Journey to Ladyship

Art Appreciation

2011-07-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

We've been following the ideas I gathered from Charlotte Mason Help regarding picture study this year. I chose to study Renior for our first 12 week term, since he painted quite a few pictures of little girls, ladies holding cats and other "cute" images my daughter would love.

Each Friday I sit down with Chloe and we view the art print on my laptop screen. I ask her questions about the painting and we talk about how it makes her feel. I lead her in a discussion of the painters use of color and how he created the focal point of the painting. I tell her when the painting was created, the medium used to create it and what was going on in the world at that time.

The past two weeks, after Chloe has described to me as many details of the painting that she can without looking, she jumped up and exclaimed, "Okay. It's time to paint!" I allow her this pleasure. I feel that this is a wonderful time for her to express herself. We've discussed painting and methods and colors and all that, so I guess I feel its natural to desire to paint something yourself.

It's funny because she never tries to copy the painting we have been studying. She always picks some other random object she finds in close proximity to her art easel and paints that. This week it was a ballerina cat toy.

I am so thankful I found this website. What a wonderful way to teach my daughter a love of fine art. She enjoys it too. That's the benefit of the gentle, easy way of a Charlotte Mason education. And I am finding myself with a desire to paint too. Funny how that works.

Nature Study Challenge #2 - Using Your Words

2011-07-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

Our challenge this week was to get outside and use words to describe what we see, feel and hear. I read the recommended pages from Anna Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study and found a couple of interesting things to note.

"This danger (of seeing too much or not seeing anything at all while on a nature walk) can be obviated if the teacher plans the work definitely before starting, and demands certain results."

I find quite often that I don't know where to start or what to look for or at while wandering through nature. I tend to point out an interesting tree, knowing absolutely nothing more than the fact that it looks pretty up against the blue sky with the clouds behind it. While it is beautiful for me to gaze upon, it doesn't really teach Chloe anything beyond appreciation of beauty. Then I point out a bird flying through the air, and "Oh! Look at the chipmunk over there!" I see beautiful flowers that beg to be photographed and an interesting bug flies across my vision. But there is no real learning happening. That is why the above quote struck me. I should have a semblance of a plan before venturing out for a nature study.

"Make the lesson an investigation and make the pupils feel that they are investigators."

We packed up our backpack with nature journals and water and headed up the hill behind our neighborhood. On the way, we stopped by a bird nest we knew was in a tree there to see if anyone claimed it. We didn't see any birds coming or going from the nest so we decided it must be a vacant nest. This is our third time watching the nest and we have never seen any birds fly to or from it.

We came to our resting spot and sat down on the ground. I had instructed Chloe before we left the house that she needed to remain quiet so she could hear the sounds of nature (through the background city noise we are surrounded with) and see things and feel things. I explained that it's hard to hear, see or really feel things if we are busy yakking about the storybook we read last night or the trip we are planning to take to the beach. I was amazed at how quiet Chloe was. When we needed to speak (to point out the location of a mockingbird or some other interesting find) we whispered quietly to each other.

Part of this challenge was to write one word that describes what we heard, two words to describe something we felt and three words to describe something we saw. Here are Chloe's words.

I heard a bird tweet.

hard, smooth rock

green, poky, movable grass

And my words.

rustling

smooth, dry

tiny, white, lace

I see now that I got the second and third parts switched around. But that's okay. We enjoyed trying to come up with words to describe these various things. We struggled a bit with choosing what to describe. I found too many things, so I listed a few for each in my nature journal. Chloe, on the other hand, had a hard time "seeing" anything to describe. "I see mosquitoes on you, but I don't want to describe it," she announced. We'd been brushing the pests off for a few minutes which lent aid to her inability to see much else to describe. She finally settled on describing the grass we were sitting on.

I am looking forward to our next nature study. I feel as though we are starting on an adventurous journey together and that we will learn so much about the world around us. How can that not excite a person? I have just learned that those lacy white weeds are none other than the infamous Queen Anne's Lace. I have heard of the ~~weed~~ flower my entire life but never knew what it was when I saw it. Now I do.

Until next time, look around you. Watch and listen. Investigate. The world is an amazing place.

Consequence Chart

2011-07-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

I implemented a pyramid consequence chart in our home a couple of years ago to help with some discipline issues. Those issues resolved and we haven't needed the chart for quite some time, although it still hangs on the fridge in case that need arises again.

We've been having a bit of trouble with schoolwork this summer. It seems that spelling words are extremely difficult to write and so we end up spending over an hour (sometimes two) crying over our 10 words. Realizing that the reason for the fits steamed from laziness and rebellion and not the inability to write or remember the words, I decided it was time to implement the consequence chart once again. Only this time I varied it for school time.

Instead of a pyramid, I make colored pockets out of construction paper and adhered them by the edges to a piece of poster board. We made a marker with a dolphin sticker (per Chloe's request)and placed it in the first pocket, which is a wonderful place to be.

Each time tears start, the marker moves up to the next pocket and thus the next consequence. If we can finish the school day with no tears or fits (which is a wonderful place to be) then she receives a Good Behavior Ticket which she saves up for a special treat.

The first week didn't work as well as I imagined it would. I thought up several "treats" and printed them up on slips of paper and placed them in a jar. The idea was that if Chloe could earn five tickets (one for every day of the week) at the end of the week she would exchange the ticket for a slip of paper in the jar. The treat would be a surprise. Some of the ideas I added were: go out for ice cream, have pizza at Chuck E Cheese, buy a new book, slumber party in Mama's room, Mama does 1 chore for Chloe, carousal ride at the mall, eat dessert first, etc.

After a whole week and not a single ticket in a wonderful place to be, I knew we needed a new motivator. I allowed Chloe to pick a treat she would like to earn herself, instead of a random treat that she has no clue what is. I figured if she knew exactly what it was she was earning and if she had picked it herself, she might feel more motivation to earn it.

She picked an Ariel (Little Mermaid) costume.

It worked.

We have seen no tears or fits since that day.

The only change I made though was that she needed TWO weeks of tickets (10 total) and two weeks of finished chore charts in order to earn the costume. (They are slightly more expensive than an ice cream cone from McDonald's.) But I must say that it worked. We are happy and she now knows her spelling words by the time we take our test on Thursdays. Hooray!

We will not be purchasing an expensive item every time, but I figured to get us started we could splurge with a bigger ticket item and next time she can pick a slumber party in my room or a chore she would like me to do for her.

What ideas do you incorporate into your classroom for discipline issues? How do you motivate your children?

Nature Study Challenge #1 - Getting Started

2011-07-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

I found a fabulous blog that will surely help us as we attempt to introduce proper nature studies into our week. Handbook of Nature Study. I purchased Anna Comstock's Handbook for Nature Study so I could utilize it this year in our science curriculum. But just looking at the size of this book daunted me. I had a hard time even opening the cover to it. It is such a massive book!

Well, when I googled "Handbook of Nature Study", lo and behold the aforementioned blog popped up second in the queue. Wow! What a neat find! I decided to start off with the First Outdoor Hour Weekly Challenge.

And so here we are.

The first portion of the challenge was to first read pages 1-8 of "Handbook of Nature Study" and highlight anything that stands out to me so I can return later when I need encouragement. Here are a couple of things I found that I felt pertinent to where we are at in our journey.

"If nature-study as taught does not make the child love nature and the out-of-doors, then it should cease."

Yup. That's definitely us. But hey! We are just getting started, right? How quickly should I give up? Well, the next thing that jumped out at me was this...

"However, if the love of nature is in the teacher's heart, there is no danger; such a teacher, no matter by what method, takes the child gently by the hand and walks with him in paths that lead to the seeing and comprehending of what he may find beneath his feet or above his head."

Ah yes. That there is the solution. I must first foster a love of nature in my own heart, then take Chloe's hand and walk through nature, the two of us, learning and discovering together.

Something else popped out at me as I was reading. It had to do with "when the teacher should say 'I don't know.'"

"Moreover, the teacher, in confessing her ignorance and at the same time her interest in a subject, establishes between herself and her pupils a sense of companionship which relieves the strain of discipline, and gives her a new and intimate relation with her pupils which will surely prove a potent element in her success."

Okay. So on to the second half of the challenge. GET OUTSIDE and explore for 15 minutes.

Now I must be honest with regard to two things. One. We kind of already decided to study birds when we started school three weeks ago. We've been feeding them in the backyard and trying to attract them so that is currently where our interest lies. Two. It is hard for us to only spend 15 minutes outside. When we go out, we get lost in what we are doing. I guess nature studies are already a part of us. (I didn't realize that before today. We came inside before I realized we had spent two hours watching the birds.)

So, our mission today was to collect feathers from our yard. Amazingly enough we found plenty. I was a bit surprised at how many we found. Here is picture of some of them.

I pulled out a resource book from the library so we could learn about the various kinds of feathers. We put them into our nature journals and labeled them. We even found one tail feather to add to Chloe's journal. I didn't think we would be able to find all of them in our backyard but we did. Hooray!

I decided I would like to keep my own journal right along with Chloe. I love learning new things which is one of the many reason I enjoy homeschooling so much. So, I added some feathers to my page too.

Chloe then decided she would like to learn more about pigeons this week. She drew a couple of pictures in her journal and we read part of a book about pigeons I borrowed from our library.

I thought this photo I captured looked pretty cool. Can you see the red head and breast of the House Finch as he is flying away with the Pigeons? They flew so fast I caught only a blur of them, but you might be able to make him out above the pigeons if you look closely.

We tried to entice some birds with a buffet. We put out grapes, tangerines, peanut butter, raisins and banana chunks in little dishes. So far we've had no takers. A Pigeon came close but then opted for the nearby black oiled sunflower seeds I placed in a terracotta saucer. A Cowbird walked through the dishes and eyed them a time or two before heading over for a bath. A couple of House Sparrows seemed tempted as they walked by as well as a Robin but the mealworms proved more to her immediate liking.

So, all in all, I would say this nature study was a success. We will probably keep an eye on our buffet over the next couple of days to see if we get any takers, bringing in it each night so we don't accidentally feed the rats by mistake. Chloe enjoyed herself and we both learned something new. I think we will take some walks around our neighborhood this week to see if we can find more feathers. Chloe would like to start a collection.

Boxes of Books

2011-06-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

We are buried alive in books. Oh what a week! We sure do love books in this house. And books are piling up everywhere. Chloe's school books started arriving from Amazon and other sources this week and it is going to take every ounce of strength I possess to wait until Monday to start school. Just gazing at all these delightful books around me stirs within me the desire to begin right this minute. Oh, how I love school!

And more are still to come. Wow! This is going to be a great year!

Weekly Schedule of Homeschool Subjects

2011-06-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

Just thought I would share what our daily/weekly schedule will look like for first grade. I doubt this will change much over the next few years, but we shall see.

This year I will try having our Bible study time during breakfast, after we have completed our chores. In addition to the Bible study time I hope to start a quiet time with Chloe each morning. As soon as we wake up, she will sit beside me while I have my quiet time with the Lord and she can draw or write in her own journal. The point of this is so she can see me spending time with Jesus and can follow in my footsteps.

After quiet time, we will begin our chores. Once chores are complete we will sit down to breakfast and have our daily Bible study. After that, school will begin. I plan to do half of our subjects, then spend some time in physical activity and then finish up the school day before lunch. After lunch we will work on our handicrafts/home ec type stuff or go on a field trip or playdate.

Fridays will be our weekly subjects followed by a Tea Time with Mommy bible study. Each week we will have tea and do a small bible study. Every 6th week we will have a themed tea with decorations, crafts and everything to sum up our 6 week study. I am excited to see this unfold. First grade is going to be a great year!

Charlotte Mason Style First Grade Book List

2011-06-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

I've been plotting and planning and scheming for over a week and I am now ready to share with you all our curriculum plan for first grade. I chose not to go with Sonlight's Curriculum Core this year to try and see if I can get something a little more tailored to the Charlotte Mason style of education. Don't get me wrong, I love their books, but I wanted to try something a bit different. We shall see how it goes. Planning your own curriculum can be quite burdensome so I used a lot of ideas from Charlotte Mason Help. What a delightful website. Check it out.

