*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

Weekly Wrap Up

As summer winds down we tend to do more fun hands on stuff that doesn't really resemble school.

We watched Magic School Bus's "Gets Energized" and chatted for almost an hour about how various things worked. I had Brianna think about some things she needed electricity for and what she would do if she didn't have the power running through those items.

Olivia loves her Melissa and Doug alphabet stamps. After spelling Olivia, she had me write out her full name so she could copy it in stamps.

The girls had their Super Show for Park Leaders, a "year-end" talent show of sorts. All the parks in the city got together and put on a really cute show with all the kids. Our park was fairly disorganized this year, but they did pretty good for putting it together in only a few days! Olivia ended up not wanting to take part at the last minute, but Brianna had a blast

Brianna in the red dress

The girls decided to bake banana bread to take to the last day of Park Leaders. Olivia also created a "craft" that involved gluing sticks and leaves and flowers to paper to bring to their Park Leader. I missed getting a pic but it was cute to see her come up with her own idea.

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

Summer Curriculum

Here's a look at our plans over the summer in regards to school.

Because we homeschool I, of course, plan to lock the kids in closets all summer and beat them with books. We can't have them socializing, now can we?! Ok, so maybe I've heard the S word too often lately lol Here's what's really going on.

Brianna has a zillion activities as usual! She's doing a science camp next week and a sewing camp in August. Brianna also goes swimming at a local outdoor pool with friends most afternoons. Olivia would have joined soccer this year, but the only group that allowed 4 year olds was almost an hour away, so we'll wait til next year.

Brianna also does a Park Leaders program at the neighbourhood park Tues-Fri mornings. Olivia even gets to join her this year! Unfortunately this is officially Brianna's last year, but I'm hoping since our park has a small group that she can be allowed to go with Olivia for a couple more years, even if it's only as a "helper".

Brianna and Olivia both joined the Read to Ride program with the library. In exchange for giving weekly oral book reports to the librarians, they get a sticker on their library cards that allows them on the city buses free (with an adult for Olivia!). Brianna loves it because she can go to the library any time without worrying about the heat and humidity (the library is quite a hike away) and Olivia just loves the bus!

Both girls ran a fun run today (which also happens to be Brianna's birthday!). Olivia is over the moon, thrilled for another race! It's all she talked about all week. Brianna has her 4th triathlon next month. She really needs to step up the pace in her training if she wants to beat her time from last year. She has great plans to do training and then forgets them quickly lol We're working on figuring out some kind of schedule for her to follow that works around the heat but still gets her running at least a few times a week.

As for actual school:

Brianna and I are doing a joint writing project. Each day we add to a story. Just 10 minutes of writing for each of us. Brianna thinks it's great both because it's something we're doing together, but also because it only requires 10 minutes of writing (she has a lot of issues putting thoughts to paper so "hates" writing). We've only been at it a few days, but it's fun so far. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to write after Brianna's sometimes scrambled line of thought, but by reading what I write, she's also (without realizing it) learning proper writing style, grammar, punctuation, ect...

I'm also throwing spelling review at her once a week or so. Which, while I find it tedious, appears to be working as he spelling has *greatly* improved over the last couple of months. What ever works, eh?

Normally we'd slow down drastically in the math department, but Brianna wants to "catch up" her math as she's a year "behind". So we're working our way through Math Mammoth's Gr. 6 curriculum over the summer. I certainly don't expect her to finish it in 2 mths, but by doing a regular amount of pages rather than our summer amount of pages, she'll get a great head start.

We are still doing our country studies but we'll spread it over 2-3 weeks instead of cramming everything into 1 week. I had considered stopping them for the summer but as soon as we were winding down with Iceland, Brianna was harassing me about what our next country was. So we'll continue.

Olivia is in Kindergarten so already has quite the watered down schedule. To be honest, I do school with her whenever she asks for it or I think to ask her if she wants to do some. This works out to be, on average, 1-3 times a week. As she's still technically "ahead" if she was in public school, I'm not worried.

Over the summer, we're working on telling time, calendars, drawing shapes and convincing her to write her name more often. We'll also be working on making sure she's got all of her letters down, capital and lowercase and start working more on letter sounds.

Weekly Wrap Up - End of the Regular School Year

We school year round but we do move to a much lighter schedule in the summer. In part because Brianna has several activities (Park Leaders and swimming for example) but also, simply because it's summer! However, even our last few weeks of "regular" school are much slower. Partially because of just having a busy time this June, but also just because the weather's getting warmer and we want to be outside! So this weekly wrap up is a couple weeks

After a few months of refusing, I finally convinced her to write in her notebook. Here we worked on her name, drawing 4 shapes and writing our phone number

We did our Iceland country study.

Brianna moved into volume in math and pouted that the world wasn't full of little cubes (a la Minecraft?) to count. After spending 10 minutes whining about not being able to figure out volume without the cubes, she finally read the instructions and asked "is it really just area times the height?!?!?!" Insert mom giggling in a corner.

She finally finished her Gr. 5 Math Mammoth curriculum (as said in earlier posts, she repeated it due to not fully understanding and shoddy work ethic). I base our homeschool on Mastery, which we view as 80% or higher. Brianna got 74% on the curriculum's provided final test, but as the last time she got 51%, I passed her because of the fantastic improvement!

Olivia is more and more interested in time. She knows what the clock looks like for morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and supper, but doesn't really understand how that corresponds to "time". We're also working on the span of time - yesterday, today, tomorrow, ect...

Brianna occasionally joins me for my walks. This week we did a 3.5 mile walk and enjoyed some of the beautiful scenery in our city

Brianna did her final English essay as an argumentative essay on her bedtime. After explaining what she needed to do (on her choice of topic), she ran away with it. She did fantastic!

