Shared History...Ancient History

One of the things I LOVE about homeschooling is that we can experience learning as a family.

It makes for an interesting dynamic...and a great deal of fun!

Right now we are studying Ancient history -- the earliest civilizations -- Sumerians, Upper and Lower Egypt, King Narmer/Menes, Cuneiform, Hieroglyphics, Stone Tablets, Papyrus, Mummification, the Rosetta Stone, and Hammurabi's Code. It's an exciting time for us! Listening to the kids talk about history in excitement, with a clear understanding of what was happening in the world at that time, is amazing. But I think this time period in history has a great deal of appeal to all of us.

Ancient Egypt brings so many different thoughts to mind. The kids this month created their own Hieroglyphics, and spent time writing/speaking in each other's "codes" one Friday. They actually wrote keys for their individual languages, and passed the key along with their codes. We also made the double crown of Egypt - the crown King Narmer (Menes) wore when he united Egypt by combining the crown of the defeated king with his own, making the red & white crown that would be worn by Pharaohs for several thousand years afterward.

It really benefits the kids to hear the interpretation of what we are learning from each other. Savannah, sharing her understanding of Hammurabi's code with her sisters, gives a different insight than if I were to just share the basic information. Even more interesting, their interpretation almost always involves a discussion of if something was morally/religiously correct. Hammurabi's code really created a very unique debate about the appropriateness of the punishments.

Friday was the end of our first month of school and we celebrated with a game of Jeopardy based on our history studies. I developed questions from what we've learned about History over the last month. Since we have been learning this particular subject together, I was able to create one game for all four of the kids. It was a fun experience, and really gave us an opportunity to review what we've learned before moving on this coming week. Since it was a success, with all four kids able to answer multiple questions, we will probably make this a monthly event.

With the changing weather, we've had to curtail our walks a bit, and start incorporating Cosmic Kids Yoga, Just Dance Workouts, Jumping Jax Gym, and the like. Asher and Savannah will be studying nutrition this year in Science. Last year they each learned one "harder" dish to cook (spaghetti, chili, tacos, ect), one dessert bread (apple, pumpkin, banana), and made one simple lunch (PB&J, Deli-Turkey sandwiches, ect). This year, they will start helping design our monthly menu, and will each become responsible for 1-2 meals a week. Last year I avoided teaching them how to make breakfast foods, like pancakes, concerned they would burn themselves on the griddle, so hopefully this year we will find a few recipes they can make the night before and pop in the oven (I found a delicious peach & walnut stuffed french toast!). Rosalynne and Gabrielle are still a little young to help in the physical kitchen much, but they will be responsible for setting/clearing the table, getting cold items (yogurt, fruit, cheese...) and might help a little with the menu.

So far, school has been fairly relaxing. We have a full schedule, but we are working through it each day, and are settling into the swing of things. I'm excited to see what this next month brings!

First Week...Success!

The start of a new school year is always challenging. We've gone from a relatively free summer back to the structure of lessons and schooling. It's not the easiest transition.

Now that we've completed our first week of school, I have to say it went extremely well. This is the first year that we have combined our studies (World History). It's also the first year we've done two complete cores, including Science. Last year we forwent Science with Rosalynne and Gabrielle because they didn't really seem to be getting much from it after the first 8 weeks, so we packed it away to save for this year.

The first day, we went a bit slower and didn't complete our lessons until around 3:45pm, but by the end of the week, we were finished by around 2pm. We have also continued with our hour-long walk in the morning after breakfast, so I'm pretty content with that completion time. Gabrielle started right in with Grade 1 readers and Language Arts, and she is doing excellent! It's amazing what one year will do. Last year she wasn't reader for Kindergarten readers or LA, but it's clicking suddenly, and she is making sense of the words and doing well with her spelling.

Teaching 3 different Language Arts this year is definitely challenging, but it's one of my favorite things about homeschooling. I can make sure I am working at each child's level, and they never have to struggle so much that they lose their love of books and reading.

It has taken quite a bit of trial and error to place Asher and Savannah in the appropriate levels on Time4Learning. The 6th Grade Language Arts program was WAY too easy, and they found it extremely boring. But 6th Grade Math was pretty challenging.

Overall, we had a great first week. Friday is our "off" day. We are working with a 4-day curriculum this year, so our plan is to reserve Friday for field trips, art/crafts, appointments, make-up work, extra-curricular, electives, and an extra day to review any topic or subject that proves extra challenging.

I'm sure as our school year continues we will be adjusting our schedule and lessons as needed. But, it has been a wonderful first week! 

So -- what is curriculum and which one do we utilize?

I mention in previous posts about our curriculum choices, but saying "curriculum" really doesn't explain much of anything.

Curriculum is basically the subjects and material comprising a course of study in a school, college, or educational program. It is, simply, what we study. When discussing homeschooling, however, often it is so much more than what we study: it includes the methods of study. Methods of homeschooling vary widely, from complete unschooling, to relaxed homeschooling, to a Charlotte Mason approach, to a school at home philosophy, to unit studies, and so many more than I could mention here. 

Sonlight Box Day! Our curriculum came in!