Bible
The Children's Storybook Bible
The Awesome Book of Bible Facts by Sandy Silverthorne
Wisdom and the Millers by Mildred Martin
Polite Moments by Gary Maldaner
A Virtuous Girl Bible Study by Michelle Zoppa (found here)
A Child's Book of Character Building Book 1 by Ron and Rebekah Coriell
Tea Party Bible Times for Mom and Me by Mary J. Murray

Poetry
Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Oxford's Book of Children's Verses by Iona and Peter Opie
Love Poems by Sara Teasdale
Children's Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett

Language Arts
Sonlight Year 2

World History (5000BC-400AD)
Child's History of the World by V.M. Hillyer
Pharaohs and Pyramids by T. Allen and Wingate
Ancient World (Usborne World History) by Fiona Chandler
Tut's Mummy Lost and Found by Judy Donnelly
Ancient Egypt Activity Book by Robyn Hamilton
Ancient Egypt/Book and Treasure Chest by George Hart
An Egyptian Craftsman by Giovanni Caselli
Who Were the Romans? (Usborne Starting Point History)

U.S. History
This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall
Leif the Lucky by D’Aulaire
A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla
If you Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 by Ann McGovern
Pocohontas by D’Aulaire
Squanto, Friend of Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla
Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter and Connie Roop
North American Indians by Gorsline

Geography
Paddle to the Sea by C. Holling
Tree in the Trail by C. Holling
Seabird by C. Holling

Natural History/Science
Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
James Herriot's Cat Stories
Life in the Great Ice Age by Michael J. Oard
Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess
Everyday Things (Finding Out About) by Eliot Humberstone
Let's Find Out About Money by Kathy Barabas
From Tree To Paper by Wendy Davis
How is a Crayon Made by Oz Charles
What Makes You Ill by Mike Unwin
Why Do People Eat by Kate Needham
Animal Tracks by Arthur Dorros
101 Science Experiments by Neil Ardley
Various Field Guides (for Nature Studies)

If we have time we may get to...
Pasteur's Fight Against Microbes by Beverly Birch, Christian Birmingham
Space (DK) by Carole Stott
The Usbourne World of Animals by Susanna Davidson, Mike Unwin

Literature
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Pippie Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
Leah’s Pony by Elizabeth Friedrich
King of the Golden River by John Ruskin
Peter Pan by James M. Barrie
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
Aesop for Children by Milo Winter
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Snow White and Other Fairy Tales by Grimm (Dover)
Mother West Wind's Children by Thornton Burgess
The Trojan Horse by Michael Eagle
Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit
The Middle Button by Kathryn Worth

Leisure Reading (we hope to get to but not part of the scheduled list)
Mary Poppins Comes Back (currently reading at bedtime)
Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle
Raggedy Andy Stories by Johnny Gruelle
Crackle Creek by Mary Elise Monsell
Miss Miranda by Shirley Marine
The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden
Helen Keller by Margaret Davidson
Pippi Goes on Board by Astrid Lindgren
Pippi in the South Seas by Astrid Lindgren
Lily and Miss Libertyby Carla Stevens
The Boxcar Children Surprise Island by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Midnight in the Dollhouse by Marjorie Filley Stover
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry
Little Pear by Eleanor Frances Lattimore

Writing
Copywork from Bible, This Country of Ours and Readers
Handwriting without Tears First Grade

Math
Singapore 1

Health
Abeka 1

Music
Progressive Recorder Method for Young Beginner's: Book 1
Hymn study (2 hymns per term)
Holy, Holy, Holy
A Mighty Fortress is Our God
This is My Father's World
O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing
How Firm a Foundation
Amazing Grace

Folksong
Grandfather's Clock
Clementine
Greensleeves
Yankee Doodle
The Fish of the Sea
Lavender's Blue

Composer Study
Bernstein Classics Cd
Meet the Orchestra by Ann Hayes, Karmen Thompson
Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf by Janet Schulman
Story of the Incredible Orchestra by Bruce Koscielniak
Swan Lake cd
Tchaikovsky Swan Lake/American Ballet Theatre DVD
Swan Lake by Lisbeth Zwerger
Ballerina – A step by step guide to ballet by DK Publishing
Opera Cat by Tess Weaver
Pet of the Met by Don Freeman
The Magic Flute: An Opera by Mozart by Kyra Teis
Mozart's Magic Flute cd
The Dog Who Sang at the Opera by Marshall Izen

Picture Study
Study 1 Artist per term
Renior
Mary Cassett
William Bouguereau

Foreign Language
First Thousand Words in French by Heather Amery
Songs in French for Children cd
Les Oeufs Verts au Jambon (Green Eggs and Ham) b Dr. Suess
Je t'aimerai toujours (I Love You Forever) by Robert Munsch
Ours Brun, Dis-Moi (Brown Bear, Brown Bear) by Bill Martin
La Chenille Qui Fait Des Trous (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) by Eric Carle
Play and Learn French (book and cd) by Ana Lomba

Shakespeare
1 play per term
Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb
Shakespeare: The Animated Tales by Alec McCowen

Drawing
I Can Draw Horses and Ponies by Joan Thomspon
What Can I Do Today by Ray Gibson
How to Draw Flowers by Barbara Soloff Levy
I Can Draw Animals by Ray Gibson
Draw, Write, Now: Book 1 by Marie Hablitzel and Kim Stitzer

Physical Fitness
Home School Family Fitness by Bruce Whitney

I hope you enjoyed this peek into what our plans are for this next year of school. We start in a week! I can hardly wait!

Hand Sewing Projects

2011-01-14T14:11:00.000-08:00

Chloe wants a sewing machine for her birthday so I told her if she can learn to hand sew well, I will purchase one for her birthday. I made the same promise last year but we didn't follow through with it. (That was partially my fault for not enforcing sewing time.) This year I am doing better making sure she spends time working on Home Ec each week. I alternate cooking lessons and sewing lessons each month. This month we are working on sewing. Next month will be cooking.

Anyways, I thought I would show you the projects Chloe has completed the past couple of weeks.

First she made this felt bookmark. It was a small enough project that she could finish it in about 20 minutes and see the beauty of a finished project instantly. This got her good and excited about sewing.

Last week she made this drawstring bag. This project took her a little bit longer to complete, but when she finished it she squealed in delight. I think it amazed her that she could actually make something useful and cute. She was so thrilled after that project that she had no problem sitting down for her next project this week.

She sewed both of those in one sitting. After she finished the first one she exclaimed, "Ohhhh, how cute! Aren't these just so cute, Mama?"

He he he. I think I have her hooked. (grin)

I am using the lessons and projects found on Kids Sewing Projects. We started off this year with the Pre-Beginner Lessons Level 1. I love these lessons because it broke things down in pretty small steps/lessons. Even smaller than I would have thought to break it down. Like a whole lesson devoted to learning how to thread a needle. I would probably have just done this myself. Another lesson was on tying a knot. Again, something I would have just done myself. But it's been good for Chloe to learn how to do this and practice herself.

Creative Spelling

2011-01-14T13:55:00.000-08:00

How I hated spelling words as a child. Every Friday, my heart would sieze up in panic over the dreaded spelling test. Uggg. How can I inflict this upon my own child? I can't.

I am so happy that Sonlight does not make me do this either. At the end of our week, we get to be creative with our spelling words. I am always looking for creative ways to use our spelling words so Chloe will enjoy writing them.

Every week I have her write her words on either the dry erase board or on her desk. This happens usually on Wednesday. Then on Thursday we get creative. Sometimes she paints the words.

She has also written them in a cookie sheet filled with rice, with letter magnets on the fridge and with chalk outside on the sidewalk. Today I wanted something different, so I printed off all the letters of the words and had Chloe cut them out and glue them onto a piece of construction paper. (She needs more practice cutting so this served two purposes.)

One of the suggestions in our science class was to spell out a words from the spelling list in seeds, so I gathered what few flower seeds I still had leftover from last year and Chloe wrote her letters in glue and then sprinkled seeds on top. Cute, eh? I just wish we had enough seeds to write her entire spelling list this way. She sure enjoyed it.

I need to do some research and find more creative ways for her to write her spelling words. These projects have been fun.

Nature Diary

2011-01-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about a Charlotte Mason education is the opportunity to utilize a nature diary. I was a bit disappointed for the first 15 weeks of school that Sonlight did not use a nature diary. I think it is important for children to study nature and draw what they see. For them to watch the changes in nature closely enough that they can then draw it. (Thank you Sonlight!)

Well, lo and behold, week 16 of school introduced the nature diary when we began studying seeds. Yay! I made her a diary out of white cardstock and used my cricut to make the letters for the front. It won't last very long but at least she has something for a few weeks until I get her a proper sketch book for science. She has one for doodling, but not one designated for the sole purpose of nature sketches.

I found some seeds around the house for Chloe to touch and study. I was pretty limited in what I had on hand, but she got the idea anyway.

After studying the seeds, we dropped kidney beans into a jar filled with a wet paper towel.

Then Chloe drew what she saw in the jar.

Next week, I think we will be planting the seeds in some soil. I will have Chloe draw it before we transfer it to the pot. It is neat to look at it now through the jar though. We are able to see the roots and today we saw a green shoot starting to grow out of the bean. Chloe loves checking the jar every day to see the progress of the bean. I would never have though to start the bean in a jar so we could see what would otherwise be happening under dirt. It is fascinating for even me.

Library Reading Challenge

2011-01-10T14:11:00.000-08:00

Our local library posted a reading challenge for school aged children and I was so thrilled to be able to sign Chloe up for it. Boy oh boy! She is reading!!! I can't believe it. My darling girl is growing up so fast.

She seemed pretty excited to join the challenge as well. For every book she reads, a snowflake with her name on it will be hung on the wall somewhere in the library. When I explained this to her, she immediately grabbed a book from the basket and read it. Two actually. She read two books. At the end of this challenge she will be invited to a Winter Craft Party.

Chloe has always loved books. She used to spend hours just looking through all the books on her bookshelf in her room when she was a toddler. I couldn't believe how long she would spend doing that. At the beginning of this year when we first started learning to read, I got nervous. She did not like it nor did she want to learn. I hoped and prayed that by pushing her to learn to read, I wasn't going to take away her love of books. It scared me.

It excites me now to see Chloe reading to herself. She begs to read a story at bedtime in addition to my story. She still loves to have me read to her, but she also loves to read to me too. I couldn't be happier with how things are going in that regard. I love books and am so happy my daughter does too.

I now feel the desire to read a story to her so I will sign off now. Hopefully I can get some photos of some of our recent art projects up soon. We've been painting!

Subject Looping

2011-01-06T14:51:00.000-08:00

I read a few blogs this past fall on Subject Looping and the idea intrigued me so I tried it out. We have now been "looping" for a couple of months and it is really working out well. Let me try to explain our version of looping for those of you who might be scratching your heads and saying, "huh?".

I have a list (I am a list person. A check the box person. The kind of person who MUST finish the entire curriculum by the end of the year.) of all the subjects for each day of school. We simply work down the list each day. I set a time limit for the day. We homeschool for 3 hours every day. We start promptly at 9:00 am and at 12:00 noon we are done. It doesn't matter where we are at on the list, we simply stop school for the day. The next day we pick up where we left off. In a nutshell that is looping. Here is our loop.

Bible
History
Poetry
Read Alouds
Language Arts
Science
Math
Handwriting
Language and Thinking for Young Children
Extra Curricula

The extra curricula are the subjects that need to be taught only once a week. I have them printed up in my schedule so I know what to do on each day. They include art, physical education, health, music and home ec.

The reason I love "looping" is because at the beginning of the school year, I found myself skipping the extra curricular activities. I just couldn't seem to find the time to get to them so they were the ones that fell by the wayside. Other days, when Chloe would struggle with a concept in Language Arts or Math, we would spend a ton of extra time on that subject but then our day would drag on for an extra couple of hours sometimes. That made for some really long school days. I would then try to make up some of the subjects on Fridays and we would often end up with an 8 hour day of school. Not particularly fun for my five year old girl, nor her mama for that matter.

Looping solved this issue quite nicely. Now we just work our way down the list and wherever we leave off at noon, that is where we pick up the next day. And, for the most part, we can get to everything in a 3 hour period of time.

Here are a couple of websites to better explain looping. On the Company Porch and The Classical Circus are two places I studied the concept of looping this past fall.

So, I am wondering...does anyone else use this method? If so, what does you schedule look like? What do you like about it? dislike?

Finger Painting and Printmaking

2011-01-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

Did you know that there is an art to finger painting? I did not until I googled the words finger painting. Whoa! Apparently, I've been finger painting incorrectly all my life. Who knew?

