Home Stretch

Here we are within 5 days of the finish line of our first year of homeschooling.  We are still LOVING it and treasuring our time together!

I have absolutely NO intentions of stopping either.  I think the whole idea of taking a 3 month summer vacation is ludicrous.  I mean, a child's whole job is to learn...that's all they really need to spend their time doing.  And they do it through actually reading and being read to and talking and discussing said literature...but also through helping with chores, playing and exploring the world, writing and drawing, building and moving.
We have so much fun learning together about how the world works, events in history, etc., that why would we want to shut our brains off for 3 months anyway?

So, we will be continuing as we have been.  For history this year, we have been studying American History from the Native Americans up to just prior to the Civil War.  So, we will be continuing through Slavery and the Civil War, World War 1, the Great Depression, World War 2, all the way up to present day.  I'm not sure how long it will take us...as I have just compiled our <ahem> short reading list....ok so it's not short at all!  :)

Shouldn't be too bad since we've read more than 150 books so far this year and it's only been 10 months!  Belle's read another 30 on top of that!

We also just got the kids a bunch of new books for Easter...and then they wanted to use their easter money they got from Nonni to buy MORE books!  :)  Gotta LOVE that!

So, for literature/fun reads, we are going to be reading:
Mary Poppins (books 1-3)
The Boxcar Children (books 1-4)
Little House on the Prairie (books 2-9)
Ramona Quimby Series (books 2-8)
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Hobbit
The Story of Dr. Doolittle
The Giants of the Land
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle 

These should get us through a few months...I hope!  We read 3 full chapters out of our two history books today, along with a chapter from Grandpa's Box (our Bible story book we're reading through now), and then started The Boxcar Children book 1 today...and the girls BEGGED and BEGGED to keep reading.  I finally had to stop half way through the book!  LOL!

Belle's also working through the Kingdom Keepers book series right now (working through the first book still I believe).

We are still working through the Math-U-See program and loving it.  Belle is on lesson 18 out of 30 for the Delta book, and the littles are on lesson 6 of the Beta book.

As for writing, I'm switching from IEW (I just did not enjoy it at all and found it to be dull and boring, and while Belle enjoyed the videos and didn't seem to really MIND the work, she was so uninspired and got to the point where she just dreaded having to write).  So, we are now using The Brave Writer methodology and it's going GREAT!  She immediately went back to loving writing!  So, I'm glad about that!

We will continue working through First Language Lessons level 4, but at a very slow pace.  She's almost done the Winter Promise Grammar work, and so I'm not super concerned about getting lots more grammar in....so we'll just do 2 lessons a week or so until we get through the whole thing.
As for Writing with Ease, we are using that as more of a guideline now.  I pick and choose passages for narration/copywork/dictation from it when I see good ones, but skip the ones I've either never heard of or seem boring.  I instead/also am implementing a Golden Lines ongoing assignment now...instead of "copywork"...because it just sounds SO BORING!  So now, we are digging through all these great novels for golden lines or nuggets that we want to remember.  Might be because they make a really great point or moral lesson, or maybe just because it's really great writing, or it teaches a literary concept or spelling/vocab word that we need practice with.

As for science, we have switched to using Bernard Nebel's Building Foundations for Scientific Thinking as our frame work.  Much like the rest of our "curriculum", it's really just a methodology for teaching, or a frame work to guide our topics, but we learn each topic through living books and responding in writing when appropriate.  I love his methodology because instead of teaching all of biology, then all of earth sciences, then all of chemistry, then all of physics, he teaches them ALL sort of at the same time...you work through the building blocks of all 4 main branches of science simultaneously.  It's pretty awesome!

We've been doing a LOT of art lately too.  I found Mr. P on youtube and the kids love him!  He's an art teacher down south somewhere and he's posted a lot of classes online....so we do art right along with him several times a week now.  The kids beg for art time and reading time all day long almost every day now!  :)  We've done lots of drawing and some painting and pastel work.

As for music, well, I haven't been so great about this one being a structured class per se.  We sing...a LOT around here, and I can tell you that it has been quite effective.  Belle has really come a LONG way in her ability to not only sing but to match pitch and hear it!  I've tried to get her to do piano lessons, but it doesn't seem to be of any interest to her....that's ok....we've spent some time listening to Colonial music since that's the time period we've been studying most of the year.  And we've also listened to Michael Jackson's music....a lot....and have learned a lot about his life and the message that he put out to the world.  And we've spent a lot of time learning about and analyzing the affect of having that much fame and money and how it really limits your ability to have people in your life that you can trust.  We also have talked extensively about how the media portrays people and events completely differently than they are in real life...using his life and the completely made up trials that he was put through to ruin his credibility and integrity.

