You Can't Do This In Public School

I require both Siss and Peanut to do private reading each day...usually for Kira about 1/2 hour (that seems like a long time for a 1st grader but she is reading some 2nd grade books and LOVES to read so she doesn't mind) and an hour for Sissy. I have some books chosen that are MY choice like Sissy will be required to read The Courage of Sarah Noble and Peanut just finished ALL 3 of the Frog and Toad books in 3 days! They are also still encouraged to read books of their own choosing (which they do). Today it was a pretty day and when Sweet Baby and Peanut took their nap, Sissy was found on the swing set reading. It occurred to me that she wouldn't be able to do this in public school!

Ahhhhh....

Things are going so well. My kids are getting along so good. Mom isn't as frustrated or stressed as I have been the last couple years. What is happening?!?!? If this is what homeschooling is all
about, I'll take it!



Monday, after the 2 younger girls laid down for a nap (yes, my 6 year old still takes naps, but she asks for them usually!), Megan and I went outside to "her garden". Daddy tilled her a small area for her own place and she chose to plant sunflowers and pumpkins. She didn't mind watering "her garden" but when we reminded her that she should really be weeding her garden she replied with, "I don't even want that dumb garden!". Nice attitude huh? Anyway, we did the whole "plants can't grow if there are to many weeds, it's really sad that you don't want to finish a project you started after daddy took the time and energy to get you started". She did weed several times and now....she can see the fruits of her labor!

When she got all excited with the stuff she has grown, I said, "What about hating your garden now?" She said, "I like it now, but I did hate it this summer. It was nothing but a bunch of dirt and some weeds!"

A Great Day

I love great days! Nothing special needs to happen, but God just finds ways to remind us how blessed we are. We had a day like that on Saturday.

We had decided to go to Kennsington Metropark and take a picnic lunch and visit the farm area they have there. The weather was beautiful...just how I like a day in Michigan...cool enough for a sweatshirt, a slight breeze but the sun is shining! We found a picnic spot on the lake and had hamburgers. The girls played a bit on the swings nearby and then Kira and I took a walk around part of the lake. After our lunch we went to the farm, had a hayride, the kids made honey butter, learned how to make granola, we saw some farm animals, and just really enjoyed each others company. I love days like this!

On To Week Two...

Whewww! Week one is done. What a week. I had several people ask me how the week went and I can tell you that I told everyone that my biggest suprise was how well behaved Sweet Baby was! Sweet Baby is 4 and has quite a demanding and strong willed personality. I was dreading how to keep her occupied and quiet so the other girls could work and we could get through the things I had scheduled. She amazed me and pretty much played by herself most days during school. A few times she joined us at the table to do things like lacing cards, matching letters, looking through seek and find books...she was really great.

Last week we had a light week. Due to the holiday weekend we didn't start school until Tuesday and I have scheduled our Fridays as library day/field trips. We do a spelling test each Friday and will use it to catch up on anything we didn't get to. Because we had discussed the differences between a biography and an autobiograpy, we went to the library on Friday and I showed the girls where the biography section was. Peanut was thrilled to find a biography about Walt Disney that she could read so we brought that home!

The girls worked on handwriting, math, spelling, history and science. On their spelling tests Peanut got all 5 of her words correct and Sissy got 9 out of 10 correct. She has been struggling with the word "neighbor" for some time.

In History we talked about the colonies, why the colonists left England, they drew a flag of England and labeled the colonies which gave us a chance to see how the borders of the colonies were different from the same states today. The girls also used the Map of Felicitiy's world to find various buildings on the map.

We are reading a biography about George Washington it is the Childhood of Famous Americans. I have to admit it isn't all that exciting, but so far it is about his early childhood, something both Megan and Kira can relate to.

One of the exciting things (and suprising) is that I scheduled them to do silent reading. Sissy was to read My Father's Dragon and I gave her about 2 weeks to finish it. She had it done in 2 days, took a test on the Book Adventure website and got 100%! Peanut was supposed to read Frog and Toad Are Friends and I gave her a week to finish it. She finished the 1st day and recieved 100% on her test as well.

The 2nd night I was feeling guilt again for denying the girls of the opportunity to make new friends at school. When I prayed with Sissy that evening I asked God to bless us in our schooling adventure. When the prayer was done she said, "Mom, home schooling is so much better than public school. In public school there are like a million kids in class and you don't even get to do all the things the teacher wants you to, or ask questions. Home schooling is so much better and I hope we do this next year." My husband pointed out how great it is that God speaks through our children!

I Love a Good Contest...And a Good Book

Shannon over at Song of My Heart (I adore her blog header!) is having a contest to win a copy of Draw, Write, Now. I LOVE those books. I've been lucky enough to find a few in our library but would love to own a copy! If you check out this blog entry you too can enter to win! http://shannon-songofmyheart.blogspot.com/2008/09/giveaway.html

Funny Mispronunciations

When dh got home last night I was having the girls tell him what they learned. We were talking about the first colonies...I asked our 6 year old to tell dad about what she had learned..She pulled out the map of the colonies which she had colored and started reading the names of the colonies, when she got to New Hampshire she said "New Hampster"!!

Then she showed him the flag of England that she had drawn and when I asked her to tell daddy who the king of England was, she was very proud to say, "King Georgia"!!!!

Day 1

Our first day of home schooling has come to an end. It sure went well! I was surprised as Sissy came out of her room at 7:10 this morning all dressed (in a dress and leggings none the less!) I said to her, "One great thing about home schooling is you can stay in your p.j.'s if you like." She responded with "No, I want to dress for today." Sweet Baby tugged at my heartstrings this morning when I overheard Sissy say to Peanut, "Today is the first day of school!" Sweet Baby's teary response was "No, I don't' want you to go!" Sissy was thrilled to tell her that they are staying home and won't be going anywhere.

We continued our yearly tradition of the girls picking whatever special "1st Day of School Breakfast." They all chose muffins, so we had some chocolate chip muffins and blueberry muffins. After muffins we were waiting to see the school bus drive down the road and wave to it. The girls ran off to do their morning chores and while they were in their rooms I went to each of them and genuinely told them how glad I am that they didn't have to get on the bus today. I couldn't imagine having them both gone all day...especially Peanut!

I know that our schedule will take some getting used to and we'll end up tweaking it..But today it went like this (I was SHOCKED how well we stuck to it! )


8:30 Morning chores

9:00 Prayer

9:10 Math

10:00 Handwriting

10:15 Spelling

10:30 History

11:30 Break till lunch

12:30 Lunch

1:00 Language Arts

2:00 Silent Reading

I hope I'm not cramming to much into a day. Sissy (9 years old) thought the day was long when she looked at it written out this past weekend, but really it went well. I was especially impressed at how well behaved Sweet Baby (4 years was). She played alone most of the time and sat at the table with us for about a total of an hour and a half today looking at books and playing with some alphabet pieces I gave her.

Here is a picture of Peanut after finishing her handwriting/copy work lesson for today. She practiced A and then did their memory verse for the next 2 weeks, which is John 15:13 Greater love has no more than this, than he who lays down his life for a friend. As you can tell, for a 1st grader who is still working on forming her letters, to write an entire verse and have it look so good is something to be proud of! I hadn't intended on expecting her to do the whole verse, but she just ran with it!

The best part of the day was when Sissy said "I love this, I want to home school next year to!" Granted she said this within the 1st hour of the day!!