New Stuff

This week was our first week of new classes. On Tuesdays Julia still has her Kindergarten class, then off to pick up Karley from preschool and lunch at home, then back to school for her Music Appreciation class. She LOVED the class. She told me that it was a lot like Kindermusik and that so far it is her favorite of the new classes. On Wednesdays she has a drawing class first thing in the morning, then home for some more work and lunch, and then back again in the afternoon for Spanish class. I think she will really get a lot out of the drawing class. All the students draw an object (usually an animal) from an overhead projector image. Julia couldn't believe that the whole class all they did was draw the eyes of a panda! I can't wait to see her finished project. The Spanish class seems to be continuing from the first semester. Perhaps this is the reason that she says it is her least favorite class so far. I think she is realizing that it is going to be a little work.

Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays we have free to get our things done at home. Thursdays Karley also has preschool, so we still have to get up and out of the house early. At home we still are doing math, language (alternating between phonics, grammar, vocabulary, and handwriting), ancient history, and life science. The girls still have gymnastics on Saturday mornings, and next week Julia starts piano lessons.....whew!

PACT Poetry Jam!

The Little Turtle by Vachel Lindsay

This afternoon was PACT's Poetry Jam. Julia participated in the K-2 group, and was actually the very first student to participate. She was a bit nervous and began her poem as soon as she got to the front of the room (I wasn't quite ready for her and that's why the video begins so suddenly and her poem doesn't start at the beginning, plus I don't know how to rotate the video...sorry). There were about 6 or 7 kids participating in this age group and Julia was awarded Second Place! That means that she as well as the first and third place winners advance to the school wide poetry jam on Tuesday night.

Second Semester

Tomorrow we begin the second semester. There are no classes on campus this week and we will find out this week whether or not Julia will get into the next set of classes. She has decided not to continue hip hop, PE or computers for the rest of the school year. Instead, we signed up for music appreciation, Spanish, and drawing (she will still be in her Kindergarten class too). I'm not sure if they will let her into drawing or not since it is a 1st - 3rd grade class, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try. If they don't let her then we can always pick up the art curriculum that we began at the beginning of the school year (We got away from it because she wouldn't do as the lesson said to do; instead she would draw or make her own thing.)

Big news in our house: Julia and I will begin piano lessons soon. And that also means that we now have a new piano in our house! All four of us are really having a good time with it (and so far the kids have been very respectful of it and following the new "piano rules"). Julia will begin a children's group piano lesson in a couple of weeks. My lessons will probably begin in March. Karley just began a new session of Kindermusik. She is enjoying that immensely.

One "funny" note before I go: Last Friday Julia was having a tough time focusing and getting work done at home. I gave her several time outs because she wouldn't do anything and also because she began to get mouthy with me. I told her that she would stay in her room as long as it took until she was ready to be both respectful to me and to do her work. She replied with "its too hard to do both!"

The beginning of a new year

Even though school doesn't officially start back up again until Monday, I thought I would share some observations I've made over the past few months. Although we stay quite busy during school time, it is still hard for me to see the subtle day-to-day changes. I know Julia has made progress in her skills and knowledge base since we began in mid-August, but sometimes it feels as though it comes too easily. The progress that I have noticed:

Penmanship:
Julia began the school year only writing in capital letters. She was even frightened with the idea of learning lower case. Today she writes effortlessly and often. Occasionally she makes her letters the wrong way, but the vast majority of her writing is clear and easy to read.

Math:
Julia's math learning has been progressing well. The last Friday before Christmas Break she took the first review test of our second book. That means we only have another 25 or 30 lessons left to be where I was hoping we would end up at the end of the school year. There are still somethings that I feel are missing in her math knowledge, but she has been introduced to some complicated concepts already.

Reading/Phonics:
Julia's reading is really taking off. She does not love the drill of phonics learning, but I know it has helped to improve her reading skills. Last night she and I began the first book of the Magic Tree House series. We started alternating pages and I agreed to read two chapters with her. We came to the third chapter and she was hooked. She asked if she could keep reading. I said yes, but that I was done reading for the night so she would have to read all the pages to me. She was about half way through the first page when John handed the phone to me and told me. So I left her with her book. I was on the phone for awhile and Julia found me, book in hand, and asked me what one of the words was. I told her to ask her father. Later I was off the phone and in the living room. At one point, maybe 30-45 min after I had left her room with the phone, she came downstairs with a huge, proud grin on her face. She announced to us that she read the whole book! She was so happy and proud. The book had 10 chapters, 68 pages. After congratulating her we told her she really needed to get to bed. Later when I checked on her before I went to bed I noticed she had the second book out with a bookmark at the third chapter. I'm sure there are words she skips over or isn't reading correctly (although she told me one day that she found if she kept reading she could figure out the hard words by the rest of the story), but I think her reading fire has been lit!