The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE legos and use them almost daily to build mostly for fun, but also to follow the big kits to make scenes from their favorite books and movies.  We've also used them (and MineCraft) a few times for building models of time period things.

We have done away with a set spelling program, as I hate having the kids have spelling lists that have nothing to do with their other work.  We have an online subscription to Wordly Wise that we pay $35 per kid for per year....but honestly, I am thinking about dumping that next year.  We read SO MUCH, that I think they will have no issue with vocabulary!  We'll see about that one.

We've done several trips this first year already....5 days in Williamsburg in May, a week in Virginia Beach in August with Nonni, Papaw, Aunt Tracy, Uncle Brian, PopPop and the cousins, a trip to the National Zoo with Grandmom, a trip to see Noah at Sight and Sound Theater again with Grandmom, another 4 days in Williamsburg in October with Nonni, Orlando in January with Grandmom, Nonni, and Papaw - of course we hit Sea World, Epcot, Wonder Works science museum, and the usual...Disney World, Universal Studios, and Hollywood Studios.  We just got back from spending a week in Virginia at Nonni's house, and will be heading back to Williamsburg in the spring for a few days....and back to the beach in July!  And, Belle got to explore and do some farm chores at a working dairy farm and an Amish farm the other day with Grandmom!  She's also taking us back to Sight and Sound this summer to see Moses too.

So now we get to put together her portfolio that we will hand in to the school district and she will be meeting with our evaluator at the end of May for her year end evaluation.

All in all, I'd say we've been super busy this year but have had an absolute BLAST learning together!  My kids have learned all about several different tribes of Native Americans, we've studied the many different explorers that helped to bring our ancestors to this country, we've learned all about the Colonies and the Revolutionary War and the Pioneers that headed out west in covered wagons.  We've studied biology and have learned about the Plant and Animal worlds, and we started work on the human body (which we have tabled for now to wait til it comes up in the Nebel curriculum).  We've read a lot....did I mention we've read A LOT?!  We've done experiments about the different states of matter and talked all about classifying and organizing things into categories.  We've copied lots of passages from great novels and Belle has been working on learning the art of dictation as well.  We've learned all about nouns, adjectives, adverbs, subjects, objects, linking verbs, how sentences form together, how to punctuate said sentences, and how to get our point across in our writing.  We've learned how to draw several animals using simple shapes, have learned how to shade using pencils and oil pastels, and have even created our own version of van Gogh's sunflower painting.

Let's see...what else?  We've talked at length this year and last about nutrition and how to eat healthy.  We again talk about the media and how journalists and big corporations distort things into "fact" like how many servings of dairy or meat you should have in a day and how this food or that food are good for you.  We want to eat as much of what God gave us as possible and really limit our intake of all the other stuff that is man made.  Period.  We've learned about the digestive tract and germs and Belle and I read all about growing up and how our bodies change.

We've learned how to cook a few things.  Belle is my "apprentice" now and is learning the fine arts of homemaking and cooking.  We haven't done much of this the last few weeks, but she is learning how to cook some basic meals, vacuum, clean bathrooms, do dishes, and they are all learning how to do laundry.

We have read through and discussed the Jesus Storybook Bible twice already this year, after stopping another program we were going through.  I prefer to read the Bible and talk about it.  We will probably go back to the God's Great Covenant book that we were using.  It's a GREAT book to help us get more out of our reading...I honestly only stopped using it because I wanted to read through The Jesus Storybook Bible at Christmas time, and of course we then decided to read through it AGAIN after that!  And Now we are reading this book called Grandpa's Box that is pretty awesome too!

We have essentially cut out ALMOST ALL tv and video games/screen time.  When garbage goes in it comes back out.  Garbage meaning advertising/marketing, bad moral character, violence, profanity, etc.  And it really makes life harder for Derek to have video games around.  So we finally had to take the Wii down to the basement so it was out of sight...though not far out of mind.  I do let them watch things occasionally for school, like the PBS documentary series called Liberty, all about the Revolutionary War.  We also watched the Bible miniseries this year, and they have watched all of Season 1 of Little House on the Prairie (great wholesome tv AND it goes with our history content!), and they have watched all 20-something of the old Reading Rainbow shows that I grew up on that are on amazon prime! We still watch an occasional movie or tv show, but since Christmas it has been VERY occasionally.  It's been so nice having the tv off!  We don't even miss it!  In fact, Nonni came to visit and suggested going to see a movie and none of the kids wanted to go!  They said it rots their brains...I guess they are finally listening to us!  LOL!