By the way, she won. Her bedtime was moved :)

Brianna loves Report Cards. I don't "issue" one at specific intervals, but I do generally at least provide her with one at the end of June, before we move into our summer schedule. Not surprisingly, she was very happy with this one!

Olivia chose to do Pirates for her next unit. We got some great printables from Homeschool Creations, 1+1+1=1, Over The Big Moon and Homeschool Share.

She LOVED this pirate game I found

"Ps are eeeeeeeasy"

Olivia is not completely ready for the You Can Read program. She enjoys the work but doesn't seem to grasp the concept of remembering that this specific combination of letters = this specific word. No biggie. We'll give it another go in the fall. As she would only be going into Senior (or 5 year old) Kindergarten this September if she were in public school, I'm not at all worried about her "lack of reading".

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap Up

Brianna's Brain Pop videos were:
- Oceans
-  Energy Sources (Brain Pop Jr)
- Horses
- Miranda Rights

Olivia likes to write random letters that tickle her fancy while doing her school work.

This week (and last) we did our country study on France.

Brianna started on Geometry (final chapter for Gr. 5!!!) in math and is over the moon to finally be able to play with her math set.

Olivia grabbed her workbooks and begged to do them. I was in the middle of something but she said "I can do them by myself!"

Brianna makes loom bracelets to raise money for the Terry Fox Foundation. This week she has an order of 10 bracelets to complete.

Olivia continued with her You Can Read program, still on the words: the, a, and, see

She really enjoys these puzzle words

We searched for this unit's sight words

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap Up

This was a slow week as we dealt with upset tummies and more drama with Lee's chemical burns from work (a blog post all on it's own!).

Brianna's Brain Pop videos were:
- Penguins
- Fish (Brain Pop Jr)
- Basketball

We started on our new country study, this week on France. We'll finish it next week.

Brianna did ratios in math and, again, couldn't believe how easy they were. I'm glad that's she's found the last few units easy after the struggles she had previously. Now that she's done her English curriculum, we'll be doubling up on math until we drop to our lighter summer schedule. (After a mixture of not understanding {but refusing to ask for help} and some very shoddy work ethic, she repeated her entire Gr. 5 math curriculum. She's almost done now, but will finish that up and work on Gr. 6 over the summer)

I finally got Brianna reading age appropriate books. She has a very high reading level but kept choosing to read books in the Gr. 1-3 range. We finally found some young adult books that still covered the interests that she kept gravitating to in the lower level books. I also showed her that the library had a large selection of Lurlene McDaniel books (she found some of mine from when I was a teen and loves them! The ones that the library and I have are all about teens with cancer and such, so they are a little morbid, but they're well written).

We're going back to writing weekly book reports, but in a different manner than before. Previously, Brianna did a form style fill-in-the-blanks book report. She could have easily gotten the information by skimming the book quickly, which she started doing. Now, we're going to do more classic review style book reports. Since she has a lot of issues with putting her thoughts to paper, we'll be doing it dictation style with me typing on the computer while she speaks. This week she chose The Wide-Awake Princess by E.D. Baker.

My own homeschooling for the week was learning how to sew a ring sling and travel pouch with this great fabric!

Olivia mostly played on ABC Mouse this week and did a few things in her You Can Read program

Testing out our new M&D stamp set

Doing her puzzle words with her rice cakes

These ones were more difficult but she got them!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap Up

Brianna's Brain Pop app vocabulary was on:

- Bridges

- Asthma (Brain Pop Jr. app)

- Customary Measurement
- Submarines

In finishing up our mapping from last week, Brianna drew a floor plan of our first floor to scale

Brianna is flying through dividing fractions. She asked me "is it supposed to be this easy?!" Works for me!!

Yay! Last week of our English curriculum!

We started our Country Studies, this week was the USA. 

Olivia finished up her Octonauts unit

She refused to color on any Octonauts that were on the dotted lines lol

Still having issues identifying some letters, on this page it was K

Two plus two is four!

Identifying letters (we did left to right so they were more mixed up). She did better than I thought! We'll be working on "Q", "U", "Y", "R", "G" for capitals and "q", "u", "y", "b", "f", "n", "r", "g", "d", "p" and "t" for lowercase.

                                             

We've started Olivia in with 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program. So now she has declared herself "big enough to read" lol

"Reading" The Velveteen Rabbit and the Boy

Adding picture to her You Can Read page

Olivia loved this dice and graph game!

I printed these pages 2 to a page so she can have a book with all of her words that she learns

Joshua decided to do his own nature study

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap Up

On Monday we had a busy day. It was beautiful so Brianna parked herself outside for her regular school work.

After lunch we (mostly she) built a gate for our front porch.

Later, Brianna helped place plants in our garden when a headache prevented me from bending over

Again, she worked with my Brain Pop app for her vocabulary words. This week's videos were:
- Dams
- Comparing Prices (which led into a 30 minute chat on various ways to compare prices lol)
- Great Wall of China
- Graphs
- International Space Station

In geography, we again worked on review, this time on Canada in general. Brianna is excited to start our country of the week soon, but I figured a quick review on our home country was needed first!

Brianna's working on a unit of fractions and as much as she claims to suck at them, she's actually very good at them!

Olivia finished up her Pizza unit from 1+1+1=1 from last week.

Olivia was fantastic at putting the story strips in the right order after only reading the story twice

She loved making this graph of the family members favorite pizza toppings

Olivia's never done greater than/less than yet she picked it up no problem!

New color by letter page that 1+1+1=1 posted today

As usual, we're linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers