Ask Our Readers: When the Child Doesn't Want To

We have talked a lot about teaching our children here at POH, as all of us are in the throes of teaching our children to read and write.

But what do you do if your child doesn't "want to"? As in, to quote my daughter, "Mommy, I don't want to [work on that]. Reading is HARD!" She is willing to work on our reading lessons for a brief time, but she quickly tires of it and complains that it is too hard. I have explained to her that reading is hard, but there are great rewards that come with learning to read. I am not certain how to proceed. Should I enforce a certain 'reading lesson' time limit? Should I try a different method? Should I take a break?

Just to put this in context, Georgia is five years old. We are currently working through the Hooked on Phonics workbook (given to us and recommended by my sister, an elementary school teacher). She knows her letters and their sounds very well. She can write her letters fairly well. She loves books and stories, but in general she does not like to work hard, even when there are rewards at the end of the work (I hate to use the term lazy, but she is definitely not a 'driven' child). Her lazy tendency comes naturally--I have not been regularly working with her on the reading either, but I am trying to be more diligent about that.

I would love your thoughts!

Knowing When to Take a Break

This year I have been working through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading with Samuel, my five year old. About a month ago, he and I were really struggling each time we sat down for a lesson. We were stuck on Lesson 48: ank/ink/onk/unk. Did anyone else have problems with that one? There had been rumblings leading up to this lesson, but the bottom really fell out when we got here. We tried this lesson three times in one week, each one ending with Samuel being disciplined for having a bad attitude and me needing to take a break to cool off.

I realized I was crossing over into "reading isn't fun" territory - a place I didn't want to be, especially since we're just starting and because Sam is young. BUT, I also didn't want him to think he could just give up on reading. Part of me feared rewarding a bad attitude. So I had to think of a solution that gave him an opportunity to show he could do reading with a happy heart without building a dislike of reading.

What to do? We simply started over. I had a talk with him about how proud I am of him and all he is accomplishing. I also talked about things being tough and that we can always choose the attitude we will use to approach tough work. So I told him that the focus of our reading lesson for the next two weeks wouldn't be how much he read, or getting through a lesson, but the attitude he chose to have. We would pray and ask Jesus to give him a happy heart. And then we started back at Lesson 27: Words with Short-A Vowel Sounds. It took us the next two weeks to go through all of the lessons again and for him to make it through each time with a happy heart. But we made it and it worked.

Each day I would also go over the ank/ink/onk/unk lesson with him. I just had him read the words after me each day. I was dreading that lesson like you wouldn't believe! But we made it there and we made it through. Praise God! We pressed on through a few more lessons, but then I sensed it was a good time to take a break from the book. Samuel was approaching reading time with a good attitude, so I didn't feel that taking a break now would be rewarding a bad attitude. So we're taking a break for a couple of weeks.

Now I have a collection of easy readers that he can work on each day during reading time. Our bookshelf this week includes: Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman, The Baby Bunny by Margaret Hillert, Crabby Gabby by Sue Graves, Whose Hat Is It? by Valeri Gorbachev, and Mine's the Best by Crosby Bonsall (all from the library - praise God for our library!). Here's to happy reading!

Too much or too little?

I really cannot believe that we have been officially doing pre-school with Karis for over a month now! It has been such a fun and exciting experience for all of us. Even when we are not "doing school," Karis is constantly asking me, "What schoolwork can I do now?" And Karlie has utterly amazed me by doing absolutely every. single. thing. that Karis does. She wants to count backwards from 20, learn to read, and do worksheets right along with her sister. The whole process has been a blessing for our family and I am so happy to be teaching them at home this year.

But I still struggle with doubts a lot. I daily go back and forth between "Am I doing enough?" and "Am I doing too much?" I know that sounds contradictory, but I just want to be honest here.

I read my friends' blogs about their children going to pre-school and all the fun crafts they are making and hands on activities and what they are learning and it just makes me want to do more with my girls. I start to second guess myself and wonder if there is an aspect of her education that I might have left out of my plan. Plus, chasing around my suddenly-crawling, short-napping almost-eight-month-old definitely limits the amount of individual instructional time I have with my big girls. We primarily try to do our school work during her morning nap because my big girls have their own rest time when she naps in the afternoon. But Abbi's morning nap used to be our best reading time and now that we have started more formal schoolwork, I am finding it hard to make time to read at other times. When Abbi is awake, she either wants our attention or wants to eat our books :) So I am finding it hard to squeeze in as much educational time into our day as I had hoped.

But on the other hand, Karis is only 4 and I want her to have plenty of time to play outdoors, pretend with her baby dolls and doll house, and make up her own artwork. I struggle between wanting to plan out lots of fun crafts and activities for her and at the same time wanting her to be free to use that wonderful, blissful imagination that God gives to 4-year olds. I want her to have time to be a kid! So at the same time that I wonder if I should be teaching her more, I often wonder if I am actually doing too much and need to just let her play more.

I would definitely say that although we have had a wonderful 1st month of pre-school, I am still struggling with balancing it all. But I love every minute of it and it is so worth it! It thrills me so much to be a part of Karis' learning and being there to see things all of a sudden "click" in her mind. I taught her how to sound out words for the 1st time yesterday and I cannot tell you who was more excited -- Karis or myself!

I've been trying to think of what I might change for our second month of school and have come up with a two main goals. They both involve personal sacrifice but will be good for me, HA!

1. I need to get up earlier! Ever since Abbi's hospitalization, she hasn't gone back to sleeping through the night again and I haven't had the heart to make her cry it out. (Yeah, I'm a wimp, but once you see your baby cry/ scream for almost 2 days straight, it is a long time before you can stand to hear her cry again!) I've used her multiple wakings as an excuse to stay in bed longer in the mornings to get as much rest as I can. But I'm going to start getting up an hour before everyone else again. I need to have time to read my Bible and start my day right, as well as get breakfast all ready and unload the dishwasher so we can jump into schoolwork more quickly and have more time later on in the day to play or read.

