CHRISTEPHI

I always love reading about what programs other homeschool families use. Sometimes what one person likes you recognize is exactly what you don't like, or what is a disaster for one kid is exactly what another kid needs. I never get tired of that beautiful diversity! This year my little fella will be a big Third Grader. I can hardly believe he's 8 years old. I distinctly remember my third grade year and the public school in Florida that I went to for part of the year.  It's wild to think that my "baby" could have such clear memories of this time frame when he is all grown up. Miss M is having a sort of second year of 6th grade. Although she did 6th grade level work across the board last year, I am in no rush to have her start junior high (and high school right around the corner from that). She's only 11!  So this year she will be advancing in her studies, but we're still calling it 6th grade. Some of her work will be at a 6th grade level and some will b...

Hello, my lovely blog readers!  Did you miss me?  It's okay if you didn't because your life is probably as busy and insane as my own. Can you believe I didn't blog at ALL in 2017? Not once!  An entire school year in the books without a single post documenting it. But that's okay, because I gave myself permission before the year began to not blog. Sometimes we need to cut things from our schedule for a season in order to put our focus more fully in other areas. But, I'm back for 2018! A super quick recap of what we did last year..... We used My Father's World's Rome to the Reformation for Bible, history, science, music, and art.  Both kids used Singapore Math . Mister E worked through Language Lessons for Today and part of Spelling by Sound and Structure until I realized he already knew how to spell all the words in the book and dropped it. Miss M used the final one third of Intermediate Language Lessons , All-in-One English , and Writing Strands ...

We are now a little over halfway through Creation to the Greeks and MFW First Grade. As you may have noticed, I dropped off blogging every week as I expected I would. It's easier to blog when the days are short and cold, but much harder to find time for it once spring arrives and we're out gardening and such in our spare time.  I wouldn't have it any other way!  If you wish to keep up with our weekly doings, you'll have to follow my Facebook page which is updated almost every day that we do school! So, now that we're on the downhill side of the year, I thought I would write a little about what has worked well for us this year and what hasn't. Our planners Back in January I copied the grid pages from my CTG and First Grade teacher's manuals and assembled them into a lesson planner for the year. (Remember: MFW allows for photocopying of the grid pages for planning and record keeping as long as you agree to never loan, give, or sell the teacher's ma...

Shortly after moving to our new home this past winter, the kids and I noticed a squirrel that was different than the others because he had no tail! Or rather, just a stub of a tail left from some trauma he must have suffered. We have spent quite a lot of time speculating about what could have happened to him. Was he caught by a cat only to escape with his life? Did he get run over by a car? Perhaps he was caught in the crook of a tree? (This last theory proved more plausible after we found a different squirrel in January caught by its tail, dead, and frozen solid!) It wasn’t long before this unique squirrel was dubbed Dale No-Tail. During our bemused observations, we discovered which hole in which tree is Dale’s home and before long we noticed a female squirrel shares that habitation. When she came to the porch rail, we also observed that she is clearly pregnant (and has nursed kits before; nature reveals these things!). She, of course, has been named Mrs. Dale and we are eagerly...

I’ve had several people ask me lately about how we use copywork and dictation in our homeschool. I'm still learning about both of these simple-yet-powerful tools, but I'm happy to share what we've done up to now and what I hope to do in the future. Copywork Copywork is an excellent tool to teach children a whole bunch of things at once. At its most basic it is handwriting practice, and as we all know "practice makes perfect!” But it is ever so much more than just a handwriting worksheet. Good copywork passages will be taken from good sources and will include lofty thoughts and rich vocabulary. A well-crafted sentence will introduce basic punctuation, capitalization rules, and even grammar that the child will internalize as they spend time with it. The concept of copying beautiful passages of poetry and prose is immensely appealing to me. I want to sit down and fill up a journal with pretty passages! Unfortunately, Miss M is not of the same mine as I am ...

We're using Primary Language Lessons for English this year. It's a very gentle approach to language and doesn't require worksheet after worksheet of repetition.  We love it! This week one of Miss M's lessons was about prepositions. It was a mainly verbal lesson (fill in the blank), so to make it more hands on -- and fun! -- I gave her a ball of modeling clay and a toothpick so she could demonstrate the prepositions to me. And I took pictures of them just for you! How do you make language arts more hands-on?

This was our first week of First Grade!  We mostly covered review material in math and language arts: object position; grouping, sorting, and classifying objects; short a words; identifying and writing lowercase and capital letters. Miss M is far beyond all this, but a little easy review for getting into the routine of school is fine with me! It builds her confidence and so far has kept her interest despite it’s being too easy for her. In science, we learned to observe, compare, and classify using our five senses.  We also discussed how scientists use the scientific method to learn about the world.  Miss M is fixated on the magnifying glass that came with the curriculum and wanted to use “magnifying glass!” as her answer to every question.  The book Your Five Senses by Melvin and Gilda Berger was a big hit with Miss M – not included with the Calvert curriculum. Our social studies lessons didn’t quite happen because I realized during Lesson 2 that I was miss...