So, the first thing to know about finger painting is that the paper must be damp before you begin. If the paper is not damp, the paint will not spread nicely. So, instead of keeping the paper on our art easel, I taped it to the floor and dampened it with a wet cloth.

Another thing to know is that there are different methods of finger painting. We studied the finger and palm method this week. We dabbed two different colors on Chloe's palms. Blue and green. Then we spread each finger with a color and she pressed her entire hand on the paper and moved it back and forth. This effect created a world. She then added animals to the painting with her fingers.

After the first instructed painting, I allowed Chloe freedom to use her fingers in whatever way she wanted on the second painting. She enjoyed experiencing the mushy paint through her fingers and rubbing it around on the paper to create new colors. This is a big change from a couple of years ago when she cringed if paint even touched her fingers.

Our next art project was painting gift bags using the printmaking method. I gathered up all the fruits and vegetables I could find in my bare refrigerator and we got busy painting numerous gift bags.

Instead of making the gift bags like the book suggested, I simply used paper lunch sacks. It was easier for me and some days I just need something quick and easy.

After she made four or five print gift bags, Chloe's eyes widened and she exclaimed, "Oh! I know! I can make puppets!!!" My heart thrilled at her creativity. So, I told her it was a fantastic idea.

While we were painting, a curious visitor showed up to watch.

We thought it might be fun to dip Bumblebee's feet in different colors of paint and let him walk on the paper. Then we decided it might not be such a good idea after all. He certainly enjoyed watching Chloe paint though. He seem thoroughly intrigued.

Maybe someday I will allow him the privilege of joining in on our homeschooling adventure.

Back in Session

2011-01-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

Journey to Ladyship is now back in session for 2011! Hooray! While any homeschooling Mama needs a break now and then, I always find myself a bit anxious and excited to start school back up. I know...weirdo. But I love homeschooling. What can I say? I love spending these precious moments with my daughter. Watching as she grows. Seeing the light bulbs turn on in her eyes when she finally gets it.

Anyways, I will post some pictures tomorrow of our finger painting fun and other things we did to begin 2011. Just wanted to let you all know that I am still here and we are still plodding away at this homeschool thing.

Blue

2010-11-30T07:38:00.000-08:00

A poem by Chloe Ness

Blue is the water.
Blue is the sky.
Blue are my eyes.
Blue is a blueberry pie.
Blue smells like berries.
Blue feels like a soft kitten.
Blue looks like a flowing stream.
Blue makes me cold.

Creative Writing

2010-11-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

I love how completely random Chloe is in her creativity. She possesses quite the imagination for a five year old little girl. Granted, I do not have an extensive knowledge of five year old imagination capacities, but I like to think that I do not inhibit her imagination, rather I allow it room to grow.

Here are a couple of stories Chloe wrote during school the past couple of months. Keep in mind that I do not help her at all. She just says what pops into her little noggin and I write it down.

VETRINARIAN
Every morning I drive to my vetrinarian office in a building in the city. I give medicine to animals like goats, rabbits, pigs and cows. People call on the telephone with sick animals. I say, "Come to my building. I will fix them."

One day there comes a king with a sick dragon. He blew fire at me, but it didn't touch me because I ducked my head. He had too much fire. I poured water on the dragon to put the fire out.

That's just how Chloe writes. She starts out quite normal and then BAM! the story changes dramatically into something purely from fairyland. Sometimes her stories only make sense to her, but there is no reasoning. This is how things happen in her world. Take, for instance, her Whale of a Tale.

WHALE OF A TALE
A whale had a tail but it didn't really have a tail because it couldn't swim. he tried to swim. He tried and tried and tried. Then he got to swim. And then he got caught in a net. And then a swordfish cut the net. The whale said, "Thank you." Then the whale went back home.

We have filled our homeschool journey up with so many things and events that I am dying to write about. I must save it for another post though. Hopefully I can get another one up today. We shall see how fruitful that effort turns out to be.

Art and HomeEc Projects

2010-08-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today we finished a labor intensive art project. Little did I know when we began this particular project that it would take us more than an hour to complete it. (and two days too...) Chloe was glad when she finally finished her construction paper mosiac. I think she felt proud of herself for persevering. I think.

I had her draw simple shapes onto a piece of cardstock and then glue squares she cut out last Friday into her shapes. She choose circles. I found it fascinatingly curious that after she was finished, the picture minutely resembled a flower.

Funny how art can do that. I explained that (in a different context) to Chloe today as she was fussing that her squares were "falling off the lines" (or not staying in the shapes). I told her that there are never mistakes in art. We work within a certain context but sometimes other things happen and that is what makes art unique.

I explained it again when we made these adorable paper bag trees.

This project came from....yes....you guessed it...Kinderart again. (have you clued into the fact that I love this website yet?)

Last week we were "supposed to" start our sewing lessons for Home Ec. Well, somehow I forgot to do it so I got out the supplies today and we had our sewing lesson. I am using the lessons I found on Kids Sewing Projects. I love to sew, yet somehow when I begin to teach someone else how to sew, or crochet, or knit...I am unable to break down the steps simple enough for a beginner. This website does just that for me. I taught Chloe how to thread a large needle with yarn and then had her practice a running stitch around the edge of some plastic canvas. She did fabulous!

I love seeing her little fingers work so delicately. Someday those fingers are going to be the size of mine. That thought makes me want to cry. I love her little hands so much. I think I need to make one of those plaster molds of her hands or something. She is growing up way too fast.

Anyways, I have more to talk about in another post tomorrow. I am off to bed now. Enjoy each moment the Lord gives you. Thank Him for today. For this moment.

Oh...I almost forgot. I made myself a little mosaic as well. It seems to help Chloe focus on her projects when I sit alongside her and create one as well.

Week 5 Review

2010-08-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

At this point, I am so far behind in posting about our homeschooling journey through kindergarten that I figured I better just start with some thing simple before I get so far behind I quit blogging about it all together.

It is Friday and I sit here amazed that we have just finished 5 weeks of school. Yes! FIVE WEEKS! (some counties near me don't even start til this next week while some started this past week) Where has the time gone? We are both loving kindergarten. Preschool was okay...just okay. But kindergarten is where it is happening. Yes sire. The fun has begun!

Every morning after Bible, we put in our cd with the Bible verses in song and we dance around the room to the song a couple of times. Chloe reminds me to play the cd if ever I happen to forget this important part of our day. She loves dancing with me. Dancing to music has always been a fun part of our relationship. I love hearing her giggle and laugh as we dance, sometimes slow and graceful like ballerinas and sometimes silly and goofy. Sometimes it turns in to a chasing game and every once in a while escalates into an all out tickle war. (never, NEVER, never during school time though... School is serious business!)

One of our science projects this week involved placing a stalk of celery into a cup of water with a few drops of blue food coloring in it. The purpose was to see that plants soak up water to their leaves to drink.

I couldn't believe it when it worked. It really did! Amazing! We now have blue celery!

We finished reading My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett today and I just have to say something about this book.

We do a lot of reading in this house. When I say a lot, I mean A LOT! I have always loved reading books to Chloe from the time she was a day old. I just love reading. She has grown up loving books. She adores them. She spends hours at a time just thumbing through her books to look at the pictures. She loves books. Her favorites have always been the simple board books or Little Golden Books. She loves the stories of Mama's and their babies. She loves baby animals. She loves anything baby-ish. Chapter books? Not so much.

Last year, with preschool, there weren't very many books that sparked her interest. She listened because she "had to". That changed this year with My Father's Dragon. She actually wanted me to read the entire book over again tonight with her friend visiting. She loved it that much. Each day, when it was time to read aloud, she would race to the bookshelf to grab this book. She would tell her Daddy about it at the end of the day. She couldn't wait to get to the end of the book.

I LOVE THIS!!! I love to see her actually excited about a book. And not just her favorite book that takes less than 3 minutes to read, but an actual chapter book. I just needed to say that about this book.

Moving on. I love the ideas Sonlight includes in their Language Arts program. Everything is so intricately woven together. I am amazed. But one of my favorite parts of the program are the little games they include in the curriculum. The ideas to make LA fun. My daughter latched onto these things and on some days they are what keeps us sane. She now looks forward to LA instead of dreading it. Its fantastic.

Here we are, spelling words on the fridge.

Another instant favorite was introduced to us this week. Sight Word Bingo!

Now I have Chloe asking me, "Mama? You know that game we played for school? Can we play that again? It was fun!"

Imagine that!

Even our Math is incorporating fun things. I just have to plan at least a week in advance so I can make sure I have the supplies on hand to do the activities. (No Teacher's Manual with our Singapore K Math program.)

Here I gave her a pile of cards with dots from 1-10 and she had to sort them into order and then write the correct numbers underneath each one.

Today we started an art book I found on Kinderart. It is pretty basic and I am debating going through with my one page a week plan. We might just make the entire book next week, call it good and then do some painting projects for the following weeks.

I had Chloe draw a picture of something related to our homeschooling. She could draw a picture of her getting ready for school or eating breakfast before school or something like that. The assignment on the website was to draw a picture of how you got to school. We modified it. Chloe decided to draw a picture of me reading the Bible to her.

The second page we talked about the three primary colors and I traced her hands for her to color. She glued the printed sheet down and then glued the entire page onto construction paper. I plan on laminating each page when the book is done. We actually used real drawing paper for the white pages.

Because this project was so basic, I decided to start another project. I cannot show you everything since we are not finished yet. So, I will give you a sneak peak at what we worked on. I will show you the rest next week.

I am going to try harder to post more regularly. I have so much more to share but this post is quite long enough as it is, so I will save it for another day. Have a fantastic weekend. Get out and enjoy some fresh air and spend some time in God's wonderful and miraculous creation!

Science Projects

2010-08-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of a few science projects we have made in the past couple of weeks.

First up is our volcano. Chloe picked some "trees" from our yard to put on her green mountain. She did her best to form the clay onto the soda bottle in the shape of a mountain with a tad bit of my help.

After adding the "special mixture" to the bottle we watched our volcano explode red lava.

It happened so fast that I fear we missed the initial "blowing up" but luckily I caught it on video so we were able to watch it after we cleaned up the mess from my kitchen floor.

During our study of wind and air, we made a windsock. Chloe loved this simple project. She could handle most of the components herself and she enjoyed watching her "creation" blow in the wind.

She saw the tails fly up during lunch after we hung it and she gasped, "Look, Mama! A hurricane!" I was pleased to inform her that while it was wind moving her windsock we were not in the middle of a hurricane. I told her that if it were a hurricane, her windsock would be blown to Canada and our shed would not be standing there. She felt completely comforted by my declaration.

Another favorite project was the fossils we made. I substituted the clay recipe in the curriculum for one on the internet because I didn't have enough salt. This one worked fine for our purpose. Chloe collected items from our backyard to make fossils of.

We have yet to paint the fossils because I think Chloe likes them white. We enjoyed seeing what the impression of each item was. More often than not, it wasn't the impression we thought it would be. The shell was the hardest one to get. It ended up not looking like a shell in the fossil. The flowers and leaves gave the best impressions. My personal favorite was the Dusty Miller leaf.

I have been quite impressed (no pun intended) with the science projects included in the Sonlight K curriculum this year. They have yielded positive results and many ear to ear grins and smiles from my daughter. I can't wait to see what else our kindergarten year has for us. Its been an exciting 4 weeks.

Roman Dinner

2010-08-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

We are reading through the book "Living Long Ago" for history and this week have been learning about the Romans. Yesterday we learned how they cooked, ate and the foods they prepared. Inspiration struck when I saw the picture of the Romans lying on the couches surrounding the table spread with food. Ahhhh...we should have ourselves a Roman Dinner Party!

I quickly ran to the store last night (at 5 pm) and picked up some things to create our roman meal. I didn't have time to actually cook the things myself so I bought the best that Safeway carried. I did, however, find time to sew up some tunics and even a toga for James to wear. (Romans who could afford meat and cheese and vegetables were considered rich...the pour people lived off bread and porridge made from wheat. Seeing that we would have been considered "rich" I felt it appropriate to ~~force~~ ask James to wear a toga.)

Roman meals were served in 3 courses. Here was our first course which consisted of boiled eggs, "salad", bread and wine (grape juice for us).

Our main course consisted primarily of roast chicken, courtesy of Safeway. Now I planned on having fish as well, but I read the 8 minute cooking time for the wrong recipe and my particular recipe needed 30 minutes. Sooo...we just ate chicken.