2. If one of my big girls does not fall asleep during nap-time, I am going to allow her to get up early to read books with me. I posted a while back about our nap-time solutions, and the plan works wonderfully as long as both of them fall asleep or both of them are awake. But it seems that a couple times a week only one of them falls asleep while the other sings and plays until Momo's eyes open. This new addendum to the plan will allow me to have special one-on-one time with one of my big girls and add in some extra reading time as well. I'll miss that 2-hour chunk of time to myself but since my girls are all usually in bed by 7 each night, I should have plenty of time to finish up my housework, blogging, e-mail, etc. after they go to bed.

How has your first month of school gone? Is there anything you plan to do differently next month?

The Dollar Store for Homeschoolers

Do you live near a Dollar Tree? I LOVE our dollar store and I find so many great things for homeschooling there. Looking around our homeschool room, here are a few of the items I see that came from the dollar store:

1. Workbooks. I have an unhealthy obsession with the workbooks from Dollar Tree. They are just so great and so cheap. My boys are not coloring book kids. They don't enjoy sitting down and coloring or drawing. But I've discovered they will sit down and do a worksheet. Some of the ones we work on aren't really that challenging to them (draw a line between the two matching Care Bears, for example) but it is great pencil practice for them. And I always make them write their name at the top of each worksheet (front and back). This has been great practice for them. Some of the workbooks are more at their skill level and they enjoy cutting, writing, and doing mazes.

2. White Boards & Dry Erase Markers. I found these great framed white boards for $1/each and a 3 pack of markers for $1. We use these boards to practice writing letters and to draw Mat Man (from Handwriting Without Tears). I used white boards a lot as a classroom teacher and I can see us getting a lot of use out of them when drilling math, practicing spelling, etc.

3. Card Packs. This was a 6-pack of card games for $1. I have these in our Busy Bag Box and can pull them out when we need a fun activity to break up our school day.

4. Puzzles. Each of the boys picked out a Disney Cars 48 piece puzzle the last time we were in Dollar Tree. These also live in our Busy Bag Box for a quick activity. The boys can practice teamwork and turn-taking when working together on the puzzles.

5. Magnetic Alphabet Sheets. I found this cute sheet of alphabet magnets the other day. I bought two sets so we would have doubles. The boys worked together right away to lay out the alphabet and spell some words. Also, I didn't buy these yesterday because we don't need them, but Dollar Tree has Wooden Magnetic Letters. These would be a super cheap version of the Melissa & Doug letters.

I also love the Target Dollar Spot, especially when they put out their back to school items. Here are a few of the items I picked up this year:

Do you have any great Dollar Store items that you use in your homeschooling? Please share! I'm always looking for new ideas!

Homeschool Blindspots

A friend recently linked to this post on her blog, and I am glad she highlighted it. I think the blindspots the author mentions apply to all parenting, not just homeschooling, and his thoughts deserve a read. Please take a chance to read the article and chime in with your thoughts in our comments! Homeschool Blindspots HT:Joy

Homeschooling questionnaire

My friend Krista (who has written many posts for POH) asked me to answer a few questions about our home-schooling plan for a workshop she is facilitating. I thought I would share my answers here in case it would be helpful to any of you and I would love to read your answers as well. Feel free to answer them on your own blog or in the comments if you have time!

1. What books and resources do you consider the most important/invaluable as you’ve prepared to homeschool as well as while homeschooling? The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and The Core by Leigh Bortins. They totally changed my perspective on education and I know that I will reference them over and over as we progress to higher grades. I also reference Sonlight's read-aloud list and 1000 Classics Book list each week as I request library books.

2. What fun projects, unit studies, etc. have you done (or are you planning) that will make great memories? We just started our home-schooling, but I plan to do many seasonal unit studies (like in late September we will do an emphasis on apples where we go pick apples, do apple star painting, make apple pie and apple butter, read books about apples, etc.) I tend to pick a topic that relates to our current situation and then order tons of books from the library about it (For instance, when we went to the NC State zoo, I requested a bunch of books about zoos, zoo-keepers, animals that we saw at the zoo, etc.) I don't really plan out unit studies, because we always just continue with our normal home school schedule (not a unit-study type curriculum), but I supplement a lot with library books to further study whatever is going on in our life. To make fun memories, I like to do a lot of cooking projects, art projects, and trips to fun places like museums, zoos, farms, fairs, and other outdoor destinations.

3. What websites do you use regularly? This could be blogs and other sites for you as well as kid-friendly sites you integrate in learning. I've gotten a LOT of home school ideas off of Pinterest recently -- more than from any one website. We also use You-Tube randomly for videos of whatever we are studying. My kids are younger, though, so I try to keep them away from the TV or computer as much as possible. I'd prefer to show them things in books right now. I'm sure as they grow older that we will use more student-interactive sites.

4. What curriculum are you using? Briefly, what are the pros/cons for your family?
Homeschooling preschool has been a new adventure for us but we are really enjoying it! My husband and I decided to try to save money this year, so we did not purchase a full-blown curriculum and I'm kind of just compiling my own. Next year I plan to join a Classical Conversations co-op with my kindergartner but for now, my main goals this year are to read as much as possible and get her used to holding her pencil correctly. We are primarily following Sonlight's read aloud list. I can find most of the books at our library (I can't always find all the great collections, but can usually find the individual books that are in the collections). I am also using The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading to give my daughter a solid phonetic background. We are just using some preschool workbooks that I got at the Dollar Store, Target, etc that have mazes, dot to dot, etc, so she can work on her writing skills. I bought a fun calendar at a teacher store so we have calendar time everyday and talk about the weather and also do counting with a number line. I hope to teach her to count backwards from 20 and also count by 10's, 5's, and 2's by the end of the year. We've been using Cuisinaire rods, Pattern blocks, and I'm getting ready to start Inchimals for more math development. A friend gave me the History Cards from Veritas Press so I hope to memorize as many of those as we can this year. And we have map placemats that we talk about at each meal. Other than that, I simply have some fun educational games and puzzles and art supplies that we do.
Pros: less expensive and I don't pay for parts of a curriculum that I won't use. Also, I can totally tailor it to fit my girls' interests and my goals.
Cons: I get a little carried away... since I don't have lessons plans laid out for me, I often plan more than I can accomplish. I get excited about all that I want to do with my girls and then bummed when I run out of time. And I might leave out some things that a full-blown curriculum would include

5. How do you balance home school and ministry? I view my family as my main ministry right now and therefore most of my other ministries flow from my home and include my family. I am mentoring a teenage girl who comes over to help with my girls and learn about being a home-maker. She helps my girls with their schoolwork, plays with them outside, and does art projects with them. I also cook a big dinner once a week for 3 single guys and two other couples in our church and my girls often help me fix it. I try to include my girls in all my ministry opportunities.

