Living books...

I'm reading, "With Nothing but our Courage" to Evie this year as part of our history program. It's a "Dear Canada" book, written by Karleen Bradford. In the story, the mother is depressed because of her many hardships. Evie and I were discussing this depression and Evie said, "That mom should read Joshua 1:9- 'Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous for the Lord your God will be with you'." I was absolutely amazed to hear that come out of Evie's mouth! She couldn't have chosen a more appropriate verse! She just memorized Joshua 1:9 for Awana- this is exactly why I send her there. Thank you Awana! Uncle Wes would be so proud... he's always encouraging us to memorize the Bible:)

Evie's come a long way with her reading this year. She reads over my shoulder while I type. On road trips, she's always calling out what the signs say. For readers this year, I wanted to use something "living"- as Charlotte Mason would call it. I've probably written the Simply Charlotte Mason's quote on Living Books before, but here it is again:

"Living books are usually written by one person who has a passion for the subject and writes in conversational or narrative style. The books pull you into the subject and involve your emotions, so it’s easy to remember the events and facts. Living books make the subject 'come alive.' "

The Little House on the Prairie books were the perfect answer. They are exciting to read and challenging enough to keep introducing new words for her to learn. She only reads about 3-4 pages in a sitting but sometimes the story gets so exciting that she just can't stop at four pages.



I sometimes catch Evie reading the Dr. Seuss books to Elijah. I absolutely love that. I'm just dying for the day I catch her reading a novel for her own enjoyment. When I was around Evie's age or a bit older, I got hooked on the Ramona books. My mom bought me one after another. I can't wait to see what series she likes and I'll be sure to buy her one after the next too! I've got all the Ramona books just in case she likes them the same way I did. Um, not sure if they're considering, "Living" though:)

Dis and Dat...

Dis and Dat is Elijah's way of saying this and that! We're trying to get him to realize the "th" sound:)
When we started Math U See at the beginning of the school year, I started Evie in grade one all over again. She hadn't memorized her addition facts with the other math program we were using last year. She just finished grade one a little over a month ago and we're into second grade now. She's almost finished with memorizing all the addition facts now but she still has to pick up speed. I love it that she add it all in her head without using her fingers!
Yesterday she used the math u see blocks to show all the combinations that you can use to make 9. It's just so cool to me that she's able to figure addition facts out on her own. It gives her ownership and makes the facts actually mean something to her. Have I mentioned that I LOVE math u see?? I didn't even tell her to write down the combinations, she did that on her own. I was hoping that this year she'd outgrow her letter and number reversals. Another goal for next year, I guess:)

Wink!

One of our daily homeschool drills is going over our A Beka "Special sounds" cards. When we get to "Ink in Wink", Eden never fails to give us her best wink!




(and yes, we do live in our pajamas!)

A Little Princess

We finished reading "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett- what a great book! To celebrate, we had a party with Cassidy and Maggie who also just finished the book. We met together to watch "A Little Princess" movie and have a Victorian Tea party.

Angie had a great idea to start off the party. In the book, Sarah Crewe had hard living conditions and imagined her surroundings to be lovely. Angie thought we should begin by having the girls go into my parent's old, dark basement. We gave them a kettle of water, tin cups, and plain bread. They had so much fun acting out Sarah Crewe and imagining that it was a fancy tea party!





Then they came upstairs to an actual fancy tea party!








Elijah was determined to join in on the fun! He figured he could sneak in as a knight in shining armour:)



Drinking tea like a real lady!



Cassidy, the comedian, demonstrated how a lady should NOT behave at a tea party. Funny girl!

Hands-on Learning!

This year my main focus for our home school has been to bring a hands- on approach to our learning. For one thing, it's just more fun for the kids. It also helps them to remember the concepts that they've learned. A couple of the subjects we've been able to bring this change to so far is spelling and math.

The program that we're using for spelling right now is Spelling Power. It's a great program, written by a homeschool mom. It contains all the most commonly used and misspelled words. I love the short lessons and the hands-on approach. After practicing a word by studying it, spelling it with her eyes closed, etc., she spells it in a textured surface.

We use a cookie sheet of cornmeal right now for a textured surface. Evie then makes up her own sentence with the word and then beads it on a necklace.





For math, we're using Math U See. I could be a sales person for this program. I LOVE it! It has made a world of difference in the way I teach math. It comes with DVD's that show you how to teach each lesson. Prior to using this program, I had a hard time simply explaining concepts to Evie. It resulted in her not understanding it and frustration all around.
After watching the lesson, you then work on that concept until the child masters it. They use blocks to teach everything which helps the kids to really understand what they're doing when they're doing paperwork later (which is so abstract). It's so different from the way I was taught! Apparently, most schools are seeing the benefit of manipulatives and are using them a lot now.


Here's Elijah with the Math U See blocks. He built 1-20.