Now, you must keep in mind that the Romans did not use utensils to eat, unless it was an occasional spoon. So we ate with our fingers as well. We also included a bowl of water to wash our fingers in. Chloe thought this quite exciting and asked if we could have a Roman Dinner Party every night.

For dessert we tasted fruit, nuts and honey cakes. Now the honey cakes we made ourselves. I used a recipe in my Better Baking Cookbook that states its a traditional Jewish recipe for honey cakes. I figured since it was a Jewish recipe, it couldn't be very far off from the Roman version so that is what we ate. I love it. The recipe called for Whiskey and since I didn't have any, I substituted some Brandy I had in my cupboard from a few years ago when I attempted to make Sugarplums. They turned out delicious.

James finally got into the spirit of our party midway and he even complimented me on it while crawling into bed last night. Wow! It was fun and memorable. I hope it helps Chloe remember the Romans. It was fun but I highly doubt we will be eating like that every night. We dropped quite a few pieces of food on my carpet.

Circumventing the LA Tears

2010-08-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

For the first week and a half of kindergarten, tears reigned when it came time for Language Arts. I chose to start Chloe off with the first grade LA course instead of the kindergarten because she knows all of her letters and letter sounds and could even read small words. (She read Dick and Jane to me after I coerced her to sit down and try...she read it all) So, I knew she could read.

When it came time to read the short sentences with small words in her reader, she would get halfway through the assignment and then the tears would start flowing. Slowly, at first and then gaining velocity and sound as I calmly tried to explain how to "sound out" each letter. Oh my goodness! What is a Mama to do? I KNEW she could read the word because it would have been a word she read 3-4 times already in the previous 1 minute. The problem was not the level of reading we were at. It was either a lack of confidence or, worse, strong will. I leaned toward the latter.

A friend of mine visited us one day during our second week of school to appraise the situation. She taught 3rd grade last year in the public school system and I knew she could offer me suggestions.

First, she suggested I switch the order of our subjects. I started the day with Bible and then we worked on Math and Handwriting. We take a 15 minute break and then head on into Language Arts. She suggested I schedule LA first thing (after Bible, of course) so that Chloe is fresh and vibrant for that subject. She noted that in her experience, whatever subject she taught first thing in the morning, that would be the subject her classroom of children excelled in. So, I switched the order of our day.

Her other suggestion and probably the one which yielded the most fruit and the least amount of tears (because she, too, felt that this was an issue of "I don't want to do this any more" and strong will) was a reward chart. Okay. Simple enough, right? Well, the problem lies in the fact that we home school and already use reward charts for our regular life. We needed a way to distinguish this from our regular, every day rewards. So, she told me of a reward chart she implemented with one of her students last year.

The chart is a grid. She earns stickers to fill up the grid. Mine is 6 squares across and 7 lines deep.

I picked 3 items I expect from Chloe.

1. Finish the task. (I work her through some breathing exercises and have her say Philippians 4:13 a couple of times when she starts getting worked up over something)

2. Do her best. If I know she can do something better, she doesn't get a sticker.

3. No complaining.

For each task Chloe finishes, adhering to the three expectations I have outlined, she receives a sticker to put on her grid. When she fills up an entire row, she gets a reward. Once she earns that reward, we cross it off and she can't use it again for that grid. I have two sets of grids and rewards and I mix them up. She also has the potential of earning more than one reward in a day, if she works hard at each task. I even give her stickers for tasks that she does well anyways, not just LA tasks. Here is a list of some of the rewards I offer her.

Frozen Yogurt
prize from my goodie box (this is another incentive reward for her household chores)
Color with Mama (10 minutes)
Play Hide and Seek (10 minutes)
Puppet Show (10 minutes)
Read 3 books
Play bowling (10 minutes)
Play in sandbox (10 minutes)
go to McDonalds for ice cream (after school is over)
Be teacher for 10 minutes (she gets to teach me!)
Put a puzzle together

Now this is not all of our rewards but it will give you an idea of some of the things she enjoys. Most of these are instant. The minute she earns that sticker, we halt school and do the activity right then and there. Its immediate. I think that is the power of this method. Also, most of these items are done with me. That holds the most incentive for her...to spend fun time with Mama. And so far it has worked like a charm. We have far fewer tears, if any at all, and she is a much happier reader. I have even caught her reading almost every day out of her school book reader. It's been wonderful.

A Few Projects

2010-08-16T19:25:00.000-07:00

I am so far behind in posting on this blog. I am terribly sorry.

We started our fourth week of school today and I thought I would quickly share some pictures of the past three weeks with you. I will have more to talk about tomorrow (I hope) but hopefully you will enjoy a few pictures in the meantime.

Princess Chloe counts bowling pins for math. We took turns throwing one across the yard and then counting how many were left. She found this quite fun.

Another math activity she found fun was counting out stickers and tacking them onto a picture I printed off the internet and cut out. (I used basic coloring pages that can be found using google.)

For history we learned about the early man and the different things they ate and tools they used and whatnot. We made a coracle, which is a boat made from the skin of an animal and stretched over a frame. Chloe immediately wanted to know if it would float and so we tested it in a sink full of water. We both cheered when our pipe cleaner/plastic garbage sack boat actually floated.

I didn't have the cork to make an early man necklace so I just found some wooden beads from my crafting stash and I had Chloe lace them onto a piece of thread. She loves this sort of thing and I don't think she minded one bit that I didn't provide "authentic" supplies.

This chalkboard desk sure comes in handy, quite a bit. I am so glad we purchased it last year. I have her write her spelling words on it once it a week, just to change up the pace. She can write them as big or as little as she wants. Needless to say, she takes up the entire desk, most of the time.

Chloe loves the science experiments this year. We had a paper race our first week of school. Chloe's paper won. Mine blew into my flip flops, which I accidentally left by the back door in the kitchen, and got stuck.

We studied the weather for a couple of weeks and on the day we learned about the four seasons, I had Chloe paint a picture of what she thought each season would look like in our neighborhood. She loves fall and so she painted two squares fall and forgot a summer square. When I questioned her on the white square she left blank, she nonchalantly informed me that it was snowing on that square.

We made a weather vane and I have to say, this might just be Chloe's favorite activity so far. She loved putting this one together and watching the wind blow the arrow around.

Of course, I can't forget the tornado in a bottle. This was another one of Chloe's favorites. She still plays with it, a week later. I have been kind of amazed that our science experiments have actually been working. Its been wonderful to see her eyes light up when something amazing happens right in front of her. It might be a little something, but it is still amazing.

Two weeks ago, for art, I had Chloe close her eyes and imagine she were taking an adventure. Where would she go? How would she get there? Who would she meet when she arrived? What would she do when she stayed there?

She imagined herself flying in an airplane to a park far away, one which she has never been to before. She would meet new friends and they would swing on the swings and slide down the slide together. I then instructed her to draw her adventure on a piece of paper. I taught her how to draw various things on scratch paper before she attempted her final version on the "real" paper. We had a few tears with this project. She longed to draw an airplane but cried when she couldn't do it "right". I worked her through some simple steps and she was quite pleased with her final project. She came up with the trees at her park by herself. I was quite impressed, actually.

Weaving Watercolor. This has to be my favorite art project we have ever made. I loved it. (I made one myself too. he he he) I told Chloe to pick a shape (circle) and then using watercolor paints, she needed to paint a circle in all the colors of the color wheel. (I only included Primary and Secondary colors for her.) For her first painting she needed to use the colors in order around the wheel. I gave her freedom to use whatever colors she wanted on the second painting. After they dried, we cut them and wove them together. Even though this project took quite a bit of time, Chloe says she loved it.

I must be off now. We have had a busy day and I need some sleep. Hopefully, tomorrow I will be able to find some time to share with you a wonderful idea a friend of mine came up with to solve our problem with tears during language arts. Have a wonderful week!

First Day of Kindergarten

2010-07-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we started kindergarten. What a wonderfully tiring day! It couldn't have been any better. We started off the morning by opening a gift in bed. Tell me, please, what child does not like to open presents? Especially first thing in the morning???

And what was the new gift? "Ahhhhhh....A Dress!!!" she said as she fell back onto the bed.

(She even got new hair bobbles which received their own shouts of joy when it came time to put them in her hair. I don't think she knew what they were when she opened them.)

The first day of school started off with a cooking lesson. How to Make the World's BEST Breakfast! (It went over well and I am sure she learned much.)

I will break down the process in case you feel the need to instruct your own children in the art of making the World's BEST Breakfast.

STEP 1 - Pour a bit of chocolate syrup in the bottom of a sundae cup (or bowl if you don't have a sundae cup available)

STEP 2 - Add two scoops of your favorite ice cream

Step 3 - Add your favorite toppings. Ours look something like this...chocolate syrup, sprinkles and a maraschino cherry.

Step 4 - Photograph the grins on your childrens faces as they realize you were indeed serious when you stated that they were to eat ice cream for breakfast. (NOTE: Ice cream for breakfast one day a year will not harm your child in any way. It might actually be good for them.)

After we cleaned up breakfast and finished our chores for the day, school began promptly at 9:06. I just need to put this out there for the second year in a row. I LOVE HANDWRITING WITHOUT TEARS!!! (all caps because I was shouting it at you.) I really do love this curriculum. Absolutely the BEST! And quite literally...without tears.

I moved our schoolroom downstairs this year to make it a little more secluded from the main area of the house and because I actually have bookshelves down there. I like the set up.

The easel next to the desk really helps with the instruction portion of things. I can show her how to form her letters and such so she can see me while she is writing. Perfect.

After school ended for the day, we opened our main gift. Sea Monkeys.

These are, indeed, a real creature somewhat related to a Brine Shrimp. We get to watch them hatch and grow over the next 1-2 years. (If we manage to keep them alive that long. We shall see.) After school we drove to base for lunch with Daddy.

After lunch we headed to the pond to feed the ducks.

We ended our school day by visiting the library for a field trip where Chloe received her first library card with her own name on the front and a backpack to carry her books in when we visit the library. She was very pleased with this backpack and I think it was her favorite part of the day. We learned how to look up books on the catalog at the library. It's pretty neat because they have a children catalog with pictures next to each subject category. We will need to practice this a few times.

All in all, it was an excellent first day of school which ended with a fantastic pencil cake after Chloe and Daddy returned home from a hike in the park (during which I decorated the cake).

BOX DAY!!!

2010-07-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Today was box day! I am so excited I cannot contain it. I wanna jump up and down on the bed. I want to climb the highest mountain and shout it for the world to hear. "Our box of kindergarten curriculum arrived today!"

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!!! How am I going to maintain self-control and wait another week and three days before beginning our school year? It's going to take every ounce of self-control, will power and strength I possess. It doesn't help that Chloe wants to start too. And do you blame her? Look at these books...

I couldn't hold back though. I read a story to them in spite of myself. (Chloe's friend Jackson came over to spend the day with us and so got to experience a bit of our box day joy.)

It was fun to see another child who loved getting into boxes like Chloe. I could probably fill a whole scrapbook with pictures of Chloe in boxes. She has loved it since she first learned how to climb.

The ENTIRE family got into the unpacking of the boxes.

And then the fun part for me...putting together my IG.

Wow! I really felt like a teacher. I have waited for so many years for this very moment. The moment when I can put together my lesson plans and start keeping real records. Oh, my poor dear sister. I subjected her to many hours of "school" while we were children. I loved "taking roll" with all my dolls and stuffed animals. I relished in forcing my sister to write her name repeatedly in cursive. Chalk boards have always had a certain fascination for me. Now my moment of "real teaching" has come. Its here. And thank goodness I have learned a thing or two about parenting and homeschooling before this day arrived. I will not coerce Chloe to write cursive in the same manner I applied to my sister. Nor will we hold school in a chicken coup classroom. But the excitement of teaching has not changed. I am just as excited about teaching Chloe as I was about teaching my Cabbage Patch doll and Rainbow Brite, if not more. Oh, will August 2 never arrive???

We're In!

2010-07-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

I just received my email late last night (yes, on a Sunday) that our membership to a local Homeschool Support Group was approved. You have no idea how excited I am about this. All the resources at my disposal. All the play-dates and social activities. Field trips. Family Events. Co-Ops. You name it, this group has it.

Now we just have to make the decision whether we want to attend their annual Not-Back-To-School camping trip in September. Oh...it makes me nervous just thinking about. I, of course, love camping. But with a huge group of people I don't know??? That's a bug of a different color.