6. Could you share a story of a triumph or success or something fun or a creative idea or just something that works for your family? I was really excited last week to hear my daughter count to 43 all by herself and all the way to 114 with just a little help transitioning to the next ten (ex. 50, 60, etc). So far, we have only been working on counting to 20 each day and only for a few weeks, but it all of a sudden clicked for her and she understood how to go further! It was just a little triumph but was very exciting to me.

We have also been really amazed and excited about the way our 4 and 2 year old have easily memorized large portions of scripture. We are trying to learn a new chapter every few weeks (depending on the length of the chapter.) We simply add one verse each night during our bedtime routine (with motions if applicable) and recite all the previous verses. They really enjoy it and I love that they are getting the larger context of the Bible in their hearts.

Finnlings' Favorite Books (some of them :-)

In the spirit of Back to School, I wanted to share a list of some of the Finnlings’ favorite books. This is by no means comprehensive! We do not own all of these books, but have discovered many of them at our library this summer. My children and I enjoy books with fun stories and/or rhymes, and I personally look for beautiful illustrations that add to the story rather than take away from it. You will notice that I have both 'car' books and 'princess' books--and both of my big kids love both types! Forgive me for not hyperlinking each book to Amazon—that would have taken way too much time:-)

**Note: I hope to add short notes to each book as I have time over the next few days, like my own "annotated bibliography", so check back if you are curious!**

Roxaboxen –Alice McLerran ---Story of children who make up their own town with a mayor, houses, and stores. My kids played Roxaboxen for days after reading this!

Truckery Rhymes –Jon Scieszka ---Part of the "Trucktown" series, these are classic nursery rhymes reset to truck themes. Kids and adults love them!

The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash – Trinka Hakes Noble ---Fun story about a school field trip gone awry

Barn Dance – Bill Martin, Jr & John Archambault ---The skinny kid catches the scarecrow coming to life and leading the barn animals in a barn dance.

Sunflower House – Eve Bunting ---A home in our neighborhood has sunflowers in their yard, which my kids love. This story about a boy who plants a sunflower house resonated with my children, who know want sunflowers for our yard.

Blueberries for Sal –Robert McCloskey ---Classic story of Little Sal who eats more blueberries than she picks

One Morning in Maine –Robert McCloskey ---Or, as my kids call is "Little Sal grows up!" Sal is older and loses her first tooth.

Make Way for Ducklings – Robert McCloskey ---Another classic by McCloskey; set in Boston around the ducks :-)

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom –Bill Martin, Jr & John Archambault ---Bright colors and letters and fun rhyme make this a classic

Tip Tip Dig Dig – Emma Garcia ---Construction equipment comes together to build a playground. Baxter loves this book "with a digger we can Dig Dig Dig!"

Otto the Boy Who Loved Cars –Kara LaReau ---My son seems to be drawn like a magnet to books about cars (like my daughter finds books about princesses). This one is about a boy so obsessed with cars that he turns into one. The play on words is great (his name is Otto, his friends are Mini, Kia and Chevy, his teacher is Mrs. Dodge).

Pinkalicious—Victoria Kahn ---One of Georgia's favorites, this story is about a little girl who eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns pink!

Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin – Lloyd Moss ---A personal favorite of mine for the illustrations and the rhyming introduction to musical instruments.

Olivia –Ian Falconer ---Olivia the pig is very good at wearing people out. Sometimes she even wears herself out!

Tea For Ruby –Sarah Ferguson ---Ruby gets an invitation to tea with the queen, and has to review her manners before going to tea. The illustrations are by Robin Glasser, who illustrates Fancy Nancy and You Can't Take a Balloon to the Metropolitan Museum--they are elaborate and fun.

The Nutcracker – Susan Jeffers ---Two years ago, we saw excerpts from the Nutcracker and this book was read. Georgia was enthralled and we had to buy the book. It is a favorite year round!

If You Give a Pig a Party & If You Give a Cat a Cupcake – Laura Numeroff

Clifford the Big Red Dog—Norman Birdwell

There’s Wocket in My Pocket – Dr. Seuss

Fancy Nancy –Jane O’Connor

Toot & Puddle – Holly Hobbie

The Napping House – Audrey Wood

The Dress I’ll Wear to the Party –Shirley Neitzel

How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? – Jane Yolen & Mark Teague

Bella & Stella Come Home – Anika Denise & Christopher Denise

1 2 3 A Child’s First Counting Book –Alison Jay (Counting book using fairy tales—beautifully illustrated!)

Mother Goose – Mary Engelbreit

T is for Tar Heel: A North Carolina Alphabet – Carol Crane

What are some of your favorite children's books?

1st day of DeLong preschool!

Since POH is focusing on "Back to School" this month, I thought I'd share about our first day of school also. I posted HERE about our "schedule" (that I follow very loosely) and my LIST of things to do with my girls this fall. I wrote a very detailed schedule to keep me on track, but I don't try to accomplish every single thing each day. If one activity is going well, we happily enjoy it for a longer period of time than scheduled and cut back on something else. Monday, August 15th was officially our "first day of school" and I had several fun things planned for the girls. So here is a glimpse of some of the ways I tried to make the first day special. I didn't take pictures of all our schoolwork, but just tried to capture the most fun parts :)

The girls woke up to new world map placemats and fingerpaints at the breakfast table! We have had so much fun with the placemats -- the girls love pointing to places and asking about everything on the map. It kind of drives Mark crazy because we have a hard time having a conversation in between questions but I love that they are learning geography without even trying! The girls love to sing the continents and tell me which color they are.

