Project Postcard: 50 States

Last night after having a "goal setting session" with my soon to be 3rd grader I started brainstorming my own educational goals. Of course I think 98% of education should be fun and 2% busy work. One goal I have is to do a "50 states" study. I thought well wouldn't it be fun to ask all my Facebook friends to send us a postcard from their state. Study each state as the postcards come in, and build a wall as a visual with them all. Long time face book friend Alora said "I'm going to steal this" and she is going to do it to. I think it would be great for all homeschoolers who plan to study the 50 states to do the same..and of course blog about it

Is it wrong that in my head fight club quotes keep popping up in my head when I say "project postcard" lol

So far we have promises of postcards from Florida, Indiana, Oregon, Connecticut, Iowa, and Missouri. I will post our progress and how we used the postcards in our studies.

We of course will learn capitols, birds, flowers etc. And of course foods, like Hershey bars for Pittsburgh etc.

After thought being I should of asked the senders to put come cool state fact information on them.

If you'd like to send us a postcard from your state I just ask for a basic touristy postcards with the state name on front. Drop me an email and I will send our address.

Poetry memory work

If you have a reluctant writer and/or reader. You might be able to reach them through Poetry. This has been one way to get little Moonbeam to do copywork with minimal complaints. She has a a keen skill for memorization which will help her so much later in life. When we first discussed Poetry 2 years ago at the end of Kindergarten I was shocked I could still recite Paul Revers Ride from 3rd grade, but ask me what I had for breakfast forget it.

So little Moonbeam has a few poems stored in her memory and this week we are adding

Manners By. Florence A. Richardson

Water and soap will make you sweet;
Brush and comb will keep you neat
But "Thank you," "Please," and "Pardon me,"
Will make a sweeter child of thee.

With clothes that have no spot or rent,
With shoes that shine, be not content,
But polish up your manners, too;
Make courtesy a part of you.

We have a schedule for learning our poetry as follows,

Mondays We review/recite last weeks poem and I read this weeks poem to her twice then we read it together a third time.

Tuesdays Again I read the poem twice and we read it together once then we do the copy work. I use Worksheetworks.com I title the page the same as the poem and set it to have a space between so not only does she trace the words in the poem she is re writing them too.

Wednesday We do the say recite/ say together and, we start making a lapbook for the poem.
some poems its easier to find things to use in a lap book. I let Moonbeam decorate the front of the lapbook and we staple our copy work to the wide center part then use the smaller sides to put a typed copy of the poem, colored images for example for this poem I might print out some clothes and combs for her to color. Sometimes we even use things she has cut from magazines or newspapers.

Thursdays Again we use the same recite twice, together once, and then finish up our lapbook.

Friday 98% of the time she is ready to recite alone and we choose next weeks poem.

This method has worked well for her and I.

Getting ready for Kindy...

Looking at Homeschooling curriculum is sometimes enough to make your head spin. This first year is so critical that you don't want to make mistakes (but you will, and you'll fix and tweak it a bunch). I guess this is why so many of us second guess ourselves so many times. I belong to a few homeschooling groups and forums and sometimes I see these long lists of what folks are doing with their kindy kids and I scream a little on the inside. I don't know if it is because I wish I could or because I am thinking your kidding me right? I personally firmly believe that kindy is all about the 3 R's and anything else is just the icing on the cake. My youngest is going to start kindy this summer (we school year round) She is not yet at the age where I even have to report her "schooling" I have 2 years for that. Now by the standards of Public Schools she wouldn't be of age to start kindy for another year.

With that said when you have a 4 year old who begs to "do school" already knows all her numbers, colors, shapes, and letters by sight and sound. It is time to go in my opinion. The biggest issue I see coming down the pike is that her handwriting is just not there yet, and nor is she very excited about trying very hard.

As far as choosing a curriculum goes for kindy its not as hard as some make it out to be. If your a "seasoned" Homeschooling mom chances are you have tried a few things already.

#1 for me is choosing a strong phonics program. There are many to choose from. I personally didn't like   "How to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" I found it boring, my daughter didn't like and dreaded every time I pulled it out. Funny thing is I kept it just in case the next child in line would like it.
Seeing as my youngest is only 4 most of our phonics will be online or dvds. My children seem to respond better to this type of learning for phonics. Starfall.com is fantastic and we also have a membership to ClickNKids.com and let us not forget the wonderful leap frog dvds.