There is a picnic at the end of August which we are required to attend and hopefully we will meet a lot of lovely families in our area who homeschool. That might help me feel better about the camping trip. Who knows. I am still pretty excited about this group though. I am sure you will hear more about this in the coming months.

School Supply Shopping

2010-07-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Okay. You know I must really be excited about this whole "homeschool" thing when I blog more on the homeschool blog than I do on my regular blog. I have spent more time this past month on school stuff than I have crafting. Wow! That's big. That's very big.

Today we went school supply shopping. Now, if Chloe were to attend public school, she would need to buy things for the classroom like tissue, and lunchboxes and backpacks and such. Well, since we homeschool, we don't need to stock up on a truckload of tissue paper. (That comes out of the grocery budget.)

So, what did I buy for "school"? Well, let me tell you. I am so super excited.

I found this idea on the Sonlight Forums for younger children who have a hard time sitting still during the longer story books without pictures. Chloe did struggle with this a bit last year. The idea I found was to have a cupboard (or box) filled with quiet things that they only get to play with during read-aloud time. Pretty nifty, right? This would also work for younger children who aren't ready for school yet. Just have some things for them to be busy with and use it only during school time.

Here are some supplies we purchased today for her quiet box.

Sticker and Maze Books

Easy I Spy Book

Wooden beads with Hemp cord

Playdoh set with number cutters and a mat to practice "math"

Puzzles

Rubber Stamps with Ink pad

Legos and Erector Set

I also have some other things from around the house that I put into the box too. Lacing toys, wooden letters and our shapes bucket from last year. My favorite addition though are the "real" art supplies.

Chloe loves drawing so I thought this would make the box special for her. We will have a few simple rules for our box. It will only be for school read-aloud time. She MUST complete her Math and Handwriting workbooks without complaining or grumbling or anything of the sort in order to earn her quiet box privilege. I am excited to see how it works out.

Chloe took one look at my cardboard "Quiet Box" and stated, "I need to decorate that."

Yes, she does. Maybe a good project for tomorrow.

Its Done!

2010-07-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

I finally purchased our kindergarten curriculum this afternoon. We are so super excited about it. We officially have 2 weeks and 4 days left until school starts! Woo Hoo. I think even Chloe is starting to feel antsy for school to start.

I opted for Sonlight again this year. We loved our preschool year with them and decided it was a good choice for this year as well. I just love all the stories and books they provide. Such a rich selection and variety.

I also decided to stick with Singapore K Math for one more year. We ended up not doing most of it for preschool so I still have the books and such to do for kindergarten. If we still don't like it after a couple of months, I will make the switch to Horizons K. We shall see. We are using Explode the Code for LA and Sonlight Science. I am thoroughly ecstatic. I can hardly wait. I know I must hold myself in check, but ohhhhhh....how I love school.

Are you all ready for the next school year?

Summer Art Projects

2010-07-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

I find it humorous that I blog more during summer break than I did during the school year. At least it feels like I do.

Anyways, I wanted to share with you some of our recent art projects we've been working on this summer. I just couldn't wait for kindergarten to start in THREE MORE WEEKS so I've been doing some projects with Chloe each day. I really believe she is an artistic girl and if I teach her more of that sort of thing that she could excel in it. She is a most creative child.

First, I brought out her art supply box, printed off a couple simple pictures and let her use whatever she wanted to make a collage with. Here are the pictures she came up with. It took her 7 continuous hours to make these three pictures. Talk about a long attention span.

The monkey is my personal favorite. She used felt (which she cut into small pieces), pipe cleaners, wiggle eyes, pom poms, tissue paper, stickers, glitter and more for her creations. We are going to put them into a book to send to her Grandma. I so wanted to keep these for ourselves but she is bound and determined that they are Grandma's and how can I say no to that? She made them from her heart to her grandmother. To grandma they will go.

I researched some kindergarten art projects on the internet for our school year. There were so many projects out there that I just had to do a few with Chloe now instead of waiting for school to start (in THREE MORE WEEKS!). I found an Ed Emberley book at the library and checked it out so we could begin drawing. What a fantastic book. If you have young children, you should check this book out. If they can draw a few simple shapes and letters, they can draw animals. Its quite fascinating.

Chloe is quite proud of that crab. It took quite a bit of work as there were many steps involved, but she says it was worth it. Now when she sees a picture of crab when we are out and about, she states proudly, "Look Mama! I can draw that crab!"

We learned about abstract art last week by doing this little project. James helped me with this one. I gave an instruction and we were all to do that instruction. Then, we held up our final pictures to see how different they were using the same instructions. (like, "draw a triangle".)

Chloe's Abstract Art

James' Abstract Art

Anna's Abstract Art

Another day I instructed Chloe to draw a shape in the center of her paper and then to draw swirly lines coming off it. Then she needed to fill in those lines with as many colors and shapes as she could. I made the same project with her.

Chloe's Swirly Line Picture

Mama's Swirly Line Picture

Today I had her trace her hands on a piece of paper and then we had a lesson about primary colors. She painted her hands the three primary colors. Then I asked her to choose two of the primary colors and mix them together to make a secondary color. We painted around our hands in the secondary color.

Chloe's Hands

Mama's Hands

After that, I filled some little plastic cups with water and put red, blue and yellow food coloring into them. I had her help me mix them together in other cups to see what colors they would make. She loved this activity. I can't wait to do another project tomorrow. We are having a blast this summer.

Extra Curricular Lesson Plans

2010-07-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

The three required extra-curricular courses in our state are Health, PE and Art. I came up with my own Health curriculum which I will share with you another day. I haven't quite finished the details on our PE curriculum. (Actually, to be perfectly honest, I don't have any plans yet besides a few ideas rolling around in my head. I need to do a bit more research on that topic.)

But, today I would like to tell you about my two favorite classes what share with you what I plan on doing this year. Art and Home Ec. Home EC is not require by our state but I really wanted to add it in. I also added in Spanish as well since I would like to start learning other languages with Chloe. (I was inspired by the book "Her Mother's Hope" by Francine Rivers in which the main character spoke at least 3 languages fluently.)

For art, I planned out what projects we would do for the entire school year. I actually made a school calendar with our days scheduled for the year. I found most of my ideas from Kinder Art. You really must check out that website for art projects, even if you don't homeschool. There are some wonderful ideas there to give your children the opportunity to be creative.

The other class I added in on my own is Home Ec. I found two websites that I will be using this year to teach Chloe cooking and sewing. Check them out.

Sewing Lessons and Kids Cooking Lessons.

I am so excited about school this next year. I can hardly wait. We have a little over three weeks left before school starts for us and it just can't get here soon enough. Which reminds me...I had better purchase our curriculum so it arrives in time to begin on schedule.

Plotting the Kindergarten Course

2010-07-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

We have been on summer break now since the end of May. Woo Hoo. What a blessing this break from school has been. At times I have contemplated schooling year round with breaks scattered in between but, after this past month off, I have reconsidered. I like having an extended time off to gather my thoughts and put the next years plans down on paper. It gives me time to research and plot out our course.

So, I am getting ready to submit our forms to an Umbrella. Our state allows us to be under an umbrella which approves our curriculum and submits all neccessary stuff to the state. I chose this instead of taking our curriculum to a state representative because we can choose the umbrella and therefore can find someone "like-minded" (Christian) who won't give us trouble with our Christ centered curriculum choice. I just didn't want to have that added hassle.

Part of our "application" is our Course of Study Plan. It lists out all the "required" courses and has me list what curriculum I plan to use this year for that subject. I found out that we have some extra curricular subjects that I needed to come up with plans for. So, I spent a day this week planning out our courses. This has gotten me so excited for the next year of school. I even added two courses which are not require by our state but I felt were needed. If I have the Teacher's Guide already made up, whether required or not, I will be more apt to stick with it all year long.

The courses we will be doing (in addition to the regular ones) are Health, Physical Ed, Art, Home EC and Spanish. Home Ec and Spanish are not required but I would like to teach them anyways.

I will have to tell you about our courses in more detail in another post. I am super excited about what I have found and would like to share the information with you when I have time.

Knitting

2010-05-12T05:24:00.000-07:00

I gave Chloe a small knitting loom for her birthday along with some bright pink chunky yarn. She decided to knit a hat for her baby doll with it (since that's the only size this particular look makes).

She has been working on this hat for 30 minutes every day for the past week and a half. I hope we will complete it this week. She is getting a little bored with it, but I just know she will be ultra pleased with her hat when she completes it. She gets all giggly and excited when I show her the portion she has already completed. She feels it with her little fingers and ohhhs and ahhhhs over it.

Yesterday, in the midst of one of her "bored" spells, I showed her my own knitting and asked her if she would like to knit like that someday. "Oh Yes Yes YES!!!!" she exclaimed repeatedly. "Then you must work on this hat and finish it." It was a great lesson in perseverance, a word we learned last week in our Childrens Book of Virtues. I love it when real life circumstances reflect something we've been reading about in school and give us that opportunity to really learn.

New School Desk

2010-05-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

Last week a wonderful present arrived for our "schoolroom". (Which, in all actuality, looks quite similar to what one would call a dining room.) I was reading in Chloe's Handwriting Without Tears teacher's guide the importance in preschool and kindergarten aged children to maintain proper posture while learning to color and write. A portion of the correct posture involves feet touching the floor while sitting in a chair. Unfortunately, Chloe cannot reach the floor with her feet in any of our chairs. Intriguing, I know. Right?

Anyways, we decided to purchase a table and chair set for her and a couple months ago I began the search for the perfect set. Well, the prices can be quite substantial for such a small item, let me tell you. We finally settled on a school desk and chair from Lipper. The price point was in our budget and the reviews for the set all seemed to praise its durability and size. We couldn't be happier. Chloe LOVES workbook time now and begs to do it first. Can you believe that? Yes, she begs to do her workbook now and all because her feet can touch the floor.

In other news, we missed a couple days of school last week due to family arriving in town and a trip up to New York City for a wedding (can you say field trip?) so we are a week behind this week. Oh well. We will just have to go a week into June. I didn't want to, but we will have to.

Also, we will be purchasing our kindergarten curriculum very soon. I have picked the reading level and all that so we will be able to begin kindergarten in July. Now if only I could wrap my brain around the requirements for our state for kindergarten. I am officially nervous. The listings also came out for the military today and our dream location was on it so we should find out in a couple of weeks if we are moving and when. Hooray! That just might change our homeschool registration process if we can move soon enough. Sheesh! So much to think about. I think right now I shall just focus on finishing up preschool. That's about all my brain can handle right now anyways.

A Pottery Field Trip

2010-04-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

We did take a couple of "educational" trips shortly after James arrived home from Afghanistan. Homeschooling makes it quite nice by being able to call any family vacation a "field trip". We ventured up to Philadelphia for a couple of days and also hit our local aquarium.

Today, however, was our first official field trip since James returned back to work. Its been a while and I have a few more trips I would like to get done before school is over in May. So, we hit two places today because they sort of walk hand in hand with each other. (That, and they were about a mile apart from each other.)

Our first stop was a local clayworks museum.

They have about 13 resident artists and a couple others who they showcase from time to time. According to their website, the big gallery opened at the end of March, but when I showed up, they informed me that tomorrow night is opening night. Oh well, we walked through the resident artists gallery for a few minutes instead. We saw some very beautiful pieces, but Chloe got bored rather quickly. That could be due, in part, to what came next on the agenda.

Oh yes. This was definitely a hit. Chloe couldn't quite decide which piece she wanted to paint and so I narrowed down the options for her by directing her to pieces which didn't require a lot of detail painting. She finally settled on the ballet slipper.

I showed her the art on the walls in their various stages of completion. She seemed quite fascinated with the fact that before they are glazed and fired they are quite dull but when we pick them up next week they will be bright and shiny. She can hardly wait to go pick them up. (I say "them" because we also painted a plate for Grandma while we were there."

Now I am trying to decide where to take her next week for a field trip. I have a few more places in mind for the rest of the year.

- Music store
- Zoo (she hasn't been since she was 18 months)
- Aviation Park (to watch the planes taking off and landing)
- Plant nursery (we are going to make a fairy garden that she will be responsible for)
- children theater
- Opera

Have a blessed day all day long. I will try to keep posting regularly on this blog. I am sorry for the lack of posts lately but we've been adjusting to having James home again. Its been wonderful having him back.

Week 28 Review

2010-04-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

You would be hard pressed for an answer if asked whether or not we homeschool, wouldn't you? I mean, from the lack of posting on this here blog regarding our homeschooling journey you could surmise that we don't. Well, I am happy to inform you that while I have not posted on our homeschooling blog in quite some time, we are still plugging away each day with school.