The girls had helped me make special cinnamon rolls for the first day of school and had been eagerly waiting to eat them :)

Of course Karis ate all the icing off first!
And my butter-lovin, change hatin, Karlie Sue wouldn't touch the icing but demanded butter on her cinnamon roll and ate every bite (but only after she ate the raisins first!)
We used our new chore cards to get ready for our day and then headed outside for our morning walk. And of course I just had to get our first traditional "first day of school pictures!" (Do you know what the best part about pre-school at home is? That you can have your babydolls do absolutely everything with you!!)And I have to now confess what a horrible mother I am -- my eldest is 4 years old and had not touched fingerpaint until her first day of pre-school! They had a blast painting with their fingers and have since begged to do it every single day!
We had a very special "healthy" fudgesicle snack after naps! Although usually I let the girls help me make everything, I made these while they were sleeping because if they had seen the green avocado going in the blender, no one would have touched them :)
But as you can tell, every drop was devoured with pleasure!

The girls had fun with a new animal stencil set
They also had a lot of fun stuffing shells for dinner and sprinkling on the cheese!

The read together in the living room while waiting for dinner to cook...

Daddy gave them a manicure before bed :)
And our fun day ended with tickle time!

Don't you just wish you could go back to preschool?

The Finnlings' First Day of School

Our first day of school was a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I would share about our day with our POH readers (this was originally posted on my family blog).

Because Georgia's birthday falls in late October, she is not eligible for Kindergarten until next year, when she will be 5-almost-6. She is old enough now, though, to start doing some 'schoolwork' at home! It is our intention to homeschool our children at least at the beginning, and so when Daddy's classes started back yesterday, we started some homeschool activities as well. I have not invested in a full preschool or kindergarten curriculum yet, but instead am doing a variety of small structured activities to get us into some form of a routine.


After a morning walk, I took pictures of the kids on their first day of school. They had fun 'cheesing' it up!








Georgia needs to reinforce her knowledge of numbers, so I wrote out numbers 1-10 on index cards and had her put the same number of stickers on each card (thanks for that idea, Jennifer S!). It was also a good skill for her fine motor skills, because peeling off the little smiley face stickers required a lot of concentration. Baxter did this activity some as well, but not as consistently :-)










My main 'textbooks' for the first day of school: the Bible (we read Genesis 1), Big Picture Story Bible, and On the Banks of Plum Creek (we are reading a chapter in this Little House on the Prairie book every couple of days).




I wanted to document some things about the kids' lives, so we measured them, traced their hands, and I asked them a few questions. Georgia wrote her own name on the top of her paper--it is not perfect, but she is trying, and I am very proud of her!








All in all it was a great day!


Date taken: August 22, 2011

Our Preschool Schedule (kind of a "space-saving" workboxes approach)

Our first year of pre-school is starting up on Monday and I am so excited! I have a lot of fun things planned for my girls this year, but I suddenly realized that I needed to make a schedule or we were just not going to have time for it all. (Is there anyone else out there who stays incredibly busy all day long but somehow only has some laundry and dinner to show for it? :) Here is the schedule I plan to *loosely* follow with my girls. We are only going to do school about 3 days a week but will follow the afternoon schedule on most days because it makes life easier. Karlie usually wants to do everything her sister does, so she will always start out with us and if she gets bored, she will just play with her doll-house or puzzles while we finish the longer read-alouds or table work.

7:30 -- wake up, eat breakfast

8:00 -- Bible Time, weather chart, calendar

8:30 -- get dressed and do chores

9:00 -- History cards memory work, Teaching Reading, manner review, letter of the week, number-line practice

9:45 -- Preschool workbook

10:00 -- snack and outside

10:30 -- daily read-aloud, short book, Brain Quest activity

11:00 -- blanket-time while I do housework

11:30 -- free play while I do housework and fix lunch

12:00 -- lunch

12:30 -- library books

1:00 -- naps

3:00 -- wake up, library books, snack

3:30 -- Activity with Mama (click HERE to see my list of optional activities we will rotate through)

4:00 -- free play or housework with Mama

4:30 -- Make dinner/ free art work (they usually want to help make dinner but if not they can use markers, stamps, stencils, etc at the table in the kitchen)

5:00 -- Clean up/outside time/ watch for Daddy :)

5:30 -- Dinner with Daddy

6:00 -- Playtime with Daddy

6:30 -- Pajamas, singing, Scripture memory, Bible reading, prayer

7:00 -- In bed!

To make my life easier and reduce the weekly planning load, I decided to make a list of all the read-alouds, blanket-time, and learning activities/games I want to use with the girls this fall. (If you want to see my master list, click HERE.) I found this great pocket chart at Amazon and I am using it to show the girls our schedule each day. The best part is that the chart folds up completely flat and I slide it behind my couch (along with our calendar and weather chart) when when are not using it! It also has a pocket in the middle that I use to store my weather pieces, pictures, and extra letter cards.

I love the workboxes idea for organizing schoolwork, but they take up more room than I have available, some of my larger books wouldn't fit, and for just a simple pre-school plan, I didn't want to have to fill them every night. So instead, I took pictures of all our daily options, grouped them together by category for easy rotation, and placed them in our daily order in the pocket chart. Now I don't really have to plan anything: the girls simply flip the cards over to see what activity is next. Here is an example of what one day's activities might look like:
The pocket chart has 2 sides, so I 'm currently using the other side for our Teaching Reading cards sound review.

I have to mention another favorite Amazon find: this number-line flip chart. It is a lot larger than I thought it would be and has the numbers in ascending order on one side and descending order on the other. It also has flaps that flip down and cover numbers to easily work on counting by 2's and 5's.

If you are teaching your little ones at home this year, I'd love to hear about your schedule and favorite resources!

