons! Kids are enjoy getting into the grove of things, although yesterday and today due to unforeseen errands we haven't really stuck to our schedule.  Although we are getting the work done!  In the near future, I'll post what materials we are using this year, lesson plans, and our ideal schedule for this school year.

Well, I'm off to the races....
Okay not really, but I do have work around the house that needs to be done, lessons to be taught, and all the other "mom" activities. I just really wanted to post to say, I'm alive and well! Some of my more faithful followers may have thought it was odd that over a week had pass without any new content, posting, etc.

Hopefully things will iron itself out here shortly and I'll be able to better manage all of my online activities.

This Is Our Last Week!

First, I would like to say "Happy Mother's Day" to the majority of my readers. I know that most of you that visit this blog are mothers. So Happy Mother's Day. I hope it was a good day for you. It was a fanatic day for me! A day filled of wonderful gifts, plenty of laughter, and joys of family and friends. We went to Mass, went bowling, spent time at home, and visited with some friends. It was good day!

So as I was saying at the beginning of this post. This week is our last week. Superstar is the only one left with true book work. He should be finished with it this week.  Web-princess and I have been playing The Phonics Game.

I've been reading up on Dyslexia. We learned last November that Web-princess has convergence insufficiency. I have recently learned that 95% of the time if there is convergence insufficiency then there is dyslexia.  They, generally speaking, go hand in hand. (Which could also explain why a multi-sensory approach to reading is the best).

I'm learning a lot of things, what dyslexia is and what it is not. There is a LOT of misconceptions about dyslexia out there. However that's for another post. Even though we are finishing up. We will be starting Summer School in June. I think I'm slowly working my way to schooling "all year round".

Lesson Pathways is NOW FREE!

Have you heard of Lesson Pathways? Have you been wanting to test it out but wasn't sure if it was worth of the investment? Well now it's free!

To be honest I didn't even know that Lesson Pathways was out there until just a few minutes ago. It use to be a paid subscription, but due the economic down turn they have decided to make it free. The idea is that traffic, hopefully, will produce an income via the ads, good will donations, etc. I just registered myself and I'm amazed at the amount of material that is available! (registration is 100% free)

Lesson Pathways goal is to help homeschooling parents and classroom teachers spend less time searching for educational resources and more time engaging with and teaching their students. They do this by providing READY TO USE learning pathways. Each pathway is filled with information, activities, and links to related resources.

Go check it out: Lesson Pathways

Lesson Plans: Workboxes

It seems the latest craze in the homeschooling community is Sue Patrick's Workbox System. I have NOT tried this system, nor do I feel I have the space needed! It's seems that the physical aspect of this system requires you to have boxes for each subject. You place your child's work into each "workbox".

It's the child's job to complete each task in each box. At the end of the day the parent is required to set up the boxes for the next day work. It's suppose to help the child stay on task and encourage them etc. I'm SURE there is MORE to the system, but I at least seem to have the physical aspects of it down, from reviewing what other homeschoolers are doing. I've seen many share what's in the box over the course of the last few months.

I KNOW that there is value in a child being able to see what's coming up and what is going to happen. I've noticed with my own homeschool journey my kids do much better when they KNOW what's going on or what they have to do today!

I don't have space to set up workboxes even if I wanted too.  The physical space that it demands is above and beyond what my house can handle. It also would require me to set things up daily and to be honest that's even more then I want to do.

I know I haven't been posting my lesson plans like I have wanted. Honestly it's just not a grove I'm into yet! However I have made a lesson plan template that I use with the kids that have greatly help me with planning, grading, and help them see what's excepted from them each day.

Each child gets a their own lesson sheet per week and they get posted on the refrigerator. The preview of the template does not do it justice. If you were to download it you will see that each subject is it's own box with a smaller box next to it. (As seen in this picture below)

The picture is just a partial picture of the document. However it shows how each subject is it's own box with a smaller box next to it.

Over the weekend I fill out 2 lesson plan sheets one for Superstar and one for Web-Princess. Seeing we do some of our work "together" the top half of the lesson plans shows the together work and the bottom half, after the word child, shows the individual work.