Every day, I have the kids do a math speed drill from the Math U See site. If they don't get any wrong, a ribbon flashes with a banner that says that they got them all right. This ribbon really motivates them to work carefully. Evie has been getting it often and Elijah is still trying to get his first ribbon. His main trouble is hitting things wrong on the keyboard, otherwise he'd be getting ribbons too:)


It's funny, when I started homeschooling over two years ago, I really had NO IDEA how many curriculum options and homeschooling styles were out there. It wasn't until this winter that I started exploring all the options. This article really summed up all the styles for me. The Simply Charlotte Mason website is what made me get excited about the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling. I love the idea of learning through living books. The description for living books from the SCM website says:

"Probably the most well known of Charlotte’s methods is her use of living books instead of dry, factual textbooks. Living books are usually written by one person who has a passion for the subject and writes in conversational or narrative style. The books pull you into the subject and involve your emotions, so it’s easy to remember the events and facts. Living books make the subject 'come alive'.”

I've been building a living book library at home now! I've found lots of great finds at thrift stores and raided my mom's library too:) Now I need to buy some more book shelves!

Owl Puke

In our new Prairie Primer, we were instructed to write a report on owls and to dissect an owl pellet. I was going to take the kids to the farm to find a pellet until I read that they're full of bacteria. Apparently we're supposed to purchase one that has been sterilized. Since it's not that easy to find, we made our own owl pellets today using a recipe from our Owl Puke book. The book was another great thrift shop find!



The main ingredients were Rice Krispies and chocolate. We had to use white chocolate chunks to be the animal bones. The kids loved it!


Here's the little title page the kids made for their reports. Evie helped Eden make hers. What a nice big sister:)

Nature Walk

We discovered an awesome nature area within walking distance of our house! There are bridges over the wetlands and tons of trails. It is so perfect for our weekly nature walk- where we do our nature study. Now we just need to buy the Handbook of Nature Study.


We found several trees that were chewed by beavers. Some were ready to topple over!

Lately...

Eden has been sick with a cold pretty much non stop since we moved to Kitchener. I could tell that she was feeling better when she started sucking her thumb again: her nose wasn't stuffed anymore! That lasted for a few days and she got a new cold. Maybe this cold thing will rid her of her thumb sucking habit! That would be great if she quits at such a young age... I must admit I'd feel sad though. I think she's so irresistible with her 'tum' in her mouth. She readily shares her free thumb too!

As usual, Eden is right with us while we home school. Elijah was always nearby too when he was little. He learned almost everything from just hearing Evie home schooling. He's an eager learner, it's music to my ears to have him ask me to let him read. This week he moved onto learning long vowels. Cap - cape, Jan - Jane. He was giddy with excitement over learning something new.

Evie now loves every subject we do, with the exception of reading. I sure hope that changes! She loves being read to, and we do lots of that. I'm thrilled that she's enjoying everything else though. For the first time ever, she doesn't complain or cry when it's time to home school! Why the change? We changed our style. Completely. We started out a few years ago with a "school in a box" type of curriculum. From day one, Evie complained and was hesitant to learn. I realized it wasn't working so I gathered my courage to switch to a different math curriculum. Math U See is now what we use for math and it's been a lifesaver! She loved it instantly. We then started picking up novels and doing our own unit studies. Success again. Recently I came upon a website called Simply Charlotte Mason. I'd heard so much about Charlotte Mason from my sister in law and friends knew immediately when I came across this site that this was what I was looking for. I've been implementing all the ideas from this site into our home school and it's worked wonders!

Anyhow, currently we are reading "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It's such a lovely book set in 19th century England. A recent chapter described Sara Crewe painting pictures of diamonds under the earth. I gave the kids an assignment to paint a similar scene to what Sara would've painted.






Another assignment was to pretend they were "Lavinia" a student from the boarding school that Sarah Crewe attended. Lavinia was not to fond of Sarah, seeing her as competition. Lavinia was to write home to her parents about her new classmate, Sarah.
We made our own quill and ink. My parents came and brought us black walnuts from the farm, along with some feathers that my mom had. Ronny's mom helped us on another day with making the ink.



Here's Evie's finished letter. She composed it completely on her own. I corrected her spelling and wrote it out for her. She traced my writing underneath her paper.

Charlotte's Web

We recently did a unit study on Charlotte's Web. The kids wrote poetry about country and city life. We had fun studying spiders while reading the book. Evie caught a little spider and we observed it in their microscope...


Here's Evie with a spider she caught. She loves spiders. This one is very little but she'll hold and play with HUGE ones! She doesn't take after me that way!


When we wrap up a unit study, we finish off with a party! We did the same thing when we finished Charlie and Chocolate Factory. We watch the movie the day of the party. Of course it's never as good as the book but it's something fun to look forward to. I had a copy of "Charlotte's Web" with Dakota Fanning so we watched the movie and had lots of treats! My mom was so sweet... she heard about the party and came by with this delicious peanut butter pie/cookie treat!


Here they all are with the paper mache spiders that they made! The boy in the middle is my nephew, Dominik. I had fun homeschooling him for a few months.


The kids decorated their own spider cupcakes.