First Day of School Ideas

Today marked our first day of school! We are homeschooling and Will started Kindergarten while Adeline is doing her first preschool (I use this term very loosely) year. Anna sleeps. :)

As I thought to our first day, I went in search of ideas to build anticipation for this year. Since Will has done a preschool curriculum at home with me, I wanted to let him know that this would be different and a big deal! Like I suspected, he LOVED the suspense building up to today and we had a GREAT first day.

These ideas are for ANY first day of school. Not just Kindergarten and not just for homeschoolers!

1. Make a paper chain to countdown the days to the first day of school. The poster Will is holding once held his paper chain, but we removed the last link before I took a picture.

2. Here is a blog post with creative pictures to document those first school days.

3. This is a great list of "Smile-Inducing" lunchbox ideas for those packing a lunch daily. We won't have to every day, but my kids did get new lunch boxes for those days when we can pack things up and head outside! (Not yet, it's still near 100 degrees here!)

4. Make a special breakfast! Something out of the ordinary. My kids got these Double Chocolate Chip Muffins.

5. Here is a list of 10 fantastic ideas including wrapping up the new school supplies! I thought it would be exciting for them to find their new pencil boxes (though not wrapped) with shiny new crayons, pencils, etc. The only problem was that the shiny new scissors were too enticing and my kids gave each other haircuts for the first day of school. (I was feeding their baby sister.) So, beware of those shiny new scissors. :)

6. This great list includes ideas for a "Back to School Fairy" and a time capsule to remember the first day of your new school year.

7. Interview your child to have a record of their responses at the first of the year. Repeat at the end of the year. I typed one up and it was our first activity. We measured our height, drew a picture, traced our hand and answered questions. I wrote what they couldn't and look forward to doing something similar each year.

8. Make a schultuete! It's a German tradition for the first day of school. I love it! (I love school supplies so any gift of school supplies sounds great to me! Maybe not my kids...)

9. Order pizza for dinner. I know, its nothing earth shattering, but I think we'll continue this one. It was nice to not have to worry about dinner and it was a great treat for the end of our first day!

10. Lastly, be sure to take the traditional picture for the first day. I enjoy seeing mine from childhood. Your child might enjoying being able to look back and see what they were wearing, what kind of lunchbox they had, what house the picture was taken in front of, etc.

Happy School Year!

This post is part of KK's SUYL back to school traditions link-up

Teaching Reading

Though I am a trained teacher, I never taught my students how to read. I taught 4th grade and they came to me already reading. So, having the priviledge of teaching Lydia how to read is not something I've ever done before. (Oh, but it is so amazing to watch my own child learn - and especially learn how to read!!)

In November I started working with Lydia out of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We got to lesson 19 and it became obvious it was not working. She would cry, stall, fidget, turn around in her seat, and a 15 minute lesson would easily take us 45 minutes to an hour! Though she had shown many readiness signs for reading (pretending to read, asking to read, asking how to spell words, making words out of letter beads, and so on) she was not ready for this step yet. One thing I am learning about Lydia is that, if she perceives something as hard or challenging, she would rather not do it at all than potentially not succeed. It was like this when she was learning to write her name. She really wanted to learn, but as soon as we started she got stuck on "y" (which I found out later is a hard letter for preschoolers!) and didn't want to continue. Later, we started again and I made a chart with stickers and everytime she wrote a letter in her name she got a sticker. She skipped "y" learned the other letters in one setting, and then became totally motivated to learn "y" so she could complete her sticker chart. (Though we had promised her a toy when the chart was full, we found the motivation for her was in filling the chart, not the prize when it was complete.)

Looking back to this time beginning TYCTR, it was filled with transitions - arriving in a new country and moving three times over a 2 month period. Not the best timing to start reading lessons as well! A little before Christmas we put the book aside and didn't pick it back up until April. I just matter-of-factly told her we were going to start lessons again and we got started. Though there was, and sometimes is, a little grumbling, it is an overall different experience this time. Partly, I think, it is because we are more settled (we did move to yet another country after Christmas so this is a whole new place than before) and partly because she had six more months to mature. Though she still doesn't love her reading lesson, she does love being able to pick up a book and read it.

I've also learned that simply using TYCTR is not enough for Lydia (though I know many children it has been plenty sufficient for). It is an excellent curriculum that I am very impressed with it, but, for Lydia, it has been incredibly helpful to supplement it with flashcards I've made and Bob Books. For flash cards, I've done things like "at" then all the letters can I put in front to make words on other cards: bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat. This reinforces the lesson and then she gets a big personal reward when she can then pick up a book (Bob book) and read the whole thing all by herself. She now asks to read, and, yesterday, even asked to do a reading lesson!

Are you teaching your child to read? Would you share how?

Homeschooling in Kindergarten

What I've hoped to do with my children and school is something I've thought about since before ever having a baby! And my husband and I have had an ongoing discussion about schooling Lydia for the last couple of years. We are going to evaluate what is best for our children each year, and certainly are not committing to homeschooling K-12, but I am excited about this upcoming year and look forward to diving into the curriculum we finally decided on.

Our reasons for homeschooling are based primarily on the following: a) wanting our five year old to be most greatly influenced by us, learning values from us rather than other five year olds, and b) due to the transition (aka moving) phase of our lives right now wanting to give her stability in learning to read and with the overal transition moving is. And, I'd also add, if we were in the states and were going to put her in school, we would wait another year so she could be an "older" rather than "younger" in her class (she has an August 29th) birthday.

After researching MANY options, I've decided to go with Sonlight for her K year. We've purchased Core A, Readers 1, Singapore Math, A Reason for Handwriting, and Sonlight Bible and Science. I decided on Sonlight because I believe strongly in reading lots and lots of books and I love the book selection Sonlight uses. I like that the Lesson Plans are made - I can modify, adapt, and change as I like, but I don't have to create from scratch. I am impressed that it's a Christian homeschool program but readers introduce children to a variety of literature from all over the world. And it was easy to order everything from them.

