Weekly Wrap Up - 10/21/16 and Tot School Weeks 6 and 7

This is a combined post because I'm in a crazy busy period of work. Still lots of learning going on, just not as much documentation! Random colds have been floating in and out of our house too, so set school work hasn't happened as normal.

The girls took part in their first Cookie Blitz. Most of Guides funds come from cookie sales. This Blitz in particular ended up sold out!

Paramedics came to Olivia's brownies to teach them some basic first aid. Olivia was thrilled to bandage her friend's "cut" arm. Even better (in Olivia's opinion) was the fact that they let her keep the gloves. She wore those things for days!

Brianna's dad is really good about me homeschooling her and has never questioned my wishes in it. Occasionally He gives her assignments. This one was of the history of the company that he works for.

Life Skills! We got new blinds this week and I had Brianna hang them. Now she knows why I hate them lol

Random pumpkin craft with LOTS of help from Joshua.

Brianna did Joshua's schoolwork with him. He loves telling everyone letters.

This one was more a lesson of sharing and taking turns. Something Joshua is completely not fond of.

Joshua woke up this week with a swollen face, complaining of pain. A doctor's visit showed nothing wrong. No ear infection, no tooth abscess, no strep, nothing. Just random swelling and pain. Now it's gone. I guess Joshua just likes to be special.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschooler, Hip Homeschool Mom and Homeschool Creations.

Current Curriculum - September 2016

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Previous post from last July here.

This post coincides with iHomeschool Network's Annual Blog Hop. This week (which I'm late on!) is Curriculum Week. Check next week for School Room Week.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. Joshua started "Preschool" on Sept 6, 2016. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10, Olivia is anywhere from Gr. 1-3, Joshua is preschool/Kindy. 

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.

Joshua:

He's juuuust starting out so is mostly using left overs from Olivia as we see what he like/works well for him. Some of the more common printables that we're grabbing are from 1+1+1=1, Our Little Monkeys, Homeschool Creations, Confessions of a Homeschooler and Teachers Pay Teachers.

He's still working on speech with his speech therapist. At the time of this writing, he is approx 1 year "behind" in his speech for the typical 3 yr 3 mth old child. This is WAY better than his completely non verbal-ness from a few months ago, so we'll take it! We still make use of sign language. He still uses it for words he doesn't know and we'll use it when we are trying to figure out his gibberish.

Once he has a better grasp on constant language we'll start ABCMouse with him. Olivia really liked it and he loved watching her when she did her lessons so is already familiar with it.

Olivia:

English:

We're playing around in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We do dictations for Brave Writer's Friday Freewrite and to write her Brownie Journal (basically, what she did at Brownies on a given day).

We're almost done 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program. Olivia picked up a lot of the more "sight" words with that. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words. We have oodles of early readers that we share in reading and Olivia is reading more and more of the words in each book. 

In the spring started Reading Eggs, an online program like ABC Mouse, but instead of learning sounds, she's now using it to read. She loves it and asks to work on it even on the weekends.

Math:
Olivia is almost done Early Math on Khan Academy. Her main curriculum is Math Mammoth, in which she just started the Gr. 2 level. It worked well for her for Gr. 1, so I hope it continues to!

With our ReadingEggs subscription came a subscription to MathSeeds which is meant for 3-8 year olds. MathSeeds starts out really young (Olivia was being made to identify numbers), but she doesn't seem to care. I'm not sure (since she didn't care) if there is a test out area to start at a higher level.

Extra Curricular:
Olivia just finished her 2nd year of soccer. She has grown so much in it since last year. Last year she would pick grass and stare off into space. This year she actively took part in drills, actually went after the ball on the field and even scored 2 goals!

Olivia joined Brownies this year. I was a Brownie as a girl, so was super excited for her to start. For some reason, she's picking up on Brianna's "I can't sleep away" and is nervous about the possibility of camps. She's slept at a friend's house several times with no issue, so I don't think it'll be a problem, but she sure thinks it will be!

