A New Season

It's 2018 and we have a new kindergartener! That's all four kiddos in. I cannot believe we have arrived here. That means this is year seven in this house. Homeschool has been such a blessing in our lives and will be ongoing as we are entering a new season of uncertainty.
Daddy has chronic liver disease and it is touching our whole lives, but the joy of homeschool is we can easily flow into each season and go wherever we need to be without disturbing our family wholeness.
We are changing up the curriculum this year, and I do think that every few years this happens as we are making new goals and searching out creative ways to learn. We have always been an eclectic family, taking pieces of Montessori and traditional learning styles, and this year we are adding in some Charlotte Mason-esque flows.
The words I have chosen for focus this year are creativity, exploration, and simplify. We want to head into this year opening our eyes more to what we can explore as a family, and take time for all of it. That means less workbooks and more notebooks. Getting outside and researching in a more rounded way. And there is always Math-U-See. Anyways, this is a gathering of my thoughts for the year as I head into first report....

Our First Day, 2017/18.

Last week I spent some time organizing our school books, and letting the kids pick readers and play with their journals. Today we jumped into our first real day of routine. It's always a bit of a balancing act but went well. I am getting a feel for what this year looks like and I think it will be a growth year (last year being a restorative and resting one). Here are some visuals of our day!

 First of all, you have to get the littlest sibling working on something, right? They love to be included and feel like they are doing something similar. Math blocks are a special thing that is allowed out during school time and Finn loves creating with them. Roads are the fave thing right now. 

 

Bible

I tried hard to find some bible curriculum for some time and I picked up some various books. This year I wanted to give the kids more choice so that they are excited and take initiative in what they are learning. I found this coloring bible at Chapters recently for Keiran. He can read and color the whole entire bible essentially, even the cover. I love that there is a visual aspect to his learning each story.

 

 This is the book that Aiden picked for bible. I love that he has to use his bible to look up the verses and then doodle his thoughts about it. I am seeing and hoping for tons of growth in the kids' knowledge of scripture this year, as the older two especially are more thoughtful about things and maturing.

 

 Gemma's book is similar. She can doodle and color, and also look up her verses. I am adding these to their morning English routine.

 

Mom's planner has a weekly bible plan and fighter verse and this was the one written in so we read this together this morning too. 

 

Language Arts

 Aiden chose this for his first reader. I had so much fun at the homeschool convention picking up all sorts of reading subjects, knowing my kids interests and preferences. Aiden loves the WW2 stuff.

 

Aiden's "Grammar and Punctuation Six," Evan Moor workbook.



 My house read-aholic, Gemma, has already finished her first book and is on to the second. Here is her first picks for readers.

 

Gemma did a little write-up after her first book. I did not help her correct it as it was on her own initiative. I still need to photocopy some graphic organizers for the kids to fill out when they are reading, but she got ahead of me, haha. Love her enthusiasm.  

 

Gemma's "A Reason for Spelling, Level D" wordlist. 

 My good friend had the idea to encourage Keiran's reading with an audio book. It is so great to discuss ideas and challenges with other homeschool moms. He wanted a funny book and I found this at Chapters. So far so good. It also frees me up from sitting with him as this is a busy time of the school morn with lots of instruction at different times. He has also picked some readers that we will balance him and mom reading together. His confidence is coming!

 

 Keiran's "Skill Sharpeners, Spell and Write 3," by Evan Moor. He did awesome at this.

 

Keiran was brave this morn with his journal and didn't want mom's help at all. This is a perfect example of how and why we do journaling. I let the kids create and write whatever they want and keep it to just a couple of corrections. They usually copy around two words which helps them build spelling skills and this time around Keiran got some review phonics lessons too.



Science 

I ended up changing my mind when I picked up our science curriculum this year. They didn't have my intended pick and when I saw this I remembered that Keiran has been saying he wants to be an underwater animal rescuer. What better way to engage his already big love for science? It is a nice change from our usual science picks.



Also, this science comes with a Junior Notebooking Journal. This was Gemma's activity that she was working on (Keiran had the same). And....

 

 Aiden has a regular notebooking journal that requires more older thought from him. It was our first taste of the curriculum today. Mom read a lot of text, and the kids worked on their journals at the same time as they listened to a ton of information. Today's lesson was about nekton, benthos, and plankton; or the types of aquatic animals.

 

 

We kept it to those three subjects today and got our regular day sorted out into routine. More to come this week.

 

The Start

We have started, later than usual, but we are in a year of reforming. We have moved to a new home, new city, and new school! I have picked less curriculum this year to leave room for exploration, projects, and learning new ways of doing things, along with all of BC schools. Here are some of our resources. I am still tweaking things as we find our groove.

Aiden's English

 

 

Gemma's English

 

Keiran's English

 

Math-U-See is our favorite!

 

 Gemma's is finishing up Alpha this year and will move on to Beta.

 

Aiden is half way through Gamma.

 

 Keiran has just begun Alpha this year.

Socials Studies.... always Donna Ward living resources. Read-a-louds and exploring our country in a different way this year.

 

 

In science we are diving deep into the world of plants. We will supplement other science subjects as we go.

 

 

This year our school requires bible as an actual class (we joined up with Heritage Christian Online School) and so we are trying to structure our faith learning a bit more with weekly scripture verses. We have started reading our bible encyclopedias again and are reading about the early church in Acts.