#2 Is handwriting. This is easy enough to do with out a fancy program. I know many folks love handwriting with out tears. I am sure its a wonderful program and I do like some of their concepts I just cant seem to shell out the cash for something I can do for free. So many handwriting generators, free worksheets, and resources on letter formation. I like the Zaner-Blosser style of writing, not a fan of some of the other styles.

#3 is Math. Math is pretty fun at this age. Lots of manipulative's, coloring, and so many games. It's another subject that you can pretty much do for free at a young age. We will be using MEP reception which is free in pdf form. We may decide later on to add in something to supplement with.

As I said everything else is the icing on the cake. We will do plenty of read-a-longs, she will sit in with her sisters on SOTW 2 just as she has sat in for much of SOTW1 this year. She will also sit in on Science, Art and Music. I'm not expecting her full cooperation by any means but hoping she matures more this coming year and is more willing to let me be the teacher lol.

Our week at a glance

This week has been a little unusual for us. We are still settling into living in another state, a new time zone, and dealing with the loss of many of our things. It makes for a few road bumps in our schooling days.

I had to revamp a lot of our schooling due to our books getting lost in the shuffle. Which to be honest I wanted to ditch a few things and try out some new things anyway so it has not been all bad.

This week Sunshine worked on printing her name which she clearly is just not ready for.
A. She just doesn't want to do it
B. Gets all the right letters written but not in the correct order then tells me how wrong I am lol.
I am going to take a step back, remind myself that it is not a race and go back to working on some fine motor skills and more fun approaches to writing.
She does enjoy marking up workbooks though she is not really following directions but very proud of how she things they should be done. My mom guilt comes out when I'm totally fine with this because I just need her to be busy. I am still very proud of her ability to recognize letters and knowing her letter sounds.

Moonbeam is moving along nicely in FLL, every time I pull out the book she starts reciting poetry. I love that! We are Starting MEP math next week and I showed her some of it she is excited. These last few weeks since the move we have just worked on addition and subtraction drill with a little money math mixed in. We are still doing copy work her handwriting has improved but its still not where I want it. I hate to compare I really do but our nephew living with us who is just one day younger than her (and in PS) has much neater handwriting. We worked on Proverbs this week which I feel are good moral lessons even if you are not a bible believer.

Starlight and Rainbow are pretty much doing a lot of the same. Evan Moor daily lang. practice, some Math review Algebra for Rainbow and Multiplication for starlight. A little journaling, and some math story problems. Evan Moor Cursive for Starlight as well.

This week I also had the 3 eldest work on writing names in cursive. It occurred to me to do this after we joined the new library and none of my kids singed the applications in cursive. I'm not a big pusher of cursive (lets face it this day and age typing is more important) But there is just something beautiful about cursive.

As a group we do SOTW, Earth science, State History, Art & Music. Which was all sort of neglected this week. We will be "Sunday schooling" this week to make up for some lost time. We had too many outside obligations this week that made my time with them limited. I am hoping next week is a bit better when dh starts his new job and I can focus 100% on the kids.

We did manage a chapter of SOTW, and a video but we generally try to fit in a bit more.

One of those days...

Today was "one of those days" where I had obligations outside of the home and gave the kids a light day. Which generally means Friday is going to be a looooong day. I gave the kiddos premade handwriting sheets to practice there cursive signatures. Then, they had some mandala coloring sheets. This was supposed to be followed up by a Geography video which they somehow managed to avoid. I can't say I blame them for "forgetting" to watch the video the last few selections I have made were kind of blah. They have reminded me of the old boring film strips we watched in the 80's.

In other news my husband starts his new job on Monday and our days should run a bit smoother. While I have appreciated the extra hand it sometimes slows us down when he is on our turf.

Fridays are always super busy and as we try to get a lot of school work, cleaning and laundry done so we can have a time of rest. I am hoping to write a sum up of our entire week tomorrow "a week at a glance" type thing.

New Blog

So here we go...again. I wanted to start up a new blog to focus a bit more on our homeschooling adventures and a little family stuff tossed in. I am going to try at the very least a weekly sum up of what we did during the previous week. Maybe a bit on the methods to our madness and of course next years plans (isn't that what all us homeschool moms like to talk about) So pull up a chair, a cup of your favorite beverage and relax.