Brianna: 

Math: 
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions. However, she's been struggling so much with math that we're trying something new altogether. We've started Time4Learning. She responds really well to "computer school work" so I'm hoping this helps with her math. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

Brianna struggles a lot with math so she's "behind", only doing Gr. 6. But that's the beauty of homeschooling. She can be working on Gr. 10/11 science while being years behind in math. Math is something that we spend a lot of time trying out different things for.

English: 
We're semi-using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" (bits and pieces, at least) Brianna especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes. For spelling, as always, we don't do a lot of focus on spelling because of Brianna's Dysgraphia. Her spelling HAS improved on it's own through the use of texting, social media and using spell check on her typed work. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo for the 3rd time. The first year, she struggled to hit 12,000 words. Last year she did an impressive 20,000 and wasn't even done her story! We use CNN's Student News for daily writing (we watch the clip and she picks one topic to write a summary about).

French: 
Brianna is almost done her first year of Rosetta Stone. My grandma bought the kids the full 5 year lesson set, so she'll be good through high school. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours tests Brianna's French periodically.

Arts: 
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.

She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll  learn about him and read/watch some plays. 

She wants to do some basic art lessons to improve her drawing, so I'm looking into some good lessons for that. She also wants to learn to sew. She took a crochet class in the winter and will hopefully look to improve further in that.

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna normally runs with the Cornwall MultiSport Club. This year I had back to back surgeries, one being major abdominal surgery, so her coach was out of commission for the summer. Brianna is very much not self-motivating, but we hope to get her back into basic training now that I'm almost 100%. She is still walking/running/biking 10k for Terry Fox this year. She does youth yoga classes a couple times a month and yoga videos at home. Because she is overly flexible, she loves it and it greatly improves her balance and fidgeting.

Civics:
We took part in our town's first Pride parade this year, so there will be a lot of diversity learning going on in the near future. 

Life Skills: 
Brianna babysits and does random jobs for neighbours. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's looking forward to being able to get a "real" job in a couple years. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 

Extra Curriculars:
Like Olivia, Brianna is signed up for Girl Guides this year. For her age group, she will be in PathFinders. As she has anxieties about sleeping away from home, she is super nervous about camps, but we will be trying to get her to sleepover more in the coming months at various friends' so she can try to get used to it. She also joined a Teen Tuesday program through the library where she gets to hang out with kids her age and do various activities. 


Both Girls:

History/Geography: 
We're are going to start doing Country Studies again. The kids really enjoyed them. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will. We'll be reading through History of the World and Geography of the World as our his/geo base outside of the Country Studies. 

Science:
We're currently finishing up on our Biology course. After that, we'll be taking a break from a set topic while I can put together a Weather unit. Since we live in Canada and winter is coming, it works lol Both girls went to science camp over the summer and had a blast. 

Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.

Reading:
I made a post here about our reading plans for the year, with book titles and links.

Weekly Wrap Up - March 25th

We had a fairly quiet week as we took an extended long weekend for Easter. (Ok, really, so I could catch up on some marking, planning and sewing projects ;) )

Math: Olivia finished her chapter in math and is now moving on to shapes and measurement.

English: Brianna has restarted watching CNN Student News for her daily writing. We watch the day's episode together and then she picks a topic from the news cast to write a paragraph about.

Olivia decided to make these mice cupcakes with Brianna for Poetry Teatime.

Science: Olivia and Brianna had a great time with Cornell's bird identifier app. Because Brianna has always been fond of identifying the local birds, she quizzed Olivia to remember distinctions to be able to look up the bird.

History/Geography: Brianna finished World War II in Color for her Holocaust study and is now watching through Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution.

Phys Ed: The weather is getting better so we'll hopefully be getting out for more walks and Brianna will be able to start running outdoors again. For this week's Homeschool Coop, we walked to and from the library, roughly a 5km route (just over 3 miles). Brianna also did a general workout once.

French: Brianna is really enjoying her DuoLingo and was tickled to pass me in progress (which wasn't hard, I keep forgetting to do it lol)

Other: The girls have been watching Signing Time with Joshua a lot lately and all 3 of them have picked up loads more sign language! The girls are even starting to put together sentences to show off their skills

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Practical Mom

Weekly Wrap Up - Mar 18th

Joshua is progressing in his speech therapy. He's now up to 36 signs and will use the ooooo and ppp sounds unprompted to "say" open. He has also learned bbbb, eeeee, hhhhaaa and tttt.