A couple of updates for you since I have no clue when I last updated you all. Let's see here. We gave up with the Math curriculum I purchased. I did not like it at all. I chose Singapore Math but little did I know it didn't come with a teacher's guide. Each day I would be halfway through the lesson and realize I needed things in order to be able to finish the lesson. About half, if not more, of the lessons required a room full of students. Or at least a few more than one. It was hard trying to teach one child some of their concepts without the rest of the students. I decided to quit math for preschool and to try out Horizons Math for kindergarten next year. I am planning on giving her a test to see exactly where she is at for math. She might be higher than the kindergarten level too. Wanna know what makes me think so?

Apparently, the girl can read. Yup. We were driving to Walmart the other day and she read the sign "Walmart" out loud. (maybe she recognized the store?) Then she informed me that "Walmart has mart in it. Mart is sort of like smart."

Huh, WHAT? Where on earth did she learn this??? Okay. Here's the true test.

I asked her, "What do you have to do to make mart into smart?" She promptly replied, "You just put an S in front of it and then its smart."

Okay. When did my child learn how to read? I have never taught her. I went onto the Sonlight website and took the reading placement test. So, Chloe reads enough words that she can start with Readers 1. Wow! She read the words eggs, naps, lid, pet and mix. She refused to read any more for me, so I am unsure whether she can read them and won't, or if she can't read them at all. Interesting that she knew these words and I have never taught her to read. It makes me wonder with the math too. Maybe she is further along than I know her to be or give her credit for. Both the math and the handwriting that we picked for preschool were beneath her abilities that she got bored with them quickly.

So, week 28 has been completed and we will be working on weeks 29 and 30 next week. We doubled up a couple of weeks since we did miss quite a bit of school with our two blizzards and James return home from Afghanistan. My goal is to finish school by the end of May. We will take a month off for summer break and then start kindergarten in July. We will most likely be moving to England this fall and so I would like to get a head start on the school year before we move. That way, we can take time off of school during the move and not worry about getting behind.

We took a field trip today so I will post that next. Have a blessed day.

Olivia Style Fashion Show

2010-02-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

In the book Olivia, Olivia tries on all her clothes when getting dressed. So, for our lapbook today, Chloe and I produced a fashion show. Chloe picked out every single ensemble except for the military fatigue. I informed her that Daddy would laugh when he saw that picture and we needed to wear it for him. She complied amidst giggles. I then printed off the pictures and Chloe cut them out and glued them into a little book to include in our lapbook. I think this is her favorite lapbook activity to date. She told me numerous times today that this is her favorite school day ever. We sure did have a blast. Here are the ensembles Chloe put together for her fashion show. (She even named a few of the ensembles herself.)

Rainy Day Princess

The Sword Fight

Fairy Hotel

I can't help but look forward to school tomorrow. I have no idea what's in store, but I know its going to be a good time.

How Much Fun Can School Really Be?

2010-02-02T10:56:00.000-08:00

I feel I must say this one more time. I LOVE HOMESCHOOL. And to narrow it down just a bit...I LOVE PRESCHOOL! Golly, this is so much fun. Who knew that school could be this much fun. So, we do have a little bit of groaning during workbook time, but the rest of the day is full of laughter and smiles and just a really, really good time. Check out some things we did today.

We polished and sorted the wood pieces that we purchased along with our Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. As we polished and sorted, we called each piece by name. Big Line, Little Line, Big Curve and Little Curve. This is to help Chloe become familiar with the words for when she will begin forming letters, I guess. She enjoyed it.

And now for the painting projects I promised. First, I decided to bigger-ize our splattering.

It took me about 5 minutes to convince my careful and fastidious little girl that it was wonderful to get paint everywhere. I even showed her how quickly I could clean it up. I kept saying, "Have fun Chloe. Just have fun!" She finally did. In the end she proudly proclaimed with a giggle, "This is my favorite painting Mama." Oh yes. I can see we will be splatter painting again in the future.

Next it was time for our new technique. String painting. This took a couple of tries to find the right string. Apparently baby yarn doesn't work. I used a nylon string and it worked much better.

I heard a trace of excitement in Chloe's voice as she announced with this string painting, "It looks like Olivia's painting!" Sure enough, it does.

We had other fun today too but I still need to edit those pictures and get them ready to post. I will make a new post for those. Be prepared for more preschool fun soon to come!

Olivia Style Painting

2010-02-02T06:27:00.000-08:00

We started our Olivia lapbook yesterday and one of the projects I wanted to try was splatter painting. Chloe thoroughly enjoyed splatter painting. I think it imperative to mention here that I am not one of those mothers who abhors messes. While I keep a fairly clean house (one could say "neat freak"), I do believe that children should be able to fully experience things...like splatter painting...to their capacity. This is why there is such a huge market for washable paints. They WASH! I am all for making messes, as long as they are cleanable.

With that being said, I set up the supplies and watched her splatter to her hearts content.

Today we will try another painting technique. I'll have to tell you about it later.

Poky Little Puppy Lapbook

2010-01-31T10:32:00.000-08:00

Its finished. We completed the lapbook and assembled it this weekend. Here is a video of Chloe presenting the lapbook.

We thoroughly enjoyed creating this lapbook and have plans to start a new one Monday. We chose Olivia for our next book. James sent this book to Chloe while he was deployed last year to Iraq so it possesses a bit of sentimental value for Chloe. We will, again, use the free lapbook found on Homeschool Share. I feel a bit excited about this particular book because we will be trying out some different painting techiniques. Yahoo! More to come soon.

Pssst!

2010-01-28T19:13:00.000-08:00

By the way...

I thought I should mention that you are now able to leave comments on this here blog of mine. Yes...apparently, when you request Blogger turn on comment moderation and ask them to send it to your email address, they won't send it unless you provide them with the email address to send it to. Funny how that works, eh?

New Manipulatives

2010-01-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

I wonder if anyone else gets so excited over new homeschooling items like I do. I love it. I could spend hours a day just perusing the internet, looking and drooling over all the homeschool curriculum and manipulatives out there. Oh boy oh boy. And I have plans to visit a local curriculum fair coming in April near me. Will the fun never end? I nearly lost myself when, not one, but two boxes showed up on my doorstep this afternoon. Of course, I expected said boxes since I ordered items last week, but still....excitement bubbled over and I let out a few squeaks and giggles. I tried hard to contain myself since Chloe was "resting" on the couch right next to me but let me tell you, that proved a difficult endeavor.

We immediately delved into the treasures...well..just as soon as the timer rang, announcing the end of our afternoon rest time (Mama's craft time). Chloe loved making dough letters. I had to stop her at "B" because she requested a park date before ballet class this morning and I had said we could. We needed to hurry. I set out the wooden pieces for her to form capital letters and allowed her up to "B" again. She loved that too. What a wonderful addition this will be to our school day.

Oh...and I purchased some mathbooks to add to our sonlight curriculum every day. They arrived today too and we finished a page of that before heading to the park.

Gee, I am having so much fun. I gotta stop though. I mean, seriously. I've got to get control. I could have Chloe dissecting frogs next week if I don't check myself. The kid is only four years old, after all. She thinks I'm crazy, but she loves me anyways.

I have one more thing to show you all. Check out the grin on this girl.

She got it! Perfect! I awarded her TWO stickers today and a fruit snack for her success. I asked her if I could photograph her with her picture and she practically knocked me down with excitement. After I snapped about 3 pictures she asked, "Are you gonna dance with me now Mama? Like you did yesterday? That was fun!"

Of course, you know I did.

One Reason I Love Homeschooling

2010-01-27T20:02:00.000-08:00

One of the main reasons I love homeschooling is the fact that you can totally customize school to your child. What is your child good at? What are they not so good at? Homeschooling allows you the ability to hone in on those items and work on them.

This week I found myself thinking outside the box in regards to an area of school that Chloe isn't quite so good at. We use a workbook called Developing the Early Learner and she excels in almost every single skill this book teaches. I have often wondered if the book is a little too easy. All except for one skill. Auditory Memory. I read a string of instructions for a number of items and she must wait a minute and then complete all the tasks. The poor dear struggles so hard with this task and I hate it. I really do. She was literally sitting in tears last week because she simply could not remember all the instructions I gave her. (we are now up to four items per set and she must remember the color for each item and what she is supposed to do for each item. Invariably she gets it backwards every time.)

What am I to do? I don't want Chloe to hate school. I want her to enjoy it but this skill is an important one that I know she will need later on. At first, I thought it was just that she was not paying attention to me. We made it halfway through the school year and I finally realized that she really tries hard to remember. She really does. I allow her to pick up the crayons while I read the colors and place them on top of the correct picture. I tried having her trace with her finger what she was supposed to do to the items as I read it. I even tried having her repeat the instructions after I was finished reading them. All to no avail. When it was time to start, she would do it backwards or wrong.

This is when I decided to think outside the box. How can I teach her this skill and not leave her in tears at the end of our school day?

And then it hit me. Take her back to the beginning and start where it was easier. Work on the easy ones every day until she gets the knack of it. This particular skill moved too fast for her to get it down properly. By the time she was starting to understand it, it got harder and she got more frustrated.

I found clip art with similar images the workbook used and made my own worksheets. I printed off multiples of each page. I also printed out the instructions from the back of the book to coincide with my printed pages. We now work on this particular skill every day, in addition to the other workbook pages she is supposed to work on. She only has two pictures she has to remember things for at this point. After four days of it, she is finally getting it. She can do the entire page and only get one or two wrong. Yesterday she finished the entire page without any mistakes. I hung the picture on the fridge, gave her a candy cane and we danced around the kitchen for a full five minutes in celebration of her achievement.

This is why I love homeschooling. I found a way to teach her the skill that is necessary without frustrating her. We went back to the basics and because she learned that she CAN do it, her self-confidence is rising. We can celebrate these small things which I know makes her feel good. Just to see the look on her face when she got the entire page right...wow...I just was happy to be there. And how many schoolroom teachers do you know of who dance around the room with the children when they get something they struggled with right?

We have quite a ways to go yet, but we will get there. We will. She is a smart little cookie and we will get it.

Rice Pudding Please

2010-01-27T19:36:00.000-08:00

I do believe that lapbooking has become Chloe's favorite part of school. Especially since we picked a book she loves and I read it to her every day. She is just about a couple of sentences away from having the entire book memorized as well.

Well, if I wanted hands on activities, lapbooking certainly gives us plenty of those. Today we made rice pudding. Since Chloe has cooked in the kitchen with me since she was a tiny tot, most of this was old hat for her. I did teach her how to turn the burner on though, with a stern warning that this was only EVER to be done if I am with her and have given her permission. I warned her to NEVER touch the knob EVER without me. I do believe I put the fear of Mama into her little heart with my admonishment.

Anyway, she enjoyed making the same rice pudding that the puppies smell in the story. Its funny because with all the books we read for school, this is her favorite and its not even in our curriculum. She acts it out almost every day too. So cute. I must get some video of that to show you all.

I plan on writing out (or printing out) the recipes we make this week and sticking them into her lapbook (probably in a little pocket). I also would like to put a picture in there of Chloe helping to make these treats. I thought that might add a fun touch and a personal element to the lapbook.

An idea struck me the other day. I am not sure if I thought of this one myself or if I happened to read it while researching sonlight last Friday. Anyways, instead of attaching each item to the file folders just as soon as we finish it, I am saving them up and at the end of the week, we will set everything we have compiled out in front of us and arrange them in the lapbook all at one time. I'll have to let you know how it goes.

Week 16 Review

2010-01-22T19:49:00.000-08:00

So, let me tell you about our week of school. We finished week 16 today and we are doing much of the same. Reading, reading and more reading. That's one of the things I love about Sonlight. We read loads of wonderful literature. Things I might not necessarily think to read on a regular basis either. Like nursery rhymes. I never thought to read one rhyme a day. I would look at our Mother Goose book and think to myself, "Now how am I supposed to read this? Do I read it all in one sitting? That's kinda boring. Do I read until Chloe begins to nod off?" and so I wouldn't read it at all. I would have to say this could possibly be Chloe's favorite book in our curriculum so far. She gets excited to read each nursery rhyme and usually asks me to read it two or three times each day.