What Math program to use was, surprisingly to me, the toughest decision. I went back and forth between several: Math U See, Saxon, Right Start, and Singapore. After reading everything I could about each of them, talking to lots and lots of homeschooling families, praying, and talking with Josh we settled on Singapore. I feel good about that decision and can't wait for the curriculum to arrive so I can look at it with my own hands.

As for reading level, I went with Level 1 (1st grade) because I am working with Lydia out of another program currently. (I will post about this tomorrow.) After finishing what we are currently doing, we will pick up with Sonlight reading.

If we continue to homeschool in first grade, which I think we will, there are a couple things I may do differently - namely using NOEO Science rather than Sonlight, and Story of the World (with Mystery of History added in for the Christian events) for history. I thoroughly enjoyed The Well Trained Mind and might consider following it more closely in first. Right now, I'm going to see how we like Sonlight and modify (or not) according to how this year goes.

Tomorrow I'll post about what we are doing currently for preschool and, specifically, about teaching Lydia how to read.

If you are homeschooling, or thinking about it, would you share what curriculum(s) you've chosen and why?

Leah P's Homeschool Plan

I shared yesterday that we will be doing one year of homeschooling next year to try it out. I thought I would share with you today about what materials I plan on using and how I plan on spending our day. Samuel will be 5 in August and Joel will be 3.5. We plan on "doing school" Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesdays will be our adventure days with Daddy - things like visiting the library, parks, zoos, etc. On Thursdays we will go to Bible Study Fellowship. If you don't know about this program, I would highly recommend it. It is a great Bible study for you and a great children's program for your kids. My boys have learned a lot over the past two years and they look forward to going to class.

For our "school days", we will be using a workbox system. Do you know about these? I stumbled upon the idea while researching homeschool ideas. I found this Squidoo article very helpful and informative. It has a lot of additional links in it for more ideas and help. Basically you put something in each box for your child to do and they work their way through the boxes each day. I like the idea because Sam & Joel will be able to see what they've done each day and what they have left to do. Plus it breaks the activities of the day into units that should only take 10 or 15 minutes each to complete. With Joel, since he's younger, I'm not going to stress out if he doesn't get all the way through his boxes each day. But at least they will be there and he can feel like he's doing school along with us. Here's an idea of what a typical days boxes might be filled with:

Samuel's Boxes:
1. The Bible (for family devotions).
2. A non-fiction book (to read together).
3. A puzzle.
4. Handwriting Without Tears workbook.
5. 3 storybooks (to read together).
6. Kumon cutting book worksheet.
7. The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (to do a reading lesson).
8. Beans and an egg carton for a sorting and counting game (math skills).
9. Bingo cards to practice Spanish vocab.
10. A recipe to make a snack together.

Joel's Boxes:
1. Set of Little People (that correspond to our family devotion for the day).
2. A coloring page.
3. 3 storybooks (to read together).
4. A "go play trucks with daddy for 15 minutes" card.
5. Playdoh.
6. A non-fiction book (to read together).
7. A Kumon cutting book worksheet.
8. A sorting game (math skills).
9. Matching game to play with Samuel.
10. AWANA book to practice verse.

Each evening I would pack up the next day's boxes. I think this will be good for me because it will help me to visually see what I have planned for the next day and make sure that I have everything I need to do the activities I have planned. I'll plan out ahead of time what I hope to accomplish each week, so it's not like each night I have to come up with the whole plan.

I read two really great books to help me prepare for homeschooling. One is The Well Trained Mind and the other is 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. I was able to check out both from our library system. They really helped me think about the bigger picture and what I hope to accomplish. Granted, we will be sending Samuel to public school next year, but I am going in to this year trying to fully embrace the homeschool philosophy. After reading The Well Trained Mind, even if we send Samuel to public school, there is probably a lot out of that book that I will do with him outside of school.

As far as books I'll follow this coming year, I plan on using:
The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise
Handwriting Without Tears - Get Set for School
Kumon Amazing Mazes, Cutting, Uppercase Alphabet, Lowercase Alphabet workbooks
What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know edited by E.D. Hirsch (I highly recommend this book for lots of really great ideas. I plan on working my way through this book for ALL of the subject areas).
What Your Preschooler Needs to Know edited by E.D. Hirsch (ditto above).

I also plan on working our way through the 1000 Good Books List. This is a list of real books that is used by many Classical Christian Home Educators.

Finally, I plan on teaching a lot of our science and history through reading books, both fiction and non-fiction. I plan on letting the boys lead a little more in these areas according to their interests.

My main goals with Samuel for the year are to get him reading and writing. For Joel, I hope to encourage him to draw, color, and cut and love to be read to. I am really excited for our year and I hope it is a success.

The Education Experiment

(first, thank you to Christina for posting for me yesterday. I was at Disney with my mom and Samuel and typed up my whole post by phone to e-mail to her!)

Christina introduced the topic of Schooling Decisions a few weeks ago and shared a little blurb from each of the POH authors about what we would be doing with our kiddos next year. My blurb read:

Samuel will turn 5 in late August. The cutoff for school in the Chicago area is Sept 1, so I could enroll him in kindergarten if I wanted. We have decided to keep Samuel at home for two reasons: 1) We feel he isn't ready to enter the school setting because of his age, and 2) we are pretty sure we'd like to homeschool him and we thought this would be a good year to give it a try. We plan on attending a homeschool co-op in the area on Mondays, Bible Study Fellowship on Thursdays and a couple hours of "school" at home the other days. I plan on doing things with both Joel (3.5) and Samuel(5).