Making the eeee sound to ask for a toy key

Math: Brianna's continuing with her math assessment. I introduced fractions to Olivia today with Lego. She thought it was fantastic to include toys with schoolwork! Brianna made a city skyline of the Pi numbers for Pi Day.

English: I've started Olivia on Reading Eggs as ABC Mouse was getting waaaay too easy for her. She needs something that will help her read/spell words instead of with sounds letters make (something she's mastered). Joshua loves watching her work on her schoolwork and it's helping him too as he sometimes attempts to make the sounds to go with the words.

Science: I am working on planning a Human Body/Biology class right now, so formal science is on hiatus. The girls did some bird watching now that our yard is starting to fill with spring birds again. They spotted a Robin too, which is traditionally the first sign of spring around here.

Geography/History: This week was a busy week for Mystery Class. Because of being sick last week we had catch up, but also, we had to figure out roughly how many degrees longitude each Mystery Class location was from Greenwich, England, on the prime meridian.

French: Still continuing with Rosetta Stone and DuoLingo.

Health/Phys Ed.: After a sick week last week, we took it slow this week.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Practical Mom

Weekly Wrap Up - March 4th

Monday was a Leap Day!

Math: Brianna is working her way through her new math. This week she did 12 various "tests". Olivia finished another chapter in her math and is now on to telling time!

English: Olivia is enjoying her phonics book so much that outside of me reading the instructions, she is completing it independently. It's nice to be able to walk away for a minute to help Brianna or Joshua and her still work!

Science: We watched the water/ice move on our walkway and discussed erosion. The girls walked along the ice and watched the air bubbles and water underneath move and talked about displacement.

Geography/History: We read through more of the Our Canadian Girl: Rachel series. Even Olivia is getting excited for read alouds now (this was her first read aloud for school). Week 5 of Mystery Class is in the books. The graphs are looking more definitive now.

French: Brianna worked on some problem areas this week  (Grammar and Writing). She also started DuoLingo on her phone.

Health/Phys Ed.: We got a bit of snow on Tues/Wed so got shoveling exercise! Brianna rode the bike once and ran on the treadmill once for her running training. Olivia is signed up for another year of Soccer, unfortunately she has to wait until May to start playing.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Current Curriculum July 2015

This post contains NO affiliate links

Previous post from last Sept here.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10 and Olivia is mostly Gr 1, a little Kindy and some Gr. 2. 

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.

Olivia:

We have a subscription to ABCMouse.com and Olivia really likes it! It has all the way from Toddlers to the end of Kindergarten. This program added on a couple more levels, but only lists levels not grades, so I don't know where the program ends after Kindergarten. Olivia is still learning to control the computer so she's a little slower going here than in her paper school work.

For printables we mostly use 1+1+1=1 (there's also great tot school and preschool printables here!). Confessions of a Homeschooler also has great printables. I love 1+1+1=1 as they have a lot of themed units. They cover a wide variety of skills but under one theme (Olivia has done cats, pizza, Octonauts and more). Even though most of them are below her skill levels, she really enjoys them so we keep doing them. 1+1+1=1 now has literature units as well.

English:

We'll start dabbling in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We'll start up 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program once Olivia is more comfortable in phonics. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words.


Math:
Olivia has started Early Math on Khan Academy. She is super proud to be doing Khan just like Brianna. Her computer skills are still lacking, so Khan is definitely something that we do together, though she is getting better at navigating. 

Olivia loves to help take care of Joshua, cooking and household chores. We, of course, encourage her as much as possible!

Phys Ed./Health:
Olivia has started running like Brianna. This year, like last, she ran in the fun run this month and will be taking part in the Cornwall Triathlon, doing a duathlon, next month. She's also in U7 Soccer this year. The kids play weekly and Olivia seems to really enjoy it.