After 16 weeks of reading the Uncle Wiggily book, we may have come to the decision to cut this book out of our day. Chloe groans whenever I pull it out of the shelf at the beginning of the day. We are down to once or twice a week readings from this book and she is doing much better with it, but I can tell she doesn't enjoy it. I asked her about it tonight and she claimed, "its just too long." I don't fully understand that because she loves longer books too. I can read chapter books to her and she thoroughly enjoys them. I asked her today if she would rather me read Raggedy Ann to her and she said "yes!" quite emphatically. I guess we are switching out books next week. And that's perfectly okay. I am finally able to come to terms with that idea. If we aren't enjoying one item, its fine to swap it for something more enjoyable.

Today we took a field trip to Storyville, a learning place for children ages birth through 5 years old. We've been there last year twice and enjoyed it so much that I thought we would head there today. We didn't have nearly as much fun as I remember having last year. They have a pretend grocery store inside, a mail room, a house (complete with kitchen, living room, laundry room, upstairs room and backyard) a theatre and a mini library. All these little areas are designed so the caretaker and the child can interact together and play and learn. The details of the place are phenomenal. The problem I saw today was that too many people brought babies 18 months and younger and they took the fun away from the older children. Mothers weren't keeping the babies from shoving their way to the items the older children were playing with and because I teach Chloe to share and give way to babies, she missed out on a lot of what she wanted to do. She kindly moved out of the way and watched quietly as the baby would chew on the toy cash register. Most of these mothers were just standing in the background watching their babies take everything apart and not doing anything. After waiting patiently for a bit, we would try to move on to something else. This proved a great learning time for Chloe though in a way you wouldn't necessarily have imagined. She learned what its like to to be on the receiving end of inconsiderate children who aren't taught to take turns or consider others higher than themselves. If we go again, I will have to pick a time when less people are there, if there is such a time. Maybe a different day of the week?

On a better note, we did enjoy a second field trip this week. Actually, it was our first field trip. Wednesday I took Chloe ice skating for the first time. It was my second time ice skating. Thank goodness I invited a girlfriend to go with us or I don't know how I would have managed taking Chloe around that rink by myself. This trip gave me the confidence I need to be able to taker her by myself in the future though. Of all the things I've ever introduced to Chloe, this is the first unfamiliar thing that she has taken too with such enthusiasm. It usually takes her a couple of tries to warm up to new endeavors...like riding a bike, roller skating, you get the picture. She LOVED it. She told me so WHILE she was skating. That's new. She asked if we could go again soon while I was turning in the skates after we finished. She even exclaimed at one point, "When Daddy gets home, we can bring him here to ice skate. Daddy will love ice skating."

I have a video of Chloe's scripture verse for this week.

I also have a video of Chloe enjoying her shape blocks which she loves. Now I have to warn you, this video is a bit longer than normal. Chloe helped me edit it. I knew we were to keep a piece when she would begin giggling at herself on the screen. (totally too cute for words) I just wanted to show you what she does with these shape blocks. I also love listening as she tries to pronounce some of the shape names.

The fun thing with homeschooling is that I get to learn right along with Chloe. It might not always be the same thing she is learning (although many times it is) but I do learn quite a bit. Today I learned some fabulous things and I hope to be able to tell you about those things tomorrow. I think I am done posting for today though. Its bedtime and my fingers feel a bit weak from all this typing. Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Poky Little Puppy Lapbook Started

2010-01-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

I planned to start a new lapbook next Monday but Chloe seemed a little too anxious to begin and begged to start yesterday and so how could I resist? You may recall a few months ago we finished a Corduroy lapbook and since then have started 3 more which never came to completion. I finally realized what our trouble was. I aimed too high. The topics we picked were too large for a four year old to understand and the projects too extensive. I headed back to square one. Easy, quick lapbooks on books Chloe is familar with that we can finish in a week.

She seems quite happy with this book. One thing I am doing since we own the book is read it to her every day when we begin to work on the lapbook. While I read it, she colors the main picture which will be the cover for her book. (They actually have a coloring page of the cover of the book so my meticulous daughter can "match" the colors of the cover.)

We found the Poky Little Puppy lapbook templates on the Homeschool Share website. I love this website. Absolutely love it. A great FREE resource for lapbooking.

First I tried her out cutting the hexagon shapes to put into a little fold book. She totally surprised me with how well she did. At the beginning of the year I handed her the scissors and she couldn't hold them let alone wield them and control them to cut around a shape. We have not worked with them since and today she actually cut on the lines all the way around the hexagon. She came off the line a couple of times but for the most part, her shapes look like hexagons. Amazing! her fine motor skills have improved dramatically simply by her workbooks alone.

The second item I had her work on was to count the number of puppies and flowers on the first page of her book and to write those numbers on the hexagons she cut out. (this template here) Again, I was amazed at how well she did writing the numbers. I've never shown her how to write numbers before. I wrote the number for her and explained it once and she copied me afterward and made them almost perfectly. WOW! This has got me thinking that maybe we should be aiming a little higher in school. I don't know. I don't want to push her, but if she is capable of so much more and ready to learn, would it hurt to get something a little more challenging for her?

Anyways, my goal is for her to complete two items for this lapbook every day and have it finished next Friday. We shall see. I have more things to chat about but I will start a new post for those things.

School Week 15

2010-01-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

If I thought I neglected my regular blog, boy oh boy...this one hasn't much hope.

Okay. We are two weeks into school for the new year. Yesterday we finished up week 15 of our 36 week curriculum and next week will be the halfway point of our school year. Woo Hoo! We have had many good times and a couple of not so good times. (neglecting the homeschool blog could classify itself as one of those "not-so-good times)

Let me give you a recap of the previous week of school.

Every morning we read out of a Child's Story Bible (the exact name of this particular story Bible escapes me at the moment). We are reading now about David and Saul. Chloe particularly enjoyed the story of David and his best friend Jonathan. After reading for two days of Saul chasing David and trying to kill him and David having two opportunities to kill Saul and choosing not to, she stated, "these are not good stories. He's a bad man. I don't like him." It gave us a little opportunity to talk about being nice to people instead of treating them bad.

Chloe works willingly in her workbook every day now. This was a struggle for her when we first started school. She did not enjoy it one little bit. Now its getting easier for her to understand the instructions and be able to follow them.

We tried a science experiment this week out of her Bernstein Bear's Big Book of Science but it didn't work as the book portrayed it working. I've got some video of our attempts.

One of my New Year's goals for this semester of school is to take Chloe on more field trips. Well, just to take her on ANY field trip would be a start. Today we are headed to an art museum. I thought I would let Chloe paint when we get home as a follow-up to the trip.

Another new goal of mine for this blog is to update at least every Friday with a recap of our week. Hopefully I can add content during the week too, but every Friday will be my minimum goal.

And now I leave you with a video of Chloe saying her memory verse last week.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Thanksgiving Mini Book

2009-11-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

Has it really been a month since I updated my homeschool blog? More than a month? Really??? That's not good.

Let's see...what has been happening lately on our Journey to Ladyship.

~ We have found that a longer daily schedule does not work. We've cut out many of the extras I added into our curriculum so we do the bare minimum now. It works better that way. Chloe began dreading school and I just did not want that for her. I always enjoyed school and that is what I want for Chloe. I guess there is a reason Sonlight keeps their preschool curriculum short and sweet. (sometimes those experts really are experts)

~ We stretched the week back to five days instead of four. Cramming those couple of extra books in on day four was too much for us. This allows us to do an extra little project or two on Friday in addition to our workbooks. Pretty soon I will work up the courage to take Chloe on some field trips.

~We put the Japanese lapbook on hold. It was fun learning about Japan while our friends were there on a short term mission trip, but overall I think a Japanese lapbook was too intense for a four year old. We started a much simpler Thanksgiving lapbook this week. Chloe enjoys it more too. Here is what we made today.

A Thanksgiving Mini book.

Here are some pictures of Chloe making her mini book.

We took a creative detour and punched holes along the top of the book with my CropADial and I let Chloe add eyelets which I stamped into it. She loved working with Mama's scrapbooking tools. Word of advice though...we found the eyelets along the top inhibited the book from opening properly. Next time we will just sew string along the top and leave it at that.

I printed off some fun little projects to include in this lapbook. More on that to come soon (I hope). I just need to get my hands on a lamination machine so our creations will endure little hands and Father time.

Our Japanese Lapbook Project Begins

2009-09-17T09:57:00.001-07:00

We finished our corduroy lapbook a couple of weeks ago and for some reason, I am unable to upload the video of Chloe presenting her project. Arg! Since then, we have started a lapbook on the country of Japan. One of my dearest friends traveled to Japan the first of this month with her husband as short term missionaries. They offer 5 minute English lessons to the people of Japan in train stations and at parks in order to strike up a conversation, friendship and eventually lead into a gospel presentation. I wanted Chloe to take an interest in their work and in missions in general so I thought it would be a good idea for us to study the country of Japan while our dear friends are over there.

This week I borrowed books from the library about various Asian animals. (Most of which probably do not roam the island of Japan, but hey...close enough, right?) Each day this week we focus on a different animal. Monday we chose elephants. I read a book filled with facts about elephants (most of which were african elephants) and we pretended to be elephants ourselves. Chloe adores these types of play exercises.

We drank water by sucking it up through our trunks and then spraying it into our mouths. We sucked up dirt into our trunks and sprayed it over our heads onto our backs to protect us from the sun. We rolled in the mud to cool ourselves off and we slept under a shady tree.

I thought it would be fun to learn origami while working on our Japanese lapbook. Its a Japanese craft, after all. I found a book at the library for preschoolers filled with origami animals. PERFECT! I immediately turned to the elephant section and we got to work. Lo and behold, I discovered that even a book for preschool origami proves difficult. I now present my feeble attempt at an elephant.

Supposedly, this elephant sits up. Mine flops onto his nose (trunk.) He needed a little help from the pencil box to actually sit up. I think I will practice some of the basic origami folds before attempting another animal. And I will most likely teach those same basics to Chloe too.

We then inserted a picture of an elephant with a few facts on the back into our animal pocket for the lapbook to finish off our day. What fun! Today we will learn about Rhinoceroses if there is time before ballet class tonight. I will have to show you some of the other things we've added to our lapbook previously. Its been quite fun.

Art Class

2009-09-17T09:45:00.001-07:00

Sadly, with all that has been going on in our lives lately, I have not taken the time to update our homeschool blog. I am so far behind on everything so I am trying to play catch up today...with the house, with errands and with school. Yikes! What a task.

Anyways, I wanted to tell you all about a new class we added to our routine. Art. I checked out a book from the library with art projects ideas for preschoolers. Chloe picked our first project. Rice painting.

First we dyed the rice blue, red, green and yellow with food coloring. (She practiced scooping and pouring the rice into the bowls for an added learning exercise.)

I helped her draw a picture onto the poster board. She found the large piece of blank, white paper a bit intimidating so I gave her a few ideas to get her started and then she imagined her own creative picture. She wanted a tree with her Mama standing next to it. I drew a shape of a tree onto a smaller piece of paper to give her an example of how it worked and she came up with the larger scaled picture herself.

We painted watered down glue in sections on her picture and sprinkled the colored rice onto the paper. It took us a little while to get used to the idea that we needed to be quick before the glue dried. Mama was also forced to let go of her "clean floor" fetish and just allow the mess which invariably happens with creativeness.

Chloe added a blue flower before she deemed the picture complete.

So, I've scheduled art class for Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We will learn to sew on Tuesday and Thursday. Chloe spied a kidlet-sized sewing machine at Joann's the other day and just about drooled the entire walk through the store. She begged for it so she could sew her own doll clothes. How precious is that??? I thought about it for a couple of days and finally formulated a plan. I sat Chloe down, looked her in the eye and explained the plan. If she will work very hard and learn each step to sewing that I teach her during the next few months and IF I think she is ready...I will buy her the sewing machine for her next birthday. She agreed to this plan. So...I implemented sewing into our school day. More on that in another post though.

Preschool Fun

2009-08-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that I love school? Oh, yesterday. Right. But I do. I really love it. I probably haven't mentioned before the fact that I have known since I was four years old that I would homeschool. Its true. I always knew I would and have dreamed of the day when I could. You have no idea how excited I am that the day is finally here. Now I don't have the passel of children I hoped I would have by now, but that's okay. I am enjoying teaching my one precious little girl.

Today we blew bubbles. That's right. For school. How cool is that? (I never got to blow bubbles in school, but then again...I never attended preschool or kindergarten, so that's my problem right there) Up until today, I never would have classified bubble blowing as "school". But it stated right in her curriculum to blow bubbles. We usually blow bubbles about once a year because that is how often I think to get the bubble stuff out of the cupboard. Goodness gracious, but its fun. We should do it more often.

I am really taking this physical education thing seriously. I write out in my curriculum notebook an specific "exercise" for every day that we have school. I vary it up too...so some days she jump ropes, other days we go on a walk. Today she rode her bike around the block. This was our second time doing so and I can't believe I never thought of it before. If ever I wanted to go on a walk, I would haul her heavy stroller out of the shed, buckle her down and push her around the block. I never gave the bike a single thought. My mistake.

After just two times of riding around the block (last week and this week), she can now get herself over almost every hump in the sidewalk. (and when I say hump...I mean hump. Huge cracks where one side of the walk rises a good 3-4 inches above the other side) Today she even started steering crazily to show off her skills.

I knew homeschooling would be fun, but I never knew it would be this much fun. And Chloe loves it too. I thank God every day for the opportunity to sit and teach my daughter about His world. It truly is a privilege and I am blessed.

Tomorrow we are headed on our first field trip of the year. We will visit a pet store and hopefully have the chance to ask them some questions and maybe even pick up a book on kitten care or a little toy for the rascals. I better head to bed now before I nod off on the keyboard. Have a wonderful night everyone.

I Love Learning

2009-08-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, how I love school. Even while I attended school I enjoyed it. I even love the math and science portions, although those subjects are not my forte. (I am more of an English/Literature/fairyland kind of gal) Teaching Chloe this past week brings back alot of my own school time memories. I am the kind of person who could very easily attend school the rest of my life...that is, if money and time weren't such an issue. (I have five college classes to my credit) They say there are people who are addicted to school. That could soooo be me.

I truly believe that I will thoroughly enjoy homeschooling Chloe. Whatever I didn't get the first time around, I have the chance to try a second time. (and hopefully this time it will stick)

I wanted to share with you a few things I learned this past week with Chloe. (and somethings I learned outside of teaching her too)

1) Men in Japan wear Kimonos
2) Kimono means "clothing" in Japanese
3) There is a difference between a rhombus and a parallelogram. (had you asked me prior to last week I would have suspected you were speaking to me in a foreign language)
4) Chloe doesn't have very good attentiveness skills. Neither do I. I suppose that is where she gets it from. We are both working on it this week.
5) a week without television does a body good (we haven't even entered the basement except to do laundry since James left)
6) Dulce la Leche coffee creamer does not taste good in Caribe tea.
7) Many of the nursery rhymes I have memorized are a lot longer than I remember. (did you know that Mary's little lamb got kicked out of school for causing a ruckus amongst the kiddos?)
8) Chloe actually hears and understands most of what I tell her...she just pretends not to hear me. (can you believe I didn't know that before?) Now I ask her to repeat what Mama just said and every single time she repeats it verbatim...even when I think she was visiting la-la land while I was speaking. She is one smart cookie who had her Mama fooled for the longest time.

And the best thing I learned this week is that I can make a lapbook myself. Yes, I can. I am so excited. Our next lapbook (we are still finishing up Corduroy) will be on Japan. Then I think I will make one on tea. A whole research project on tea...how cool would that be?

Anyways, I better sign off for the evening and check some emails. I will hopefully have a finished lapbook to show you tomorrow.

Lapbooking

2009-08-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Melanie planted the idea of lapbooking in my head the other night while we chatted away over the internet. She figured it would be something I would probably be interested in and I have to tell you, she couldn't have been more accurate. It took me a couple hours of google research to finally figure out exactly what a lapbook was and what it was for, but in the end I knew it was for me.

We began our first lapbook Saturday evening while I was scrapbooking. I printed off some pictures for Chloe to color that didn't require much "work" or "teaching" with them so she could sit and color while I worked on my own stuff. We chose to do a lapbook about Corduroy. (the book written by Don Freeman) And before our first lapbook is even complete, I now have ideas for the next 100 books for us to make. Oh goodness gracious, but Melanie was right. I LOVE lapbooking. I even have ideas for lapbooks I want to make myself! Is that weird?

For those of you who don't know what a lapbook is, let me try to explain it in a way that makes sense for me.

A lapbook is like a scrapbook about a topic of your choice made from information you gather when you research your subject.

We have friends heading to Japan for a month long mission trip and so our next lapbook will be on Japan. It will certainly be interesting to learn about the place they are while we are praying for them.

Tomorrow we should be finishing up our Corduroy lapbook and then I will take some pictures of it (and maybe some video) to show you all what it is. So definitely, more information to come about lapbooks!

School Schedule

2009-08-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

So, today we started Day 3 of our homeschooling and we are beginning to feel some sort of routine with it already. I am seeing how things flow best and adjusting and tweaking the curriculum a bit to fit our own style.

Today, I thought I would share with you our routine. First, we start the day with prayer and our Bible lesson (complete with Bible verse and character trait.) We sit on the couch for this portion of our school day.

This is also where we read our storybooks and rhymes. Then we head over to the kitchen table for our school work.

We do our workbook and our science here.

Then, we head outside for our physical education and our gross motor skills activity. (the activities vary so sometimes they are indoor projects instead)

I thought that was a pretty cool picture. I tried teaching Chloe to jump rope for physical education and I caught her mid-jump. We realized quickly that it would be easier to jump rope without her pinafore on so we took it off and that helped her get the rope over her head easier. After physical education and our activity, we head back inside for one more reading and then Chloe enjoys working with her shape blocks.

Sometimes we add an art project in there like painting or something else. For music I have borrowed a classical cd from the library and we play that during breakfast. If she finishes eating before the cd is over, I allow her to dance around the living room before we start our chores. Chores are always finished before we begin school for the day. It helps Chloe to get out her energy too before we begin.

So, this is what our school day looks like so far. We will see how it goes for the next couple of weeks.

Physical Education

2009-08-12T17:18:00.000-07:00

Even though James left today for his 6 month deployment, I went ahead and kept school with Chloe. I needed to keep my mind off things for a while and he needed to gather his last minute articles for packing. It worked well.

Yesterday was our first day of school and it only took us about 20-30 minutes to complete the entire thing. James felt that I could have taken more time with it and really explain things better. Today, I did. We spent over an hour for school and we had so much more fun too.

I also decided to add physical education to our school day. Today I took Chloe on a bike ride around the block. (after James left...I needed to get out of the house so I wouldn't cry all night long.) We haven't really given Chloe much opportunity to ride her bike much since we live in a townhome with a tiny backyard. There really isn't much room for physical education type play. The walk/ride around the block was perfect. I might incorporate more bike rides around the block into our routine. She needs the practice too.

Now, I am trying to think of some other things we could do for physical education. Here is my list of ideas so far.

~Roller skating
~Bike Riding
~Walk in the woods (or around the block)
~Kickball (soccer)
~Ballet (she is enrolled this year)
~Swimming (we just joined the local YMCA and will be signing up for swim lessons)
~Jump Roping (she really wants to learn and I haven't taken the time to show her yet)
~Running at the park (she loves to run back and forth...I could even set up an obstacle course for her to run through)

Does anyone have any other ideas for the physical education of a four year old?

It Arrived!

2009-08-11T12:48:00.001-07:00

Today marked the beginning of our exciting journey this year. The preschool journey. Our curriculum finally arrived at our doorstep today. We ended up choosing Sonlight curriculum because of the mass amount of books included. Many of you already know me...I love my books. It is one of my biggest desires to pass on this love of books to my children. (child, right now)

We immediately tore into the box to see all the goodies inside.

Oh the books! Glorious books!

I don't think I have been this excited in a long, long time. Well...probably since Chloe's 4th birthday. Anyways, Chloe couldn't wait to get started and since neither could I, we began our first official day of preschool today. I was quite surprised that it took us less than 30 minutes. Wow! This will be a piece of cake. And most of it was reading out of storybooks. It couldn't have been easier. I am extremely pleased with our curriculum choice so far and I can't wait to see what this next year will teach us, together.

I am starting school as early as possible (which was why I started it today on the very day the books arrived) so that we can take time off when James returns home from his deployment this spring. He will be gone for 6 months and I want to be able to have 2-3 weeks off when he returns so we can just enjoy being a family again. Also, we have put in for orders to Germany or England and so there is a strong likelihood we will be moving in March/April. We will know in September and I will be able to tell you then, where and when we will be moving.

Well now... I must be off to spend some precious time with my dear ones playing games for the afternoon. Have a fabulous day!

Which One?

2009-08-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

Okay. I have narrowed our curriculum choices down to two. I can't quite decide which one to pick.

Sonlight
or
My Father's World.

Both look fantastic yet they are completely different. Sonlight carries mostly books, which I love. I own a couple of them already but most of them would make pleasant additions to our bookshelf. My Father's World, on the other hand carries more hand's on things like puzzles and lacing toys and such like things.

I have already purchased many of the four year old read-alouds found on Simply Charlotte Mason. Two of them came in the mail today and we began reading them this morning. Norman the Doorman by Don Freeman and When We Were Young by A.A. Milne.

Why is it so hard to pick a curriculum? I am actually debating buying both, at least for preschool and postponing the decision between the two until kindergarten. I have to be honest with you and mention that I LOVE all the books we would be able to read with Sonlight but I also love all the items for preschool play that we would receive with My Father's World. Has anyone ever combined these two curriculum before? And if so, what were your experiences?

Researching Charlotte Mason

2009-07-31T09:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I began researching homeschooling curriculum so I can begin preschool with Chloe this fall. I am finding myself quite interested in the Charlotte Mason method and have been doing some internet reading to familiarize myself with the details of her philosophies. I really like many of the ideas I am finding. Living books, nature studies, scripture memory. It all fits right up my alley. Today I plan to get a hold of her series so I can better understand her method and philosophies.

While Chloe won't start anything formal until next year (kindergarten, which is required in my state at 5 years old) I do plan on trying the Family Work together this year for some preschool time. I think I will begin with scripture memory, music, nature study, and some art. We live in a very rich area for art and history so it should be fairly easy to find things on a 4 year old's level.

One thing that struck me about her method was the idea that young children should have as much time out of doors as possible. I have been remiss in this area. I am going to begin taking Chloe to the park, beach, woods and many other places outside as much as I can and am able. Today we went on a walk through our neighborhood to look for animals. I allowed Chloe to use the camera to photograph a few of them herself. She wasn't used to this sort of thing, but I noticed that after a few minutes of letting her run around freely, she really opened up and I could see her just soaking in the world around her. She chased butterflies and bees, picked flowers and watched the birds flying overhead. I am beginning to see that this form of learning really is best for her age.

I look forward to learning more about the Charlotte Mason method and seeing if its a correct fit for our family. If anyone has tried this method or is currently using it, I would love to hear how its working for you and some benefits you have seen in your children. I would also love to hear about different things you do and some of the schedules you keep for the subjects.

Some websites I have been reading the past couple of days are...

Simply Charlotte Mason

and

Ambleside Online.

The next thing on my to do list is to get my hands on the Charlotte Mason series and read up on that. Then I plan on creating an area in my home for "school". Of course, there will be loads of play areas in my "school" but I would love to have a more formal area too. Like a bookshelf with,(like this list of books for Early Years Read Alouds. I have already ordered most of the books on the 4 year old list from Half Ebay.) an art center, a dress up area, a blocks area. All the sorts of things you would expect in an actual preschool.

I can't forget, though, that the Charlotte Mason method implements spending a majority of the time out of doors. That is key.

Beginning a Home School Blog

2009-07-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

I thought I should begin a home school blog separate from my regular blog. I don't really know why I thought this would be a good idea aside from the fact that maybe everyone reading my everyday blog might not be interested in our home school journey...and vice versa. There could also be those who are solely interested in our home school journey but could really care less about my crocheted dishcloths or the color of socks I am wearing today.

So...here is it. The first blog post of our Journey to Ladyship. I chose the name because that is exactly what I am in the process of doing. Raising the little girl God has blessed me with to be a Lady.

A lady, to me, is much more than merely being a female, or even a woman. A lady shines Jesus light to the world. A lady reflects the glory of God. A lady exemplifies a Christ like heart and lives a Christ centered life. These are the things I want to instill in Chloe while we home school. This is actually one of the very core reasons I desire to home school her. So that while we are learning math and science and literature, I can also teach her patience and virtue and generosity and all the other things God admonishes us to learn and teach to our children.

Here begins our Journey To Ladyship. I hope you enjoy reading our story.