When I write out the lesson plans I will often just write down the page numbers, seeing the kids KNOW what book is their grammar book, math book, etc. As they finish the work they put an X in the smaller box next to each subject. This help because like with the workboxes they can see what is needed to be done and what is done! Having it posted on our refrigerator allows daddy to SEE what we've done too.

This helps with grading because I take the lesson plan sheets and grade the work that was done. (They are plans and sometimes things don't go as plan). I then can also use it to make up the new plan because I know where we left off.

On the together work section of the lesson plans I do have some abbreviation that might needs some explaining.

DEV=Devotions

HIS=History

SCI=Science

You may notice that I have science in the together section and the individual section. This is because I do both with the kids. I have something I do together and some things I do individually. This is what works for US!

You may also notice that Tuesdays are pretty empty! That's because that is the day we typically are with our co-op so we don't much "book work" that day.

As for the template that was made in a word processor program. If you are proficient in using a word processor or spreadsheet program then I'm sure you could make a lesson plan sheet that is more tailored for your homeschooling needs.

About 1/2 Done!

I've before have listed what we are using for the 2009-2010 school year. I can't believe that we are just about 1/2 done with our books. Wow 1/2 the school year is almost done!

With 1/2 the school year almost done, I've realized that I haven't really been posting lesson plans like I wanted too. Honestly I haven't been making lesson plans like I wanted too. I just the night before look at our books and decided what to do next. Some of it also is just routine. I tell the kids to do math and they will automatically do 4 pages. I tell the kids to do grammar and they will automatically do the 1 page. There really isn't much planning to be done. We just are working through the books. From the beginning to the end! LOL

Althoug I want to be better planned out and have more of a schedule or weekly planner for them, so they know this is what needs to be done this week. With perhaps the goal of them being able to plan out their days accordingly or their week accordingly. That if they have to do 4 page of grammar all week, that it's okay if they do it all on Day 1 or they can not do it one day and do 2 the next, etc. That it really wouldn't matter as long as at the end of the week the work was done.

Anyway we are about 1/2 way done and it's AWESOME!! It took us 5 months to get here and that was with a month of no schooling do to flu and surgery. So I imagine that it will take us another 5 months to finish. That means we should be done some time in May. Which is cool seeing the public schools here go to school until Mid June! LOL

Thursday's Art Class: Picasso

We are blessed on Thursdays! On Thursdays the kids take ART Class with Oma! (Oma is German for Grandma) Today's Topic:What makes a Picasso a Picasso?

The kids had fun discussing Picasso and making little Picasso type work themselves. Here are their self portraits.

Trampoline Wars: Gym Activity

Trampoline Wars is our planned activity for gym class. It basically is a child doing seat drops for as long as possible. The first child that fails to do a seat drop and and lands back on their feet looses the war.

The kids had fun with this game. Web-Princess didn't loose all the games; she did when a few. Superstar as you can see kept on doing seat drops even when the war was over! He wanted me to be sure I told everyone that he did over 100 seat drops in the 10 minutes we played this game.

After Trampoline Wars we did a couple games of Blind Tiger on the trampoline. For that game one child is blind-folded and placed in the middle of the trampoline. At the word go the blind child CRAWLS around on the trampoline trying to find the other people!! It is very important that the blind child CRAWLS!!!

Now with the Trampoline Wars I can understand how some parents may not want more then 1 child on the Trampoline. If that's the case my only suggestion to you is have your children go one at the time and count the number seat drops they do. The one with the most wins!

We also want to do a game of popcorn on the trampoline, but I have to get a few Nerf type balls first. With that game you place 4-8 balls on the trampoline. The child(ren) jumps on the trampoline being careful NOT to be touched by the balls. If the ball touches them they are out!

All of these game ideas came from: Homeschool Family Fitness

Here are some more picture of the kids smiling faces! (For more of an inside peak of our lesson plans for this week, click on the words lesson plans in the menu above)

Lesson Plans Posted!

First I just wanted to say thanks for all the wonderful suggestions that I got on my blog and off my blog via emails! You guys are awesome for wanting to help me out!!! For that I'm thankful!

I looked over several of the suggestions and I've decided to get a scribd account. I've made up my lesson plans for this week like I try to do in Microsoft word and when I was done I uploaded the document to scribd. Then I embedded the document into my lesson plans web-page (see link in menu bar above).

I'm happy with the results! This is going to be such a time saver for me! So lesson plans for this week are up and posted! WooHoo...it feels so good to get back into the swing of things! Now if we can only get a break for this heat wave. LOL

Oh one more thing before I go. If you view my lesson plans you will see the kids now have "code names". Frankly I've been tired of using DS and DD, but yet I'm not comfortable with posting their names. So I asked the kids what they wanted for "code names".

DS told me Superstar and DD told me Web-princess, but I can use princess for short :) So from this day forward DS is going to be known as Superstar and DD is going to be known as (web) princess.

Okay have a great week! Superstar's EMG/NCV is going to take place this Wednesday, so I just ask that you keep him in your prayers.

Thanks and God Bless
SAHMinIL :)

School Again!

Well back in June/July I announced we started school, then I said we were taking a week off because it got terribly hot! Well that week turned out to be the rest (or most of) the summer!

Which is totally okay! However, tomorrow we are going to hit the books again! Honestly, I'm looking forward to it and I believe the kids are too. Our homeschool group is also meeting up again soon...within the next week or 2...so it's beginning to feel a little more like "school time" :)

Not sure what there is going to be yet for co-op classes. I should be getting that info sometime this week. Our co-op offers a variety of classes. The schedule generally works like this: 2 classes, then lunch, and a class after lunch.

What classes are available is totally depended on the parents that choose to teach a class. We can be there for all the classes or just for what we want. Like the last semester of last school year the kids just went to play practice and that was it. We do try hard to have at least one class per age level, per class time, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.

Anyway that's what's going on here. I'm going to be working on my lesson plans today and hope to have them posted soon on my lesson plan page. I wonder if there is away for me to post a doc of some sort so I don't have to retype everything.... hmm... something to consider especially if I'm going to be "sharing". :)

Perhaps some of my readers know of some FREE programs that would allow me to share docs or make pdf? That would also allow me to share them but edit them any time if needed. Not only that but the editing wouldn't effect what was shared. As a matter of fact it would auto edit what I shared. Does that make sense to anyone? Any ideas?

Heat Wave = No School

We have a bit of a Heat Wave here and with NO air conditioning it's a little sticky! Thus it's "hard" to focus on school work! So we've decided not to do school for the next few weeks so we can get pass this heat wave!

Reminder Lesson Plans/Google Reader

I just wanted to remind everyone seeing school is back in session for us I do have our lesson plans posted on my website. The direct link to those lesson plans are found in the menu bar at the top of this page.

Also I just want to say THANK-YOU to each and everyone of you that are regular readers of my blog! I'm honored to have 30 followers and OVER 40 subscribers! I am truly humbled that each and everyone one of you have become regular readers of My Adventures into Christian Homeschooling!!!

I know that it's hard at time to keep up with all that is happening in the blogosphere that is why I love to use Google Reader! I know there are other readers out there, but with Google Reader I can read the blogs I FOLLOW (via Google friends connect) and Subscribe to in ONE place! Not only blogs, but news feeds, updates on my favorite websites, etc. If you don't use a reader already, then I HIGHLY suggest that you do. It makes things so much easier!!

Rained Out: No Zoo

For those of you that have peaked at my calendar (link in the menu bar above) you may have noticed we had plans to go the zoo today. However, we got rained out! NO zoo today!

Yesterday, however was a beautiful day and we took our school work to the local-state park. We even got to have lunch with DH yesterday. The park is a 2 minute drive from his work, so he met us there for lunch over his lunch break.

The kids did their work, played on the playground, talked with daddy, and after daddy left we went hiking in the woods. I, true Nikki-Style, didn't have my camera on me! Having the camera always pop in my head after the fact! I should have had my camera, because the kids favorite place to go hiking is where there is the 3 story rock face with stairs! They love climbing the stairs, and well with me being at the weight I am (5'7" and over 300 lbs) it nearly kills me every time! (I love them and it is because I love them that I nearly kill myself walking up the stairs on this face cliff) Some day I'll have pictures of that to share with you!