Personally, unschooling is not for us. We need some amount of structure, and though I do like to let the kids pick different electives to study, I am uncomfortable with the idea of completely student-led learning. So, I might let the kids help choose what area of Science we will study (Earth, Physical, Biology, Chemistry, ect), but then I will select the appropriate materials. 

If I had to describe our homeschooling method I would say it's a rather eclectic mix of relaxed homeschooling, Charlotte Mason (Nature studies, yay!), with just a touch of school at home. Yes, we have desks, tables, and a designated learning area, though often our lessons move around the house, inside and out. 

In general, we have a schedule, but we keep it relaxed. We have an overall plan for the week, month, semester, and year. If we complete more in one term than we do in the next, it's not a big deal. Our main goal is to have fun while we complete our studies. If we work a little faster some weeks, and slower others, then so be it. With homeschooling, we are blessed not to have a designated end of the school year. We can finish earlier or later than initially planned, or we can extend our studies throughout the summer and go year round. 

The Core Asher & Savannah are using

This will be our third year using Sonlight Curriculum. It's an amazing program, which uses living books to teach History, Social Studies, Language Arts, and Science. Throughout the year we do what are called "Read Alouds" which are books that I read to the kids and then we discuss them. The kids also have what are called "Readers" which are assigned independent reading. We also study History and Geography through reading. This year, Asher and Savannah will be doing Core G, World History Part 1 (seen above, though we purchased an older version that has more books and materials) and will be reading approximately 40 books. 

By an odd stroke of luck, the girls will be starting Core B this year, Intro to World History Part 1 (seen below), so for the next two years or more, they will be on the same cycle as Asher and Savannah, so we can actually combine some of our read alouds!

The Core Rosalynne and Gabrielle are using

Because the kids are separated in age, we can't use just one Core for them. It would either be way too challenging for Rosalynne and Gabrielle, or way too easy for Asher and Savannah. So we will be using two Cores (B & G), one for the older kids, and one for the younger girls. I will combine the read alouds, somewhat, since the kids will be studying the same time period and locations at approximately the same time. The kids all listened to several of our read alouds last year and still talk about their favorites. In fact, they've asked us to reread some of them. 

The biggest difficulty in using Sonlight with four children of different ages and abilities is that I need to use multiple Language Arts programs, so Asher and Savannah will study 6th/7th grade language arts with Core G. Rosalynne and Gabrielle, however, are at drastically different levels. Rosalynne will be working through a 2nd Grade LA program, and Gabrielle will be starting at a K/1st Grade level. Rosalynne is reading fairly well for a 6 year old, and easily worked through Grade 1 LA last year. Gabrielle wasn't quite ready for Kindergarten LA last year, so we switched to The Reading Lesson and just worked on writing and letter sounds, getting to basic reading towards the end of the year. At the start of the school year, I will assess Gabrielle's reading before making a final determination of where to begin. 

With Sonlight, the Core program covers History, Bible, and Literature, so I am easily able to pick readers/LA that are a perfect fit for each student. Similarly, Science is separate from the Core, and will adapt for multiple ages. The girls are starting Science A (we decided not to use it last year) and Asher and Savannah will start Science F, but I will detail our LA and Science studies a bit later.

A New Year, A New Newsletter

Welcome back, everyone! 

We stopped blogging for a while, thinking that a better way to reach our family and friends would be to mail our newsletters (not everyone has internet access, right?) but, after a year and a half of writing our newsletter, and often forgetting to go to the post office to mail it, or running out of stamps and only sending them to half of our list, we decided to give this medium another try. 

This school year we are doing something quite different! We will be integrating our literature-based curriculum (Sonlight) with online programs (Time4Learning, ABCmouse). In our technologically advanced world, we know it's important that our children know and understand how to utilize computers and similar systems, and what better way than to mix this integration with necessary core material? Asher and Savannah will be focusing on Math material this year, while Rosalynne and Gabrielle will focus on Math and Reading. All four of the kids will have access to core material in other subjects, but for our purposes this year, those subjects will be purely for fun.

As we did in our Newsletters, the kids will be responsible for some of the information in the blog, though I intend to post regular updates about our progress. I'm still not certain how frequently I will post, or just how much of a contribution the kids will have (we have an extremely rich and full curriculum this year). 

Last week and this week is our "soft start" which is my way of saying we are taking two partial weeks to become acclimated with our online programs so we can work out any bugs well before our official "start" date of September 4th. This is as much for me as it is for the kids, since I am learning two completely new parent 'portals' and reviewing the lessons and objectives along with the overall scope/sequence of the programs. Since we already have a "complete" curriculum with Sonlight, we will likely spend a few weeks adjusting our schedules to achieve the correct balance. Feel free to check in and see how that adjustment is going.

As many of our family and friends know, we have welcomed two new children into the family since this blog was regularly active. Rosalynne and Gabrielle will move to be featured here, in Adventures in Homeschooling, and our two youngest kiddos will be featured in Nursery News. 

Well, in a nut shell, that's where we are at right now as we approach the official start of the new school year! We look forward to sharing our adventures with you this coming year. If you know a family member or friend that might enjoy following along, please feel free to share a link to the blog with them, or send me a message with their email, and I can email them a link to new posts as the come out!