History:
Julia enjoys history well-enough. She doesn't like me asking her review questions about what we have read, but she is definitely getting an idea of the world around her. Much more, I'm sure, than I knew at her age.

Science:
We are continuing our life science notebook with our study of animals. We will continue this into the spring, but may leave the animal kingdom for awhile and do some plant biology. I think we will leave human biology for next year.

Dance:
Julia goes back and forth about whether or not she enjoys hip hop. I think it is fun for her, but it does move awfully fast and just when she feels like she is starting to "get it" her teacher adds to it or introduces a whole new dance.

PE:
Although Julia enjoys running in a soggy, muddy field, she doesn't like her timed runs so much. I imagine she will want to drop PE for next semester.

Computers:
I think Julia enjoys her computer class and will probably want to continue. I can't say that I have noticed a great improvement in her computer skills, but I'm really not worried about that at this point.

So anyway, although I don't see big break throughs day to day or week to week, they must be happening, because when I look back on what we have done so far this school year I can tell that she has grown from a preschooler to a true kindergartener.

What's new?!

Hmmmm, I don't know. I'm finding it harder and harder to think of new things to post about on this blog. Homeschooling is going fine. Julia, Karley and I are learning a lot and getting things done. We have our good days, our better days, and our not so good days. This month is a bit tricky with all going on. Julia will probably finish her next set of phonics workbooks next month as well as the first grade handwriting book. I'm considering adding some grammar and/or vocabulary for the next semester. Julia's reading is really taking off. She does structured reading for me, fun reading for herself, and she reads to her sister.

We are continuing our science learning. We read about a different animal each week and she completes a notebook page or two. This week we are reading about chameleons.

Our history studies are going fine too. We have not done a big, fun project for awhile, but I think she still likes and looks forward to our reading. This week we are learning about ancient China.

I think Julia is enjoying her classes on campus. She had been complaining about her computer class for awhile. I think she gets frustrated with her work, erases, and then finds that she does not have enough time to finish before the class is over. So for several weeks she came home with nearly blank pages. The last week or two she has done better (I told her not to worry about her work so much and now she comes home with papers that actually have work on them).

She complains about PE and hip hop. She thinks that they make her too tired. Yipeee! I love it. I think she does too, but they do work her hard. She is learning a dance (or two?) in hip hop that will be perfomed at the end of the school year. So far I'm not convinced that she is a natural born dancer. She says she has a hard time keeping up with everyone and the music (and it does move quite fast), but I've found that she starts late, always a step or two behind the others. That was until I told her that "5, 6, 7, 8,...." means "on your mark, get set,..." Once she started replacing that for 5, 6, 7, 8 she started her first step in time with the others. Hurray!

So all is well. I guess it feels familiar and ordinary. Nothing new going on right now, no good material to write about, but we are doing fine and plugging along.

Karley is writing!

For a couple of weeks now I have been satisfying Karley's new request of "be my teacher too" with teaching her to write her name. I have small slate boards from Handwriting Without Tears that I used to teach Julia to write. With Karley I started with letter K, then A, R, etc. We haven't actually finished all the letters of her name (she really likes to do Ks over and over again), but yesterday I decided to have her try writing on paper. I gave her a piece of Handwriting Without Tears paper (grey blocks that represent the slate board). I was amazed (Julia too I think), but Karley can WRITE!!! She has always held a crayon or pencil correctly and has shown some good control, but she was able to transfer what she has learned the last couple of weeks on the slate board with chalk to the paper, which is much, much smaller writing. I also discovered that she has a bit of her father in her. She was getting mad at herself when her straight lines were not perfectly straight. She began erasing until I told her that this was practice and that there is no need for erasing when you are practicing. She filled almost all of the paper with careful, controlled and very legible letters. One of two of them I would have thought Julia had written if I had not seen Karley do it. Plus, she started branching out on her own with "new" letters. She asked me how to write an H. I looked at her paper and noticed she had both of the vertical lines already drawn! This girl can write!!!

Dull Week

After having a whole week off last week I am finding it really hard to get back into the swing of things this week. I'm not the only one, the girls feel it too. Maybe it is all the distractions that come with this time of year, I don't know, but it is really hard to be motivated to sit down and get a lot of work done.

Our work for the week:

1. Continue with Book 2 for math (we just started this on Monday)
2. Combining Explode the Code (Julia thinks its boring) with another phonics program that I already have that is less writing and more reading.
3. Continue working on her handwriting.
4. Begin studying about ancient India.
5. Begin our unit on reptiles.
6. I have two parent meetings this week.
7. Julia has both PE and Hip Hop classes.

Sounds kind of boring to me. I guess its time for a field trip!