After the park, we came home and "hung" around the house, or should I say "tree".

Not only did I get a picture of that, but I did get a snap shot of the flowers up by my front door.

Word Problems for 3rd Grade Math

Our first week of our new year is going well. The kiddos are enjoying the work and we are getting through it at a pretty good rate. Of course the first weeks back are in some ways review so it's pretty quick.

DS, math problems confused me today and I'm not sure how to find the answer, other then making a calendar (and that's what we did). I took the easy way out today. Now mind you it's the 3rd day of 3rd grade so I'm really not sure what they expected him to do.

I'll give you the word problem here: (We are using MCP: Mathematics Level C)

In the United States, Thanksgiving Day is the fourth Thursday in November. What are the earliest and the latest dates on which this holiday can fall?

The following word problem for the day had to do with Canada's Thanksgiving:

In Canada, Thanksgiving Day is the second Monday in October. What are the earliest and latest dates on which this holiday can fall?

There was a total of 10 word problems today and these, listed above, were the last two of the day. He was able to use the steps for the other 8 problems today easily. These last ones confused him, and me, so I told him just to draw out a calendar and do it that way. I'm sure there is a way to do it mathematically, but I was lost on how to do it on a 3rd grade level.

The steps they expect the kids to do are

SEE: What do you need to find?
PLAN: What you need to do?
DO: Follow the plan?
CHECK: Does your answer make sense?

I don't have teacher manual for the book, but for the most part I don't need it! It's just these word problems above really stumped me today! So how would a 3rd grader solve these problems without making a calendar?

Happy Memorial Day!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Memorial Day! Thanks for being a reader/follower of My Adventures into Christian Homeschooling!

Sincerely,
SAHMinIL

PS: Did you have anything special plan today? For those that homeschool did you do anything special for your kids to help teach them about Memorial Day?

Record Keeping

Lesson Plans, Record Keeping, Scheduling, all just a click way, I hope! This as you may know by now is my last week of our first year of homeschooling! We made it through one whole year! 3 cheers for us! Hip, Hip, Hooray; Hip, Hip Hooray; Hip, Hip, Hooray.

Record keeping has not been our strong suit! That if anything is the one thing I need to change for the up coming school year. I'm hoping I can find (very soon) a software program that will make record keeping easier for us. I don't care if it's a program on the PC or if it's web-base. I do have a few things that I have in mind. Perhaps I can get some help from my fellow homeschoolers!!!

There are some basic things that I think would make a program good!

• Allowing easy scheduling. I can pre-enter a schedule with "certain days" for "certain subject", but flexible enough to allow me to edit each individual day schedule as needed.
• Can easily assign "assignments" for each subject as needed.
• Can enter in sick days, vacation days, etc and it will automatically adjust the schedule and assignments
• students' page for the kids to be able to view and check of their assignments for the day, etc
• oh and price, I prefer it to be FREE!
  

I've tried out homeschool-inc web based planner. It did most everything I wanted but the critical flexibility per day scheduling. We are going to working on a 5 day week. However we will have only 4 days of "book work" and allow the 5th day be be open for field-trips, errands, etc. That day will be on Fridays. However I have one week where I want that day to Monday and I can't adjust that week to reflex that....At least I'm not seeing how too!

I've taken a look at homeschool tracker and I've downloaded the FREE basic version, but to be honest it's to confusing and an NOT very user friendly in my opinion. Plus the basic does not have many of the features I want. The plus version may, but I find the basic NOT to be user friendly, so I assume that the plus will be the same. The PLUS, also, comes with a steep price tag $50. I don't want to spend $50 on software. I really don't want to spend anything, but that's besides the point.

However I'm hearing from Sara at A Shower of Roses that the plus is actually user friendly. So I really don't know any more!

So what do you use? (beside the good, ageless, paper and pen method LOL)