Julie and Derek have worked through almost 2 of the WinterPromise language arts programs now (each of half a year).  They are just about half way through the 2nd one.  We've enjoyed it immensely and Derek is now reading SO MUCH!  Julie is still a little ahead of him, but he's catching up very quickly!  He's trying to read everything now and is successful more often than not now!  :)  They've done the first 4 Explode the Code books also.  It's been so great watching them grow in their reading, writing, and math skills!  And to be able to say that I taught Derek how to read and he's already reading at about a 2nd grade level is so cool!  :)

We did 3 weeks of swim lessons last summer (5 lessons per week), and they have all done a LOT of dancing this year (Derek takes tap, jazz, and hip hop....Julie takes ballet, tap, jazz, and lyrical...and Belle takes ballet, tap, jazz, and hip hop...and they all took tumbling for most of the year).  And now Derek is also doing t-ball again this year.  So we are absolutely keeping busy around here!  That's such an understatement!  LOL!  :)

The kids helped plant our garden last year, but this year they will be more responsible for helping to plan, plant, weed, water, and harvest.  We will be adding another 8x4 square garden, so we'll be up to I think 110 square feet of veggie space!  That's a LOT of veggies!  I can't wait!  We already put some swiss chard, lettuce, kale, and collards out there and so far the frost/freeze weather hasn't hurt them!  We will be doing spaghetti squash and butternut squash this year in addition to all our regular stuff.

I'm sure there are other things that I have simply forgotten at the moment, but we've done SO MUCH!  I look forward to continuing on this journey with them each and every day!

As of right now, we have read all of these books this year together...more than 150 books in less than a year!  And the kids remember most of them....they will hear or see something that takes them right back to many of these!  Even ones that I had forgotten.  They hear about or see a picture of Nelson Mandella or Gandhi and they get so excited that we read a book about him!

George Muller
Homer Price
Red Sails to Capri
School Story
The BFG
The Littles
Birchbark House
If you Lived with the Hopi
If you Were at the First Thanksgiving
If you Were on the Mayflower
Ben Franklin
Paddle By the Sea
The Jesus Storybook Bible
If you Lived in Colonial Times
Mayflower 1621
The First Thanksgiving
The Discovery of the Americas
Exploration and Conquest
The New Americas
Charlotte's Web
Liberty!  Story of the American Revolution
If you Lived at the Time of the American Revolution
The Revolutionary John Adams
How the US Government Works
Who was Thomas Jefferson?
What was the Boston Tea Party?
Samuel F.B. Morse
Amazing, Impossible Erie Canal
The Trail of Tears
Escape North!  Story of Harriet Tubman
A New Land!  Early American Stories
If you Lived with the NW Coast Indians
If you Lived with the Cherokee
If you Lived with the Iroquois
If you Lived with the Sioux
The Fighting Ground
Little House on the Prairie
The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed
Pedro's Journal
Ben and Me
The Secret Soldier
Riding Freedom
Dolphin Adventure
My Father's Dragon
Battle with the Bugs (Immune System)
Respect
Words are Not for Hurting
A Pill Bug's Life
The Story of Snow
The Spider and the Fly
The Salem Witch Trials: An Unsolved Mystery from History
 Deadly Praying Mantis
Scorpions
A Butterfly is Patient
Everybody Can Help Somebody
The Complete Book of US History
Thank You Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving
Sign of the Beaver
Indian in the Cupboard
When Jessie Came Across the Sea
There's a Nightmare in my Closet
Too Many Dinosaurs
Trouble with Trolls
The Rag Coat
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Uncle Jed's Barbershop
Mr. Rush
Little Miss Greedy
Little Miss Helpful
The Three Bears
The Three Little Pigs
Rumpelstiltskin
The Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah Sampson
Did I Ever Tell you How Lucky You Are?
Under the Sparkling Sea
Curious George and the Ice Cream Surprise
Curious George Saves His Pennies
Little House in the Big Woods
The Gingerbread Boy
The Gardener
The Quarelling Book
On a Beam of Light
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
There's an Alligator Under My Bed
There's Something in the Attic
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Where the Wild Things Are
Three Little Kittens
Jack and the Beanstalk
Chicken Sunday
Grandfather's Journey
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
A Band of Angels
Gandhi: A March to the Sea
The Incredible Life of Balto
The Eye of the Whale
Who was Laura Ingalls Wilder?
George vs George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Halfway Herbert
The US Constitution
The Boy Who Loved Math - the Improbably Life of Paul Erdos
My Great Aunt Arizona
Henny Penny
The Little Red Hen
The Velveteen Rabbit
You Wouldn't Want to be an American Pioneer
God's Design for Life - The World of Animals
God's Design for Life - The World of Plants
Who Says Women Can't be Doctors?
Clara and Davie (story about Clara Barton)
Mr. Fussy
Little Miss Naughty
Sir Cumference and all the King's Ten
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angle Land
Safe Kids - Fire Safety
Ender's Game
Wrinkle in Time
Nelson Mandella
The Matchbox Diary
Locomotive
Katie and the Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh and the Colors of the Wind
Vincent van Gogh: Sunflowers and Swirly Stars
van Gogh and the Sunflowers
Getting to Know...van Gogh
Music of the American Colonies (book and cd)
Getting to Know....Picasso
Just Behave, Pablo Picasso!
Under the Quilt of Night
Moses: When Harrient Tubman Led her People to Freedom
13 Artists Children should Know
Matter
Solids, Liquids, and Gases
Change It!  Solids, Liquids, Gases and You
What Makes a Shadow
Air is All Around You
Freezing and Melting
What's the Matter in Mr. Whisker's Room?
Q&A States of Matter
From the Good Mountain: How Gutenberg Changed the World
Life of Fred - Apples
Life of Fred - Butterflies
Ramona the Pest
Grandpa's Box
The Boxcar Children (again)
Ramona and Beezus