 

 

There is a lot more to cover this year with Arts, Health, PE, Technology, and French classes, but here is the beginning organization of our core subjects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Registering

Changes. This next year we will be registering as a homeschool family, instead of enrolling. That equals no reporting. It has been a hard year. There has been much growth too- kids learning to read, two-wheelers conquered, math concepts sticking stronger, adding of a Kindergartener, exploration of family history. We now need to simplify. Circumstances are uncertain. I foresee growth of a different kind, but we shall see. I won't make it to the beloved homeschool conference even. We are still excited for what next year in homeschooling will bring, even if it will look a bit different.

Health

We have been in a weird season. Our school year has not been as smooth and organized as usual. (Have I said this before?) We are having a lot of days off for health concerns. After being sick, with the flu this time, we have been able to get in a good groove. Finally! It is nice, and it is good, to step back and simplify what every child needs. I can now see where we need to go to build each child's strengths, as well as weak spots. Onward. This busy mom is also re-reading the first homeschool book that encouraged me on how to go about things. I am sure it will spark old ideas that I have forgotten in the chaos....

stages

This morning we started a fresh month and we are now into all of our subjects, getting a groove going. I have changed Keiran to a more pre-K kind of learning and will no longer be doing any book work with him. He was a trooper this last month and has a lot of understanding but his fine motor skills and attention span are just not there yet. We will work on his numbers and letters more now, and he can be around to listen in- we shall see where he ends up by the end of the year. As well, this brings more focus on Gemma who is doing marvelous in her Kindergarten learning. And not forgetting about Aiden, who is continuing to be a great learner too. He does well being a little more independent. I am so glad that I can change up anything where it needs to be. This Mom is already loving year two of homeschooling and I am excited to have gotten a head start since we will need some time off when we add babe number four in a  month or so....   

Our start.

Some pics from the first day of school. Grade Two & Kindergarten.

 

Our day actually started with some God-planned science. Haha. Toads that appeared after a stormy night.

 

We made a little habitat for them. 

 

This equals hours of observation and play.

 

Keiran's F. He was a proud boy.

 

Gemma, excited about her F practice. 

 

Concentration :) 

 

Aiden- rule and write. (Compound words.) 

 

Sonlight K worksheets- Gemma's is on top and Keiran's is the bottom one. 

 

This year Aiden's first reader is a bible. (Grade Two Sonlight.) 

 

The kids are enjoying using the whiteboard while Aiden works. 

 

Math blocks. Making patterns. 

 

I find that the first week is a little chaotic to plan out so we go little by little, sorta winging it. We started with just English, as we are adding two new little workers to the plan. 

 

More fun. 

 

First go of Aiden's copy work. He needed a reminder about where his capital letters are used. Overall it was an encouraging day as the littles stepped up and Aiden is liking his Sonlight Grade 2. 

organized chaos

I just finished organizing our books in order to be able to fill out the kids' planners. I am super pumped (do moms say "super pumped," haha) to get into all of these books. The more I look at all the kids' curriculum, the more I get excited. There are great things that I haven't seen before in each program. Pretty soon I will post all our individual curriculum pics but for now here is a look at the organizing chaos of tonight....

I love laying out all of the kids' books. This year I am teaching three! I am so glad that we went with enrollment. It is great to know you have support, funding, and I need the organized approach for my brain. I like to use my school planner (resource plan and year overview) during the year sporadically in order to see if we are where we need to be and then I have a person planner that I use to keep track of our daily activities.I can't believe we are starting homeschool year two!

Week One! Trying it all out.

We are done the first week and starting to get a groove going. We usually start school at around 9am, after we are done breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth, and making our beds. I won't always do this, but here is a sample of our week:

ENGLISH

English review.

An alphabet museum of magazine pics.

 Recognizing sounds and matching.

The books that we read as part of our English this week. Ella sings Jazz is about singer Ella Fitzgerald. We had fun looking up her old songs on the internet and listening to her jazz and bepop songs. This English program is great. Mom loves that it incorporates art and music in the language learning. Aiden is loving it too!

 

A Robert Munsch book that Aiden read to us all for fun (and practice).

 

BIBLE (Health and Career)

Our picked faith/character book didn't work out, so for now I just grabbed a kids bible off of the shelf and Aiden is journaling along with it. (He is not used to using single lined paper yet so it is a little all over the place.)

 

ART

This week Aiden learned about lines, strokes, smushes, and really just to play with your paint brush and colors in order to get a feel for it. This turned out great.

 

SOCIAL STUDIES

A map of our home and places Aiden likes to go. I think he was thinking of the bank because he received some allowance from doing all his chores. :)

 

His worksheet. We also rapped C-A-N-A-D-A to learn the letters in Canada. This was the fave subject for the week.

 

SCIENCE

The creation of man. Aiden drew a self portrait to go along with this lesson. (He was in a mood this morning and so I threw in this older activity that was meant for the next level and it seemed to get him back on track a bit.)

 

MATH

Review.

Counting.

 

 

AND SOME EXTRAS

The days.

The weather.

 

PRE-K AND KB (Which stands for Keiry Baby... or as dad calls him, Killer Bee).

And this is where my littles have been. Gemma has been glued to this chair with the smelly markers, and has been so focused on her coloring- something new for her.

Keiran is a little wild still, as he is only two years old, but the both of them have been listening in on the books we read. Altogether, our "test week" went well. Mom has now worked out her planner and we are in homeschool!