Revelations of a Homeschooling Mom

Tonight, as I was researching ways to enhance our study of George Washington, I had a revelation. My daughter learns best through reading quality literature. When she was in PS, she (and I!) were always frustrated because there wasn't enough time to read for pleasure. When she came home in the afternoons there was always homework to do -- most of it mind-numbing -- things like word searches, fill in the blanks, and copying your spelling words five times even if you know them already! By the time she could make it to a good book she was just too exhausted to read. When she did read a book (I will use the first book in The Little House series as an example), her teacher told her she needed to read it through twice before she took an Accelerated Reader test on it because it was worth so many points and she couldn't possibly have understood it all in just one reading. WHAT?!?!

Since she has been homeschooled she has read wonderful books such as "The Skippack School", "The Matchlock Gun", "Pedro's Journal", "Squanto Friend of the Pilgrims", "Pocahontas and the Strangers", "The Corn Grows Ripe", "A Lion to Guard Us". AND..... she has read the first five Harry Potter books! Wow. Talk about an education! This is just the list in the first five months.

I attribute a lot of this learning to our wonderful curriculum from Sonlight, and also from my research of the writings of Charlotte Mason.

Another revelation I had was that, in just a few short months, my daughter has come to like math. Today, she actually told me she loved a certain type of problem we were doing and could she just do a whole page of problems like this? WHAT?!?! Horizons Math is just fabulous... the lessons are broken up into six small sections that are achievable. The student is introduced to concepts slowly and over many lessons, and this repetition helps build confidence and mastery. The problems she liked today? The Distributive Property. Enough said.

I am kicking myself for not making this decision earlier. My soon to be homeschooled Kindergartner will benefit so much from the mistakes I made with my first child. I am just thankful God led us to this point and has provided for me to be at home and educate my children. I am blessed.

Enjoying the Birds

I will be the first one to admit I am NOT an artist. I can be very creative when it comes to scrapbooking, and fun craft projects for the kids, but as far as teaching my children about the elements of art and good artistry I am very inept! So, I have been thrilled that my daughter is taking art lessons with a wonderful woman who is a talented artist. The past two weeks they have been working on painting Chickadees - and I love the way this masterpiece turned out!

It is especially timely since it is now spring and we are watching all of the beautiful birds from our deck. Last night my son called me outside to see the Cardinal in the backyard - he was so proud that he had identified the bird, and I was more proud that he had the courtesy to be quiet and observe the bird rather than stomp loudly and scare it away! We have yet to see hummingbirds come to the feeder, but I understand they are on the way! We did a little hummingbird research, and I think we're doing all the right things, just no hummingbirds yet! At our local garden store they sell little feeders that hang right in your potted plant (we chose Begonias), so we didn't spend a lot of money and it's not too much to keep up with.

We have also ordered Painted Lady butterflies/caterpillars and they should be coming any day now. We caught some caterpillars of our own yesterday, but we don't have a guarantee they will turn into butterflies, and not moths. It is things like this that I wanted to do with my children, but never thought we had "time" for because of school! Isn't that ironic? I don't think we ever would have taken the time to enjoy God's creation quite as much as we do being at home every day. The blessings of homeschool pop up every day - God's sign to me that we are doing the right thing!

The iPad and Homeschooling

The iPad arrived this past Saturday. I know my husband has been very excited about getting it, and I think it is certainly living up to our expectations. One of the features that I really like, is the ability to read books (much like the Kindle). While the "store" on the iPad doesn't have that many titles yet, I did download an adorable book, "My Father's Dragon" (which was free!) and decided to start reading it to the kids.

This particular book is on the Sonlight booklist for Kindergarten. Thank you to the homeschoolblogger who posted this list, along with the links for the Five In A Row booklists. Many of these books are older, harder to find titles. Some are also available online for free through Project Gutenberg. Another resource for books I like to use is the Ambleside Online free homeschool curriculum.

Once I pulled up "My Father's Dragon" it is larger than a regular book, so my kids can sit with me and actually follow along with what I'm reading. If we come across an unfamiliar word, I simply tap and hold the word and a dictionary and thesaurus option are available. How cool is that? The screen also shows neat stuff like how many pages are left in the chapter.

I quickly went to the internet (using the iPad of course) and found adorable lapbook templates for this book on Homeschoolshare.com. Then, I emailed this idea to a friend of mine who also homeschools. And, did I mention that I was doing this at midnight the first day the iPad arrived. Sad. Oh, and in addition to doing this I was playing Words With Friends (Scrabble) and updating my Facebook all at the same time!

I know a lot of the naysayers have said it doesn't support Flash, and it doesn't have a USB port. Oh well, I didn't expect a laptop, and I didn't pay nearly what I would have for a laptop, either. For me this is going to be a great way to read to my children, have then play educational games, and just keep up with technology in general. Perhaps in another post I will review some of the apps that are good for homeschooling.

For now, I will enjoy a week off of school for spring break, and a chance to enjoy my children and some of this gorgeous weather!