Brianna: 

Math: 
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions in a way that really gets through to Brianna. Math Mammoth goes only to Gr. 7, so once she's done that, I'll be looking for a new curriculum for Algebra and the like. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

English: 
We're using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" again this year. Brianna's especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes, which we'll be starting again in the fall. For spelling, I keep track of words she has spelled wrong in her general school work and base spelling practice off of that. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. She took part last year and wrote an impressive 12,000+ words. Amazing who someone who often struggles with writing a few pages. This year, we'll be starting early with NaNoWriMo's educator's lesson plans.

French: 
We will be doing Rosetta Stone now that Brianna has her own laptop to install it on. Brianna already knows more French than I do, so thankfully Rosetta Stone is a self-teaching course! We'll be using Living Languages for extra activities. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours has offered to test Brianna's French periodically.

Arts: 
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.

She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll  learn about him and read/watch some plays. 

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna runs with a local MultiSport club. Her last run of the year is her Terry Fox run on Sept 14th. She actually bikes the Terry Fox run, but as she chooses to do the biggest route (10km), it's certainly nothing to laugh at! Once that is done, she's done until May. She'll spend that time doing training at least twice a week (running, yoga, strength training, cardio) and of course, we live in Canada, so there's always snow to shovel! 

Computer: 
Brianna and Olivia both have Minecraft accounts. I'm currently looking for cool educational ideas for it as I know many are out there. But for now, both girls are just working on computer skills and building. Brianna is learning to use the MinecraftWiki to research how to do or use various aspects of the game.

Civics:
This fall we're doing a study on Canadian government and our Prime Ministers from Confederation to present. We have a federal election this fall and will be tracking the candidates and their platforms. We're using various books and sites like Canada Votes, Exploring Canada and a cool Prime Ministers of Canada set that I got from the Library and Archives of Canada

Life Skills: 
Brianna has taken on babysitting and dog poop scooping jobs from our neighbours. This is teaching her a great deal about responsibility and money. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 


Both:

History/Geography: 
Lee and I are driving across country at the end of August and the girls will be tracking us and learning about various places as we go.

We're continuing to do Country Studies. The kids have really enjoyed them so far. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. We'll be using History of the World and Geography of the World at home and whatever oodles of books we can snag from the library. World Atlas is fantastic for maps and National Geographic Kids has a bunch of videos and articles I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will.

Science:
For the most part, science is done through day to day life with no set curriculum. We'll be doing a lot of interest based topics. Both girls want to do the human body. We'll have to do a refresher in a few years for Olivia, but with the random stuff she picks up on of Brianna's school work, I'm not worried about doing a joint class with them. Brianna got an ant farm for her birthday and the girls are fascinated with watching it.  

Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.

Joshua:

He will to continue to be cute and get into stuff and steal school work *wink*


Linking up with the iHomeschool Network

*sigh*

Ok, so I suck at keeping up with the blog. Christmas got nuts in my shop and I barely had time to breathe. Even homeschooling took a back seat for the most part.

Brianna did NaNoWriMo in November. She really struggles with writing. We set the lofty goal of 12,000 words. She has struggled before with writing 500, so 12,000 would be a miracle. She did surprise me though with 9,388 words! AMAZING!

In December we completely broke off of scheduled school work and just did homemade gifts. Brianna made a set of wooden blocks for Joshua and a pair of mittens for Olivia. Olivia learned how to hand sew (and super assisted machine sew) made Brianna a set of bean bags for the bean bag toss game. (Pictures later)

This month we're easing back into "real" school work. Brianna's working on Khan Academy and Olivia is working through some kindy workbooks she was given for Christmas. Joshua, unlike Olivia, is completely uninterested in "schoolwork". Meh, whatever, he's 18 mths old.

Brianna has joined Lee and I in a healthy living diet. Brianna doesn't have a lot of weight to lose (though some wouldn't hurt) mainly she just needs some eye opening lessons in nutrition and keeping up with her winter training so next running season isn't as bad (for lack of a better word) as last year.

Weekly Wrap Up

I've been slackin' over here! Not surprisingly, it's been crazy busy. With my business and getting back into the school routine, it's been pretty hectic!