My husband and I have talked about our schooling options a lot and have come up with a sort of Education Experiment. We plan on keeping Samuel home for one more year and following the plan I outlined above. Then the next year, when Samuel will have just turned 6, we plan on enrolling him in kindergarten at our local K-8 school to give him one year in public school to see how it goes. We have committed to waiting to make a decision about which direction to go until after he finishes out that year (well, unless it is going horrible and we decide to pull him out early). Here is a sort of run-down of what we see in each choice:

Why would we homeschool? I really like the flexibility and individualization that is available with homeschooling. It just makes sense to me that a child would be able to excel academically when they can move at their own pace and with their own interests. After having read A Well Trained Mind I was really encouraged to think of all we might be learning in our home. The academic side of the equation is a big draw for me. Second, I see the days we spend together to be a time of character building and training. With the boys home with me and around me all day, I have plenty of opportunity to teach them things I want them to know that they may not see modeled and taught in a traditional school setting. I can be a side-by-side guide to a lot of character training. Third, the unity of the family is a strong draw. Instead of splintering the family for 8 hours a day, with each of us going to our respective "jobs", we remain a more complete unit that share experiences and responsibilities together.

Why would we go to public school? I really like the school that our boys would attend. It is a short walk from our house (just across the street from our little neighborhood). It is a small K-8 school in a single school district (meaning all the tax dollars from our district go to this school instead of being spread around many schools). Second, I see the enrichments and specials that a school setting is able to offer my boys that would be difficult to duplicate in a home setting (art, gym, group activities, etc). I know these could be done at home but not in the same way, with the same dynamics. Also, if Samuel and Joel were both attending school, I could (hopefully) get a job at the school (if we don't have any more children; see last post!). Finally, there is an intangible factor of growing up "going to school" and the good and the bad that come with it that can build character.

Our experiment is our way of giving ourselves time to experience both options and also to have two years to pray that God would help us to make a good decision. I'm nervous to try both and not just be decided in what we are going to do. But I think this will help all of us (me, Ed, and Samuel) decide what we want. We'll see!

A closer look at our schooling decision

Like Christina mentioned, the topic of schooling our children is a big issue for the POH authors right now. Several of us are going to share during our week about how we decided on homeschooling and how we chose different curriculums. (Christina, thanks so much for the great links!!! I've really been using them recently for research!)

First of all, I wanted to mention that although we have all chosen to homeschool for the next school year, that does not mean that we think other schooling options are bad! In fact, most of us were school teachers in public and private schools, so we know that there are excellent teachers and schools out there. And just because we are currently choosing to homeschool does not mean that our children will be home-schooled for each grade. We each have different reasons for choosing to homeschool during the upcoming school year.

My educational background is quite diverse: private school in kindergarten, public for 1st and 2nd grade, homeschooled in 3rd, public for 4-5th, homeschooled 6th, private in 7th, and public 8-12th grade. Whew! I know it sounds crazy, but I was actually excited about each change, enjoyed it, and excelled each year. So I'm a firm believer that a child can do well in any school as long as the parents are highly involved. I totally respect my parents for being willing to do whatever they thought was best for me each year. I doubt I'll switch my girls around quite that much, but I do plan to re-evaluate each year and spend much time in prayer about the decision. I'm very much a fan of the classical-style education and I'm not sure I could do it justice as my girls grow older. Most likely I will home-school in the early years and send them to a private Classical Christian school for at least high school if we can afford it at that time. But we will just take it year by year...

We decided to homeschool this year for several reasons. Since I taught pre-school and loved it, I just can't see paying someone else to teach my daughter. I'm really excited about all the fun things I want to do with Karis! And we really don't have the money right now to pay for preschool. Also, she and Karlie are such great friends that I really hate to separate them right now. They entertain each other so well and I really think that Karlie would be much more of a handful without her big sister to play with. But the main reason I want to keep Karis home with me is so that I can spend more time with her. I want to have more time to cook with her, read more Bible stories, remind her how to peacefully resolve conflicts with her sister, sing with her, encourage her imagination, and so much more! I also think that kids should be kids and have lots of time to just play so I'm just not in any hurry to send her off to school.

Here are some of the things I plan to do with Karis in the fall:

-- Join a local homeschool co-op group that goes on field trips together each month

-- Join a MOPS group so that she will have more opportunity to play with kids her age and so that I can get to know some other Moms in the area

--Read most of the books from the Sonlight 4/5 curriculum (by checking them out at the library or buying them used)

-- Purchase the My Father's World Curriculum to use with her -- I love that it is classically based and is filled with fun, "hands on" activities that she will enjoy!

-- Continue using tracing, dot-to-dot, and other workbooks to develop her writing skills

-- Continue going throughThe Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teach Reading by Wise with Karis

For Kindergarten the following year, I will probably use Handwriting without Tears and Saxon Math (because I used it when I taught preschool and loved the repetition and all the fun manipulatives!)

Homeschooling Will - Kindergarten next year!

As we got into our Pre-K year of homeschooling, it became more clear that homeschooling Will for Kindergarten would be the best option. The reasons for this were:

1. Our pending move overseas.
2. Will is a typical boy (active, wild) and probably a little immature for a public school classroom at this point.
3. Keeping him home for another year will give us the option to "hold him back" for a year, making him the oldest in his class.

Around the same time we were making this decision for the K year, I found out I was pregnant and due in June! I knew that I had to get my ducks in a row asap or risk things not actually happening for the K year. Here are some things that I found helpful or that were recommended to me:

1. 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum - This book was SUPER helpful in helping me evaluate my teaching style compared to my kids' learning styles and what curriculums (and homeschooling approach) I might like. I would, hands down, recommend anyone start here! You can get some of the reviews on her site as well. But the book contains things the site does not - so get it as well!

2. Find a few other homeschooling Moms and get together and ask questions. Lots of questions! A friend of mine organized a "panel" of veteran homeschooling Moms. Several of us got together with them and spent several hours just asking questions! This was very helpful for me.

3. Attend a homeschool conference! I wanted so badly to do just that this spring, but couldn't find one that worked with my pregnancy due date or bedrest times. The big NC conference is held in Winston Salem in late May. So there is still time to attend this one.

4. A few other homeschool books that have been recommended to me include, The Well Trained Mind and books by Ruth Beechick, The Well Trained Mind is a great resource book to have on your shelf. It's a guide to classical education at home and I can say its one that I'll turn to many times, even if I'm not sure about all aspects of classical education at this point.

5. Once you've decided on the direction you're taking, consider looking for your curriculum used. I purchased our Sonlight P4/5 mostly used (and added a few missing items new from Sonlight). I used these sites to look for used curriculum:

Well Trained Mind Forums
Sonlight Forums
Homeschool Classifieds
Wake Curriculum Exchange (for those local to me)
Homeschool Gathering Place (another local spot)


So, what have we landed on for next year for Will?

1. The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

I had planned to use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I've known many that have used it with great success! I found a copy of this used and was getting ready to start. But it just didn't ever "click" with me.  After doing some more research, I learned about this book. I found a used copy at our local homeschool bookstore and immediately loved it. I still think 100 Easy Lessons is a great option, but I chose this one for several reasons. It seemed more straightforward with less use of unnecessary symbols and font. It is actually over 200 lessons, but carries the child to a 4th grade reading level when completed. It was (like 100 Easy Lessons) very simple, with no "extras" needed except the book itself and some flashcards you can make.

2. Explode the Code phonics practice (Primers A, B, C)

These are not 100% necessary, but I chose to add them to our lessons next year to reinforce the phonics skills. My plan right now is to focus on him learning to read this year, supplementing with these books. Next year, I will move to a more comprehensive Language Arts program. Not sure yet what direction I'll take for that! My only regret is that we haven't already started the primers. I've had them all year, but only recently realized that he was more than ready.

3. RightStart Math, Level A

The decision for math ended up being a lot easier than I anticipated. Right Start Math has been recommended to me at least 15 times by different people. I've researched a few others including Singapore, Saxon and Math-U-See. In the end, I settled on RightStart out of the sheer number of recommendations I received. I figured that God was making that decision easy for me!

4. Sonlight Core A (includes history, worldview, bible, literature, etc.)

Since I've loved Sonlight so much this year, I decided we'd continue it for the K year as well. I love the readings so much! I may consider other options for these subjects for future grades, but for now I'm sticking with Sonlight. Others I would like to research are Tapestry of Grace, Mystery of History, and Story of the World.

5. Handwriting Without Tears K

I've used the pre-K version and liked it, so I plan to continue this with Will. He's really come very far in learning the correct way to form many of his letters already. He is very interested in this, so I figured I should capitalize (pun intended! :) on his interest and encourage the proper way to write those letters.

The only subject I haven't mentioned is science! Ironic, since this is what I taught in a classroom for five years. :) I have a couple of options for this... '

1. Sonlight's Science Curriculum. That is my first choice, but budget restraints are holding me back from purchasing this.

2. Another option would be to create my own unit studies in Science that mimic Sonlight's topics. I would use library books, lapbooks (looking forward to doing some of these either way), experiments and fieldtrips as appropriate for the topic. Of course, this involves a lot more planning on my part. Time is extremely valuable when you're a Mom and Wife! (Which is part of my decisions to use Sonlight in the first place!)

3. We plan on participating in a local homeschool co-op. This means that for 8 weeks in the fall and spring, Will can participate in a "class" on any number of topics. They are taught by other homeschool Moms (or Dads I suppose!) I know he loves all things science, so if I can chose a science related topic for him, I will. This could be plenty sufficient for Science at this age.

Whew! What a journey this has been so far! I'm thankful for this pre-K year to help get us in the routine for next year. There have been many rough days for Will and I both, but by the grace of God we're ending our year well and he is still very excited about learning and school. :) I'm excited to see what next year holds for us!

As I wrote about a few days ago, the reason I share all this stems from discussion among the POH authors concerning our oldest, almost school age children. We figured it was a discussion our readers might want to be interested in as well. I look forward to reading what some of the other ladies plan on sharing during their upcoming weeks on POH!

Homeschooling Will - Pre K this year

First off, let me start by saying that homeschooling is not at all what I ever thought I'd be doing! Our desire to be moving overseas soon is definitely a large part of our decision to homeschool. It is certainly one of those things that we'll evaluate each year, for each child and determine what is best for that time. For now, I have been confirmed that it is certainly what is best for Will right now!

Last year when Will turned four, we knew sending him to preschool was not an option. Mostly financial, but also because I was just not convinced it was necessary given the fact that I knew we'd likely be homeschooling at some point. So, I started considering what he needed from me at home! Somehow, I found out about Sonlight and their P4/5 core curriculum.

Sonlight is very literature based (meaning we read...a lot!) and I have loved all the different topics Will has been exposed to in a very gentle, non-demanding way. It really is a simple reading schedule that lumps readings together in a way that makes many connections. In addition, there are a lot of great activities to go with certain readings throughout the week. The only "workbook" portion of P4/5 is a series of four books called Developing the Early Learner.

This is an example of one of the first pages in the book. There were four exercises where I read instructions to Will. For example: "Put a blue line over the ball." Will LOVED these books, though we stopped after book 2. 

In addition to this book, Will has enjoyed a variety of Kumon books and we're finishing up the Handwriting Without Tears Pre-K book. I've been so surprised that Will loves these type of activities. I've had to find additional printables online because he is flying through the things I had planned. 

Normally, we "do school" about 3 days per week. We read everyday, but those 3 days per week we do our written work and other activities together. I don't have a super rigid plan for this, but usually it includes activities like puzzles, letter/number games, crafts, scissors practice and computer games (starfall.com!). I use a drawer system (similiar to the workbox system) to organize our activities for each day we work. This really helps Will. 

I had planned to start teaching Will to read after Christmas (at 4.5) with Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. But, neither of us was ready at that point. We've recently switched gears and chosen a different book.  

I think I'll split this into two posts and address the decision making process for Kindergarten in another post! I'll include a list of resources recommended to me then as well. 

In the meantime, please share any additional preschool resources you've enjoyed with your child!

R.C. Sproul Jr. on Homeschooling

I recently checked out this gem at our library. I started it last night and am really excited to recommend it. It is R.C. Sproul Jr's When you Rise Up: A Conventional Approach to Homeschooling. So far, it has been a super encouraging read. He gives a lot of godly perspective to the why's of homeschooling. I haven't finished it, so I can't give it a full review, but wanted to throw it in here in the middle of all the schooling posts this week!