And...ON TOP OF THESE....Belle has read these books by herself (I've read about half of them too):
Children of Noisy Village
Harry Potter 5
Harry Potter 6
Harry Potter 7
The Whipping Boy
More Stories from Grandma's Attic
Ralph S Mouse
Anne of Green Gables
Songbird
Guns for General Washington
The BFG (again)
Charlotte's Web (again)
Almost Home
Great Expectations (stepping stone book)
Les Miserables (stepping stone book)
Swiss Family Robinson (stepping stone book)
The Secret Garden
Little House in the Big Woods (again)
Return of the Indian
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankenweiler
The Secret of the Indian
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Grimm's Fairytales
Soft Rain
Summer According to Humphrey
Kingdom Keepers 1
Mystery of the Vanishing Coin
Blizzard on Moose Mountain
The Birchbark House (again)
Kingdom Keepers 2

She is to the point now where I give her a book to read that her curriculum said would take 2-3 weeks to read, and she's done in just a few days...sometimes just 1 day!  She reads SO MUCH!  But she also plays a lot too.....so it's not like she's reading constantly...but she's like her mama, just really enjoys reading all sorts of things!

And somehow, even through all this work, they still have time to just be kids.  They play a lot every day....outside when it's nice, but inside with legos and barbies and other toys when we can't be outside.  We go to the park occasionally or to friend's houses.  We spend lots of time with our neighbors.  Belle started a book club with Ashlynn 2 months ago and they read The Secret Garden together....not sure what our next book is.  We're going to be going through 8 Great Dates with Your Daughter this year (and Ash will be doing this with her mom too!).

And of course, this should really have been listed as it's most important to our family...but our kids have gotten to spend a great deal of time with the girls from New Life for Girls.  This is a ministry that our church runs (it actually led us to our church a year and a half ago).  It's a Christian, live-in program for women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.  And it's awesome!  They have had so many success stories and it's so amazing having a front row seat to these girls' recovery process!  The fact that God even uses us a little bit to love these girls and to model what life can and should be like is so awe-inspiring!  We get to hang out with them at least once a month outside of church and other events.  We used to go as a family to the center and cook for them and hang out for an afternoon and evening...but for the last several months we have invited them to our house instead for a few hours of respite, relaxation and fun.  We cook for them, play cards, chit chat, and sometimes go out and play volleyball.  It's a super special time that we all look so forward to.  I even got an email just today from Sharon (who runs the program) and she said that next weekend one of the girls has a visit with her family and so they wanted to know if we could adjust the time of them coming to dinner because this girl really didn't want to miss Dinner with the Allports!  :)  And it's cool because our kids get to really bond with these girls/women and then they extend that into loving on them at church or other church events, etc.  We get to go to our second New Life for Girls graduation this saturday night, where we'll see our friend Ferra graduate!!!!  :)

It's amazing what you have time for when you stop watching tv and start hanging out and learning with your kiddos!  I know I am so blessed to be able to be with them everyday and don't take that lightly...but man of man, I am just so grateful that God opened my eyes to what I was missing out on by sending them to school.  And of course, this list is just the things that they and I were missing out on being able to do together....which is reason enough!

I can't wait to see what this next year brings!