Last Monday, Brianna did her final running race of the season. She knocked 2 minutes and 22 seconds off her last 5K time! She bikes a 10K for Terry Fox then is in off season training until next May

Olivia insisted on running with Brianna for a stretch

On Tuesday (first day of school for local public schools) our local homeschool group did our Not Back to School picnic. It was a small group, only 4 families, but I'm trying to get more activities going! The kids had a blast and Brianna even met with another girl her age (most of the homeschool kids in our area are much older or younger than her).

Brianna, 12, age-grade "7"

Olivia, 5, age-grade "K"

On Wednesday, the girls did their first real day of school. We decided to start slow with them only working in their new daily books for the week as it was only 3 days and Daddy was on vacation time so we had extra distractions!

This week, I did a homeschool assessment for a friend's daughter who is Gr. 1-2. It was great for me as it gave me a sneak peek into the next couple years with Olivia. We only started homeschooling with Brianna in Gr. 3, so I have only homework knowledge of Gr. 1 and 2.

Olivia seems to be loving doing school work every day. She does often complain about her arm hurting if we do too much (in her opinion) writing, but I think that's because she presses too hard with the pencil or crayon. Any ideas to get her to lighten up?

Olivia loved this graph from A Teaching Mommy

Brianna's excited about the new things we'll be doing this year, starting with Brave Writer's Poetry/Tea Time Tuesdays. We may do it a little different than Brave Writer at first, but Brianna expressed interest in learning about poetry when finding out that poems do no have to rhyme, so we're running with it!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Week Wrap Up

Ok, so it's been a little quiet around here. Things are picking up with my home business, like really crazy at the moment! We're also trying to enjoy summer as much as we can. So far we've only knocked mini-putt off our summer's bucket list but bowling and a full picnic are probabilities for this weekend!

This week at Park Leaders the girls had to make presentations of something they liked. Olivia, in her 5 year old glory, picked Goldfish. As in the cracker. Well, at least she was kind enough to want to bring a bag of Goldfish to share with the whole group!

No surprisingly, Brianna chose Hannah Montana. (for the record, it's the show she admires, not Miley). Seen here showing off her pink and blue hair.

Olivia's been working with her hands a lot lately. Isaac got her some moon sand for her birthday, she got playdoh from another friend (*shudder*) and clay from Brianna. Most often her creations turn into a big ball of mixed color, but lately, she's been actually working to create things. Sure, it's just stuff like snowmen, but hey, she's 5!

Brianna continues to plod her way through her Gr. 6 math. At her current speed, provided she continues with the *much better* work ethic she's had lately, she should be almost half way through by summer's end. Which is good, since by age she'd be starting Gr. 7 in Sept, but on the other hand bad cause that means I'm running out of time to find a curriculum for Gr. 7 math. I DO have the Golden Series for Gr. 7 (pre-algebra) from Math Mammoth, but I'm not sure it will provide a complete curriculum for the year.

Brianna has expressed interest in poetry. It seems perfect as we'll be using Brave Writer for her English after our summer story is done and they encourage Poetry Teatime. Brianna hates tea, but we'll pretend with iced tea! 

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap Up

Now that Brianna's science camp is over, the girls are back to Park Leaders. This week they had a sports day with the other parks in town. Olivia missed out because she's not actually 5 yet (she's allowed at the park, technically under Brianna's supervision, until Saturday when she turns 5, then she'll be officially in Park Leaders). Each park represents a country (similar to the Olympics), our park was Egypt. Brianna made a flag and put together a costume of sorts (her favorite part being the eyeliner she was allowed to wear lol).

I found a great birthday themed preschool pack at Tot Schooling. It's a little lower in the skill level for Olivia, but as it's her birthday week, she thought it was fantastic to do birthday school work!

With some early birthday money, Olivia decided to buy some finger paints. It was amusing to watch her be as careful as she could be (at first). She's so used to painting with paint brushes and trying *not* to get paint on herself that she was almost weirded out by the idea of putting paint on herself on purpose!

Brianna is very much enjoying our joint writing project (explained here). Our story is very loosely based on our family (to make her writing a little easier) and she's having so much fun with it! She can't wait to see what it will look like at the end of the summer and wants to type it up on the computer once we're done.

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers